Why Movie Characters Smoke so Much?

Hello everyone!

A few months ago my wife called my attention to this subject: why so many movie characters smoke?

I never actually realized, but that's, indeed, a weird phenomenon. According to some CDC statistics that I've found on Google, about 12% of the adult male population in the United States (where Hollywood is, so let's go with that number) actually smoke. In the other hand, in almost every movie in existance, there's several characters that smoke.

I haven't found any formal study on the subject, but it seems obvious to me that there are WAY more than 12% of movie characters that smoke, especially if you consider only movies that are meant for an adult audience (removing cartoons, family-friendly movies, etc.).

It's almost an ubiquitous part of the cinema industry: in nearly every genre of movie, in nearly every situation, there's several characters that do smoke.

But.... why?

See, I'm not a smoker myself, but I'm not stupid. I do understand that smoking is culturally associated with being rebellious, independent, sexy, tough...

But it feels so cheap, on today's world in which everyone knows that smoking is bad, that movie directors keep shoving down everyone's throat that every "cool" character HAS to smoke. If there's a sexy male protagonist, of a femme fatale, there's an incredibly high chance of he/she also smoking.

It's a trope, indeed, but an outdated trope. There are dozens of tropes that were a thing in the past but the industry moved past as they were considered bad by today's standards, like suicide on cartoons (Tom suicided several times back in the days) or the perfect-hero (with unquestionable moral, incredible physical strenght and perfect strategic skills).

Anyway. What I'm trying to say is: I can't understand why the movie industry keep using the "cool smoker" trope in 2023.

Thanks for reading this post, and until next time!

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