AT&T puts the smoking back in Superman

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) today issued this age-rating for a home video release:

SUPERMAN: MAN OF TOMORROW — Rated PG-13 for violence, some bloody images, suggestive material, language, smoking and brief partial nudity. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (#52714, issued May 13, 2020)

Superman: Man of Tomorrow is an animated, feature-length movie produced by DC Universe, a video-on-demand platform owned by AT&T’s WarnerMedia.

Write AT&T, the company responsible.We recommend you send a brief letter to:

      John Stankey, CEO

      WarnerMedia, LLC

      30 Hudson Yards

      New York NY 10001

Note: Mr. Stankey will take over as CEO of AT&T, WarnerMedia's parent company, on July 1, 2020.

History you need to know

1 | In 1978’s Superman movie, Lois Lane lights a Marlboro and Superman uses his X-ray vision to confirm that she doesn’t have lung cancer: “Not yet, thank goodness."

2 | In December 1980, advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi and Britain's Health Education Council launch a two-year, £3.5 million campaign against youth-smoking. TV and magazine ads star Superman, who battles bad-guy Nick O’Teen with the slogan, “Never say yes to a cigarette.”

3 | Superman II opens in spring 1981, while the UK anti-smoking campaign is running. Lois Lane smokes cigarettes, Marlboro logos appear on city streets, and Superman fights his way out of a Marlboro truck after Philip Morris pays the movie’s British producers £20,000 for product placement (worth nearly $125,000 today). Superman's producers give Philip Morris the power to remove anything from the film “detrimental” to the Marlboro brand name. Read the deal in UCSF’s Truth Industry Documents Library.

Forty years later, AT&T puts the smoking back in Superman. Why?

Does AT&T have a policy against PG-13 smoking? Yes. Against tobacco product placement? Yes. Read WarnerMedia's policy for yourself.

Does its policy count for anything in a global health crisis worsened by smoking? Ask the next boss of AT&T.

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This 2020 Superman movie is not yet released nor reviewed by Breathe California. The MPA adds “smoking” descriptors to a tiny fraction (13%) of all top-grossing, youth-rated movies with tobacco content. Unhelpful to parents, these labels sometimes give us advance notice of a film with smoking. What polices are evidence-based? See the “Recommendations” in: Polansky JR and Glantz SA (2020). What is Hollywood hiding? University of California, San Francisco.

This item, prepared by Jonathan Polansky, is cross posted from  the Smokefree Movies blog.