Real Thing - Smoking in movies may turn students to cigarettes study

The actor Joaquin Smoking.

Youth who watch a lot of movies with cigarette-smoking characters, no matter what the film's rating is, are more likely to start smoking themselves, according to a new U.S. study.

The lead author of the report, which appeared in Pediatrics, said the conclusion supports the idea that the smoking itself - not the sex, profanity or violence that may go along with it in certain films - influences teens to take up the habit.

"Movie smoking seems to be just as impactful if it's packaged in a PG-13 movie as opposed to an R movie," said James Sargent, from the Geisei School of Medicine at Dartmouth in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

"I really think it's a 'cool' factor. The more they see it, the more they start to see ways that (smoking) might make them seem more movie star," he told Reuters Health.

Sargent and his colleagues counted how many times a character was seen smoking in each of over 500 box-office hits from recent years. Then they asked 6,500 U.S. children aged 10 to 14 which of a random selection of 50 of those movies they'd watched.

The average "dose" of movie smoking was 275 scenes from films rated PG-13 and 93 scenes from R movies, the researchers said.

In three subsequent interviews with the same youths, those who had watched smoking-heavy movies were more likely to pick up the habit themselves. For each extra 500 smoking shots reported in their initial survey, young people were 33 to 49 percent more likely to try cigarettes over the next two years.

The effect of on-screen smoking was not significantly different for PG-13 and R films. Because young people tend to see more PG-13 films, Sargent's team calculated that if smoking automatically earned an R rating, the number of youngsters who try cigarettes would drop by 18 percent.

In the United States, a movie rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America suggests some material may be inappropriate for kids under age 13. An R rating means children under age 17 must be accompanied by an adult.

"At this point, it is established that exposure to smoking in movies is a potent risk factor for actually taking up smoking, especially when the exposures are early," said Brian Primack, head of the Program for Research on Media and Health at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

"This study goes a step further and suggests that taking smoking out of all PG-13 movies could have a palpable effect on the impact of smoking in the US," he told Reuters Health in an email.

But another researcher who was not involved in the study said he wasn't sure if eliminating smoking from all non-R movies was "the magic answer."

Matthew Farrelly, who studies smoking at the scientific institute RTI in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, said the study is a step in the right direction but that he wasn't sure the researchers could totally discount the influence of violence and profanity in moves on kids' decision to try smoking just by looking at movie ratings.

"I'm hoping that someone can disentangle smoking in the movies from other content that might appeal to youth to really firm up the relationship," he said.

Though the link between on-screen smoking and trying cigarettes "makes sense," Farrelly added: "I just think the relationship has been vastly overstated."

Best Story - Imperatives for the future

As political leaders and others deliberate on the names and numbers of provinces for a federal Nepal and others alike decide on bandas to counteract the proposals, what seems to have escaped the mind of many is a vision of Nepal as a ‘multicultural’ state. Considering the demographic reality of the country, the Interim Constitution has already declared Nepal a “multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural” state, but this concept

of a Nepali state that is encapsulated by the term ‘multiculturalism’ seems to be missing from the current debate.

As I write this, I am reminded of a very insightful article by Mohana Ansari, member of the National Women’s Commission, published a few months ago in Kantipur, arguing that lack of awareness about the value of educating children is no longer a concern amongst Muslims in Nepal. However, the main reason young Muslim girls are reluctant to attend schools at higher levels is the requirement to wear uniforms consisting of short skirts, particularly when they reach secondary and higher secondary levels.

One might wonder what short skirts have to do with federalism, or multi-culturalism, for that matter. But, as Ansari writes, the principals of the schools in Biratnagar, Itahari and other areas where the population of Muslims is not insignificant, have said firmly that bending the rules for the sake of any community is not possible.

If we cannot recognise the cultural differences of social groups in democratic societies such as ours, then what are we heading towards? Multiculturalism, state restructuring, federalism, these might mean many things to many people, but the basic tenet needs to be that in

democratic societies, different groups should be entitled not only to non-discrimination and inclusion in the economic and political domains of the state, but also to some form of public recognition of their differences.

‘Multiculturalism’ as a state policy was gradually adopted in countries like Canada and the UK in the 1970s and became popular in the late 1990s even in countries like France and Australia. For these countries, multiculturalism was a strategy to define the relationships between immigrant groups and thehost society. More specifically, as political theorist Harihar Bhattacharyya reminds us, the discourse of multiculturalism in these Western states have been taking place in the context of them already having evolved as culturally more or less homogenous nation-states that now have to accommodate and incorporate their minority groups into a dominant national ethos of liberal democracy.

