India: CHATTERJI: Bollywood: Not All Smoke

Source from:  India Blooms (in)  12/18/2012

The 43rd Union World Conference on Lung Health held recently in Kuala Lumpur focused on tuberculosis and tobacco use. TWF correspondent Shoma A. Chatterji was a media Fellow at the conference presenting her study on the impact of smoking in Indian films on children and young people.

You must have heard the warning voice-over against smoking in Indian films before the film begins and during the intermission. Does this warning really work? How much has Indian cinema contributed to the portrayal of smoking in films, both in qualitative and quantitative terms? What is the extent and quality of its impact on the youth? How has it affected smoking in general and smoking among the youth in particular? These questions have been recently addressed by an interesting study that also sheds considerable light by offering quite a few significant answers to the questions raised.

In India, many tobacco users start as young as the age of ten. More than 5,500 adolescents join the rank of tobacco users daily in India, adding to the four million consumers under the age of 15. The early initiation age is a pointer to the urgent need to plan effective interventions to safeguard this vulnerable group. While social acceptability of the use of tobacco among older persons may be declining, its use among the young is on the rise. In a recent study among Delhi students (aged 11 to 14 years), 9.3 per cent said they had experimented with smoking in the absence of interventions.

Research from Western countries has provided strong evidence for an association between viewing smoking in movies and smoking initiation among adolescents. Indian films are watched by over 188 million Indian viewers every year and are distributed in several countries including the Middle-East, South East Asia, USA, UK and Europe. The worldwide viewership for Bollywood films is estimated to be around three million; compare it with 2.6 million for Hollywood films. Bollywood film stars in India have a large fan following and can influence the behaviour and attitudes of adolescents.

Since the 1950s, Indian cinema has glamourised tobacco use through its icons. Ashok Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor were often shown smoking cigarettes and cigars in films. The big posters of Amitabh Bachchan balancing a cheroot in his lips in Coolie, is another example.

Over the years, smoking within the script has spilled over to smoking by young men and women in real life. The linkages they seem to have made with mainstream films are that of style, romance, tragedy and rebellion, too tempting for youngsters not to emulate, either in order to seek closer identification with their favourite stars, or, to gain peer acceptance, or both.

A 2003 report entitled Bollywood – Victim or Ally by Strategic Mediaworks for the Tobacco Free Initiative, World Health Organisation (WHO), stated that the use and portrayal of tobacco in Indian films has not declined despite governmental initiatives that apparently seem to be getting stronger with every passing year. The report documents the findings of a study on the portrayal of tobacco in Indian cinema and reiterates that it glamourises the use of tobacco. The report was a call for action to the film and fashion industries to stop promoting smoking. WHO was supported in this project by the American Medical Association, the Los Angeles Department of Health and the SmokeFreeMovies project at the University of California in San Francisco. It was the outcome of increasing evidence of tobacco companies turning to the entertainment industry to market their deadly product.

The study showcases how tobacco portrayal was common in 76 per cent of the 440 films that were released during 1991 to 2002. In 2002 alone, it shot up to 85 per cent. The study records an increase in the celluloid depiction of smoking in stressful situations – going up from 9 per cent in 1991 to nearly 29 per cent in 2002. Between 2001 and 2002, the portrayal of tobacco-use as a rebellious activity had risen sharply. Of late, smoking is also associated with attitudes of independence and self-assertion.

Researcher duo Goswami and Kashyap's detailed study focuses on 'Tobacco Use in Indian Movies released in 2004-2005' and 'Influence of Movies on Youngsters'. It reveals that instances of showing smoking/tobacco use in movies had increased significantly to 89 per cent of all movies released between 2004 and 2005. Tobacco brands now appear in 46 per cent of movies having tobacco smoking scenes.

Some youngsters who have not experimented with tobacco yet admitted during interviews that imitating smoking behaviour of the movie characters was cool, thinking it to be fashionable and imitable.

Equally distressing are the findings of the comparatively recent India Global Youth Tobacco Survey among 2,183 students (aged 13 to 15) from 50 schools in 15 states. A whopping 87.5 per cent said they had purchased tobacco products without restriction. Supported by the WHO and Centre for Disease Control, USA, the survey reveals that one in ten students had used tobacco in some form and the percentage of current users was 4.5. Less than six in ten students reported having learnt about the dangers of tobacco use, says Monika Arora of Hriday, who wrote the survey report "Tobacco use in Bollywood movies, tobacco promotional activities and their association with tobacco use among Indian adolescents". The report reveals that three in ten students thought smoking/chewing tobacco made boys look more attractive.
 
An interesting real-life anecdote is related to No Smoking (2007) directed by Anurag Kashyap. The film focuses on how a man joins a course to kick his addiction. He finds the course a bizarre journey. Sadly, the film flopped miserably at the box office. The interesting behind-the-scenes story is that the film's hero John Abraham does not smoke in real life. But to make the character convincing on screen, he smoked up to 90 cigarettes a day during the shooting to give the film a more believable look. Later when the film was complete Abraham went for an X-ray and found his lungs were heavily damaged. Interestingly, the two early contenders for the role later played by John Abraham were Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan respectively, both known to be heavy smokers in real life. But they declined the film. Enditem