Smoking in Entertainment

 When movie and TV entertainment decided to normalize smoking cigarettes, I believe it began as "hazardous" and/or "subversive" in pop culture. Like an example of Ott and Mack's discussion regarding blue jeans and the punk movement. During the World Wars, smoking became much more popular, owing to a strategy of supplying free cigarettes to allied troops as a "morale booster." In the early twentieth century, the prevalence of cigarette smoking continued to rise, owing primarily to the emergence of new modes of tobacco promotion. Advertisements became easier to implement anywhere. 

Tobacco use in any form of entertainment contributes to the normalization of smoking, and the growing media landscape provides more options for exposure. Though this challenged the ideologies of maintaining good health. Smoking became less popular later in the twentieth century as a result of public health concerns. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis, are all diseases caused by smoking. Smoking also raises the chance of tuberculosis, some eye illnesses, and immune system problems, such as rheumatoid arthritis.

Yet, new entertainment was found to advertise it and bring it back to normalcy.

According to a new analysis by Truth Initiative, tobacco usage in streaming shows including "Stranger Things," "House of Cards," "Orange Is the New Black," and "Fuller House" is prevalent, growing, and more prominent than it is in broadcast shows. Shows where most of society's youth have been binge watching. The message to smoke is subvertely given.

In its way of promotion and subverted advertisement in these popular mainstream shows it has been absorbed by youth viewers as safe. Researchers looked at 14 of the most popular streaming and broadcast TV shows among teens and young adults for cigarette images. There were over 500 images of tobacco in the sample.

The combined tobacco imagery in the seven Netflix shows in the sample was higher than the combined tobacco imagery in the seven broadcast shows . According to the report, smoking is prominently depicted in 79 percent of the shows. Now "we've seen a pervasive re-emergence of smoking images that is glamorizing and renormalizing a dangerous habit to millions of impressionable young people while everyone was watching but no one was paying attention," said Truth Initiative CEO and President Robin Koval. "Content is the new advertisement, and it needs to end."

According to research, teenagers and young people who are heavily exposed to tobacco imagery in films are twice as likely to start smoking than those who are not. This is risky and threatening. While movie studios have made progress in reducing tobacco representations in recent years, smoking remains prevalent in many youth-oriented films (G, PG and PG-13). This contradicts the belief that youth should abstain from such behavior. Not just in entertainment but also in sports, particularly baseball, continue to have a cultural link with smokeless tobacco. "The usage of smokeless tobacco in baseball promotes the industry's message that teen males can't be genuine men unless they chew," says the article.