Think 'Disney' and you'll quickly think 'smoking' – whether it's Cruella Deville with her cigarette holder, Pinocchio chewing on a giant cigar or the industrial weapons-grade Jamaican skunk preferred by Basil The Great Mouse Detective.
But that's all in the past, because Disney has announced that it's banning scenes of smoking from all its family-orientated movies, and heavily reducing them from more grown-up fare produced by its Touchstone and Miramax divisions. While Disney's no-smoking decision is an undoubtedly good idea – it's a little-known fact that 82% of lung cancer victims started smoking because they saw the 1928 cigarette-friendly Mickey Mouse cartoon The Gallpoin' Gaucho and thought it looked fun – it comes at a cost. For example, now that they're no longer allowed to smoke, Chip 'N' Dale Rescue Rangers are resigned to losing their rugged macho appeal with the ladies forever.
Now that smoking has been banned from pubs, clubs, restaurants, hotels, workplaces and anywhere else that might annoy Russell Crowe somewhat, smokers everywhere have been forced to find ever-smaller refuges that accept their stinking, yellow-fingered, phlegm-hacking habit – and those refuges are grower fewer by the day.
People already want to cover DVDs in anti-smoking messages, extinguishing the smoker's long-standing pleasure in, um, watching other people smoke in rented movie. And the MPAA has put in place a new smoking classification system which instantly makes a family film containing a scene of someone having a crafty fag out of a window as offensive as watching all three Saw movies at once while listening to a CD called Now That's What I Call Rape. And even Tom And Jerry have been banned from smoking, which just leaves them with horrific violence and offensive racism. Boring!
But now Disney has taken another step forward. Disney has announced that it is to ban all scenes of smoking from its family movies and reduce the number of smoking scenes from its more adult-orientated divisions. E! Online reports:
In a letter sent to Democratic House Representative Edward Markey, Disney President and CEO Robert Iger laid out the company's revised guidelines in response to concerns that showing stars lighting up on the big screen is a threat to public health. "We discourage depictions of cigarette smoking in Disney, Touchstone and Miramax Films," the Disney chief wrote. "In particular, we expect that depictions of cigarette smoking in future Disney branded films will be nonexistent."
It's a sign that smoking is becoming an increasing unacceptable habit, and anti-tobacco lobbyists are hoping that other movie studios will follow Disney's lead in the future and reduce the number of teens who take up smoking because they see their favourite stars doing it on the big screen.
However, this new Disney smoking ban will be problematic for at least one Disney production – Pixar's follow-up to Ratatouille. Ever since Ratatouille proved that Pixar could make box office gold from a film about a rat clawing at some food, it had been hoped that it could repeat the trick with a feature-length animation about a family of emphysematous blebs slowly learning the value of friendship while trapped in a dying man's lung.
But don't worry, Disney fans. If you miss scenes of Disney smoking that much, you're always welcome to go to Disneyland Paris, where you can see red-faced Frenchmen dressed up as your favourite Disney characters smoking sneaky cigarettes hidden behind every tree. Get close enough and you might even hear their hilariously violent opinions about children, too!
Read more:
Hugo Agochi says
Lilo And Stitch. Disney should have banned Lilo And Stitch.
Dean says
I think it’s great that Disney has taken a stand against smoking in their films, but if the complaint is that smoking is life-threatening, the stance feels hypocritical.
I took my daughter to see Ratatouille several weeks ago and was stunned to see a woman pointing a gun and shooting at the main characters less than ten minutes into the film.
I’m not going to leave a theater because a character lights up, but you had better believe we walked out of Ratatouille while our popcorn was still warm.