The night after Sweetheart Vivienne and I finished watching The West Wing, we began Mad Men. Its website says: ‘Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama Mad Men follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising’. We’ve now finished Season 1 in which the amount of smoking astounded us. It’s incessant. Was smoking that popular in the 1960s? If not, why is it depicted falsely? Or if so, why is it essential to the series that it’s depicted so? And either way, is paid product placement a factor? Though tobacco companies target teenagers because once they’re addicted, they’re life-long customers, little doubt they’ll target adult Mad Men watchers if it’s commercially beneficial to do so. Which is relevant because 31 May – eight days ago – was World No Tobacco Day 2009. To mark it, the MJA published this paper by two Americans who analysed the content of the first 18 seasons of The Simpsons TV show, which aired from 1989 to 2007. They watched 400 episodes and found 795 instances of smoking. I reckon an objective content analysis of Mad Men would document much more smoking. In Australia direct tobacco advertising’s been banned on TV since the 1970s and at sports events since 2006. Currently our smoking rates are among the world’s lowest. Frequent smoking in films and TV programs is arguably the tobacco industry’s response. It’s deplorable.
