You Can't Do That On Television

In a shocking 2004 episode of Desperate Housewives, Gabrielle Solis, played by Eva Longoria, cheats on her husband by sleeping with their 17-year-old gardener. She then does something unconscionable: she smokes a cigarette. This final act nearly proved too extreme for television. The creator of the series, Marc Cherry, recalls in an interview, "[The ABC standards and practices department] didn't mind the statutory rape or the adultery, but they were really upset by the fact that she lights up a cigarette afterward. They wanted me to take that part out because it's not good to show smoking on TV - but I guess sinning is OK."

Each year, advocacy groups release reports detailing the extent to which TV shows inadequately represent their constituencies. Yet today, smokers go underrepresented on television far more than members of any racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual minority. This fact undercuts any assertion that art merely reflects life as opposed to promoting certain ways of living. The logic of the situation, so obvious that it doesn't bear elaboration by network executives, apparently dictates that smoking, unlike, say, fornication and adultery, can have negative consequences.

Joe Eszterhas agrees. The screenwriter of such notorious bodice-rippers as Basic Instinct, Showgirls, and Jade, Eszterhas started smoking at 12 and contracted cancer in 2000. After having most of his larynx removed, he began crusading against smoking. In a 2002 editorial in the New York Times, he apologized for glamorizing smoking in his films, writing, "A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old." He is probably right. But while he laments smoking's role in the "sexual subtext" of Basic Instinct, he never laments that sexual subtext itself. Apparently, having Sharon Stone expose her crotch after murdering her lover with an icepick at the moment of climax doesn't aim anything at anyone.

Years ago, my uncle told me, "In the '50s, you used to go into a drug store and say, 'I'd like a pack of cigarettes - and [whispering] some condoms.' Now, you go into a drug store and say, 'I'd like some condoms - and [whispering] a pack of cigarettes.'" His observation has proved more true than he anticipated. In this progressive 21st century, media executives dictate cultural taboos with Tarzanesque simplicity: sex good, smoking bad. Of course, sex can be good, whereas smoking never can. But sex can also be very, very bad - not that anyone would learn this from watching television.

Americans seemingly can no longer agree on any moral imperative of greater consequence than "don't smoke." In the absence of any consensus regarding a transcendent value system, "morally wrong" is rapidly coming to mean little more than "bad for your health." Indeed, if Miami Vice had taken place in 2007, it probably would have featured Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas hanging out at South Beach protecting innocent low-carb dieters from the ill effects of secondhand smoke and trans fats. The traditional song "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" contains the lyric, "Jordan's river is chilly and cold / Chills the body but not the soul." Much of contemporary culture forms the antithesis of the River Jordan: it chills the soul, but not the body.