Statutory warnings are injurious to your entertainment

A number of films or television serials these days open with a black screen sternly informing the viewer in bold, reverse type that ‘Smoking is injurious to health.’ That is old hat of course, and we have been seeing that health warning or its variants on cigarette packs – ‘Smoking causes cancer’ – visually aided by skull and crossbones, for several decades now. Nobody pays a blind bit of notice for various reasons. The thing of it is, there are not too many people smoking these days, though I could be contradicted on that point by some market research wag representing the interests of the tobacco lobby. Smokers at international airports are treated like outcasts and provided with a separate glass cabin where they all gather in the haze and smoke their lungs out, coughing and sputtering the while. Smoking inside the aircraft, of course, is a strict no-no, and if you are nabbed sneaking a drag inside the loo, you could be thrown out in mid-flight. Without a parachute.

 As for the pernicious habit having declined worldwide, I am speaking more for myself and those I run into on a regular basis. And as I am on the subject of films, the first thing you notice as soon as the film or episode commences, is the hero fishing out a fag from his soft pack and taking a deep, contemplative drag. Who remembers ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’ – a classic 1950s British cigarette commercial? Which kind of puts the kibosh on the preceding health warning premise. That is perfectly fine from the storyline’s point of view. One is not expecting the hero, or the bad guy for that matter, to be overly consumed by potential health hazards.  It is all to do with style.

Can you imagine Casablanca without Humphrey Bogart and a cigarette dangling from his lips throughout the film? For those of you reading this who are too young to have heard of Casablanca or Humphrey Bogart, you could do worse than get on to Google search. ‘Here’s looking at you, kid,’ became a tagline for the ages, on par with Gone with the Wind hero Rhett Butler’s ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ Staying with the Bogart reference, there is a saying (and a song) Don’t Bogart that joint, my friend (featured in the soundtrack of the 1969 counterculture classic Easy Rider), meaning don’t keep the weed dangling. Pass it round. Needless to add, the joint referred to contains substances far more potent than your normal, everyday cigarette. Once your name, in this case Humphrey Bogart’s, goes into legend and song, there is nothing more to be said.

This raises an interesting question. Why do purveyors of tele-cinematic entertainment confine themselves to tobacco when it comes to warning us of dire health consequences? Truth to tell, it is the government’s film censor board that insists on the warning being displayed at the outset, not the producers themselves. The point I am making is, I don’t come across the scolding strap line with regard to drinking. Are we to conclude that it is perfectly kosher with the authorities if we watch our blotto heroes drink like fish? I am not aware of the drinking habits of our Piscean friends and I am convinced these underwater vertebrates are being needlessly dragged into the subject of alcoholism. It is bad enough that we grill, boil and fry them for our gastronomic delectation. Should we also set them up as a benchmark for human intemperance?

When it comes to Indian popular films courtesy of Bollywood, Tollywood and others, a sozzled hero is almost a sine qua non for a lovelorn, lugubrious song sequence. So many memorable Indian film songs have been composed and screened featuring the protagonist staggering around clutching a bottle of VAT 69 firmly in his hands. It’s always VAT 69. Contrary to what I said earlier, I am informed that some Indian films do warn the viewer of the evils of drinking at the bottom of the screen whenever the actors shout ‘Cheers’ and raise a glass or three. However, I have not encountered this warning on drinking, so I will keep my counsel. Or perhaps I should watch more Indian films.

Taking this argument further, crime movies and murder mysteries revel in criminal acts of varying kinds. That is precisely why the genre is so dubbed. That said, I have yet to witness a film sequence where, just as the killer shoots down his victim, knifes him in the gut, poisons his cup of tea or strangles and gags him to death, a warning line flashes across the screen letting us know that committing murder is a crime, injurious to the health of the victim and can attract capital punishment for the perpetrator. If any of you reading this has seen anything on our screens approximating to these typographic legends, do let me know giving details of the film and where I can access the same.

What price, Gluttony? Listed among the Bible’s Seven Deadly Sins, there are any number of films which feature our bulimic movie stars gorging themselves on meat and drink and all manner of other comestibles till they are sick to the stomach. At least, the viewer is filled with nausea. Is this not a fit sequence to let the audience know that eating too much is not just extremely bad for health, but a sin to boot? The religious angle is always rife with possibilities. The poet Dante, in his seminal work Inferno, dealt unspeakably harshly with those found guilty of Gluttony. He was not too kind with those guilty of the remaining six deadly sins either – Pride, Greed, Wrath, Lust, Envy and Sloth. Dante was like that. A morose individual, he loved getting into gory and graphic details of how sinners of every hue received their comeuppance. Just imagine. If all those sins were to be highlighted in bold type every time they were committed on screen, we will not be able to follow the storyline from start to finish. I experience that problem with subtitles as well, but I have to live with them if I am watching an award-winning Italian or Japanese film.

I guess what I am questioning is the relevance of warning the public on the ills of smoking or drinking in cinema halls and on our television screens, when there is no evidence to suggest that the audience is carefully considering the admonishing, wagging finger and taking remedial action. My point is further underscored when we are treated to surrogate adverts singing the praises of Kingfisher soda water, Royal Challenger sports drinks, Wills casual wear, not to mention the stunning, Absolut series of advertisements. All these brands trigger their original, ‘mother’ brands purveying liquor or tobacco. What do they take us for? Chopped liver?

In conclusion, I can only say that the wool is constantly being pulled over our eyes. And we know it. So, my fervent appeal to the powers-that-be is that they should stop frequently interrupting our enjoyment of visual entertainment by asinine comments about the ills of smoking, plumb spang in the middle of a sequence in which the smoking hero is about to say something priceless. Like who choked to death the attractive typist with her nylon stockings? If push comes to shove, let them (at their expense) do a 30-second commercial showing a doctor taking us through our decaying lungs or calcified intestinal tract due to smoking or mindless eating. This can be screened along with other commercials like eateries, life insurance, potato chips, automobiles and so on. That’s fair dinkum, as the Aussies love saying. I’ll leave you with this thought. When did you last see an arty black and white photograph of the genius film maker Satyajit Ray without a cigarette between his fingers or his lips?

I rest my case.