That the issue to be addressed in these countries related primarily to recent arrivals, such as North Africans in France and migrants from its former colonies in Britain, is in sharp contrast to countries like Nepal or even India, which have always been multicultural societies. What we are hence confronted with here in Nepal is the need to incorporate its diverse citizenry as an integral part of its national polity.

To this effect, the nature of engagement required of the Nepali state, vis-à-vis its minority groups like the Muslims, is completely different from that of the Western states. In these countries, it might suffice to accommodate the religious needs of its immigrant Muslim

communities such as by organising cultural fairs, making available burial sites, prayer spaces, granting permission to construct mosques, and so on. But after events such as the London train bombings of 2005 and the riots later that year in France, these states also had the option

of rethinking the whole concept of multiculturalism.

That is at the heart of the debate on head scarves in France, which led former president Nikolas Sarkozy to declare that multiculturalism has failed “because some were more concerned with the identity of immigrants who were arriving, while they didn’t care enough for the identity of their host country.”

Sarkozy went on to say: “It can only be a French Islam, and not an Islam in France.” But the nature of policy interventions required in countries like Nepal would be completely different. Taking the example of Muslims one more time, although there might be Muslims who are recent immigrants, many Muslims have been living in Nepal even before the creation of the state itself, while others came with the territory when the four districts of Naya Muluk were ‘gifted’ to Nepal in 1860. In that sense, the Muslims of Nepal are not newcomers and are as Nepali as any other community living here. What we thus require are a set of political and

institutional measures that would ensure accommodation of the country’s diversity while also addressing the issue of exclusion of marginalised groups in the country’s political and economic domains.

In the context of today’s Nepal, federalism is viewed as a means to achieve self-determination for socially excluded groups. But self-determination by one group cannot be at the cost of any other, whether dominant or excluded. That exercise of self-determination by everyone is possible only when multiculturalism is allowed space to grow in all spheres of life. In other words, the ideal of multiculturalism should allow the notion of individual citizenship and the rights inherent therein to harmonise with the ethos of different socio-cultural communities.

In the short skirt example, this would mean respecting the cultural norms of Muslims and allowing girls from that community to wear a different outfit to school, or changing the school uniform entirely to make it acceptable to them. It definitely does not consist of refusing

outright to accommodate the requests of teenaged Muslim girls and their parents, thus denying one of the most deprived groups of Nepali society its right to education. Had the essence of multiculturalism been understood and embraced by our society, the approach of these schools would have definitely been different.

The Interim Constitution acknowledges Nepal’s demographic reality by at least defining Nepal as a multicultural state, but unless concrete measures are taken to provide recognition of social diversity, the ideal of multiculturalism is likely to be no more that mirage.

Best Story - A way back home

Cumulus clouds drifted slowly in the sky as humming birds flew beneath them, making random circles, pentagons and ellipses. The trees made soft whooshing sounds as the wind flirted with their foliage. Everything was calm and serene. Yes, serene; that was the word that best described the environment of the park. The only thing that seemed to be missing was a flowing stream. That would have made it picture perfect.

Still, even a flowing stream wouldn’t fill the blank for Robin; nothing would make the picture complete. Not the clouds, not the humming birds, not even a calmly bubbling brook would help soothe the turbulence that had risen in the four chambers of his heart. Robin slowly opened his eyes. He had no desire to gaze at the floating clouds; he knew the birds

would keep flying—it was the only thing they did. And since it was autumn, the leaves were destined to fall. Destiny; how he hated that word. “It’s not in your destiny,” he remembered the exact words he had been compelled to hear only a few hours ago. The synchronised movement of lips on an emotionless face had uttered these words.

There were no second takes in this act. He had given his best shot and he had lost. Robin sighed and shifted his weight on the grassland. He had been lying there for a while. He had carelessly forgotten to keep an account of the time. Besides, he had nowhere to go. He had hit his head on a dead-end. How he had hopefully looked forward to a wider, endless horizon. But here he was, confined within the four boundary walls of the park.

“It’s not in your destiny,” the words rang clear in his ears again. And though he didn’t want to, he re-enacted the act—him entering the consulate building and putting all his documents in order; the air filled with perspiration and hope; an aura of pain, pain of rejection; and the bland sound of stamps after hearing which your ears turn deaf to even the finest piece of music in the world. Robin couldn’t understand how someone could so easily put an end to the fulfillment of a dream. How could someone, without so much as looking into your eyes, pierce right through your heart?

“Maybe something was wrong with my documents,” Robin thought for the umpteenth time, or maybe, it was just not my destiny.

The right pocket of Robin’s trousers made a buzzing sound. Robin jolted upright thinking that it was a bug, only to realise that it was his mobile-phone ringing. He knew who the caller was without even looking at the number on the mobile-screen. It was thirty minutes past four in the afternoon and it was time for Robin to receive that call.

“Hello!” An excited voice echoed from the rectangular device in his hand.

“Hey!” Robin tried to sound happy.

“I’ve done it. I did just what you said and I won the match.” The excitement in the voice, its ring of pride and victory, was irrevocable.

Robin smiled as his daughter giggled over the phone. He could almost see her—still in her school-uniform, trying hard to whisper so as not wake up her napping grandfather, and making faces at her mother who always reminded her to keep the conversation short. Robin wished to be there in his home, the same home he was willing to run away from. “No, I wasn’t running away,” Robin corrected himself. “I was just changing the direction of my yacht.”

He only wanted to take a flight to some place abroad; like migrating birds that fly over the rivers and mountains to find their way into a safe haven. Only unlike those birds, Robin wasn’t planning to return after a season.

“Daddy, are you there?” The loud whisper continued. “I can’t wait to show you the trophy.”

The trophy; the bronze statuette that glistened like gold.

“It was a tough match. The words were difficult to spell and pronounce. But I tried. Like you said, it wasn’t winning I focused on. I just gave it my best shot, and that finally did it. I won.” Robin knew his daughter was having a hard time keeping her volume low. She had won, his daughter had won when he had lost, and the excitement was evident in her voice. “We took a picture too, daddy. I want to show it to you.”

A picture of his daughter smiling from ear to ear. Robin suddenly remembered other pictures he had envisioned in his mind; pictures of some faraway land where he might have found opportunities, money and happiness. But long before he could put those pictures upon a mantel, they had been torn into pieces.

“Daddy, are you alright?” Afraid that his daughter would sense disappointment in his voice, and she could, Robin cleared his throat and acted normal.

“Yes, I’m very happy and very proud of you. Keep that trophy and picture intact,” Robin said.

“Hey dad, is this gold?”

“What is?”

“This trophy. It glitters like gold. Is it really gold?” Robin knew her ever-so-keen eyes would inspect the trophy in her hand as if it were some alien object.

“Would you care about it less if it weren’t gold?” Slowly Robin stood up and walked toward a nearby bench. There should have been a stream here, he gazed around. His eyes searched for that non-existent stream. There was silence at the other end of the phone. She’s contemplating the fact, Robin mused as he continued walking.

“Oh I love this, gold or no-gold. Besides, it’s not gold that makes you happy, right dad?”

Robin stopped short. What did his daughter just say? It’s not gold that makes you happy. Yes, gold doesn’t make you happy, nor can the mirage of a faraway land guarantee happiness, he mused. Maybe his trophy in bronze had been there all along. It was just that he wanted it in gold. And he knew he had tried to paint it gold. Oh how hard had he tried and how badly had he lost!

Robin walked slowly and sat down on a bench. He gazed around and looked at the nearby trees. He saw a few migrating birds building their nests. He wondered what place they had left behind in order to breathe and breed in an ecologically safer land. “Men aren’t any different from birds,” Robin thought—both in a continuous search for a new place, a new hope; both in a hardship to adapt; both always ready to take off and change their destinies; both beguiled by a faraway land, incognizant of the consequences—and yet, Robin concluded, both will continue flying in a new direction every other day.

“You’re quiet today, daddy.”

Robin tried to concentrate on his daughter. “Those sounds. Are there birds around?”

“Yes, migrating birds, the kind that travel to a new place every new season.” The chirping sounds of the birds did what the non-existent stream couldn’t. They created a soothing arousal in Robin’s ears and heart.

“Birdsong…today I learnt what Robin means. It’s a bird. Robin—the bird.” Robin could hear a gentle tone in his daughter’s voice. “You won’t fly away, daddy, will you?”

We all have to fly, Robin wanted to tell her. It’s just a matter of where or when. “No, I won’t,” Robin lied. She will learn in due time, Robin thought, but not today.

“Oh!” Robin heard his daughter heave a sigh. “I was afraid you’d say yes. Now come back home, daddy. Remember the trophy?”

“Ahh yes, the trophy. I’m coming home.”

“Okay, got to go. Mommy is giving me her infamous stare. Bye, daddy.”

Robin could hear soft giggles as his daughter put down the receiver, sounds to which his life was anchored. And he knew that no matter where he went, he would always get back to those sounds. Like birdsongs, those sounds would never fade away.

Robin put his mobile inside his pocket as he rose up and hurried toward his home. Only a few hours earlier, his legs had been numb. He had had to drag his legs out of the consulate building. And now, he couldn’t wait to put one foot in front of another. He couldn’t wait to reach home and behold his daughter and the victory she had accomplished, her trophy—the bronze trophy.

As Robin walked back home, he saw a pair of birds perched on their newly-built nest. And even as they chirped, sang and flew around their new home, they knew that one day they had to get back; even though they had flown far away from home, they knew their way back.