The female protagonist and tobacco imagery in Spinning Gasing: a new aesthetic in Asian cinema

Abstract

This article examines images of smoking by female stars in Teck Tan's film, Spinning Gasing. It contends that the on-screen actions of female screen idols creates an aesthetic that reflects broader social, cultural and economic changes in Asia. In the light of a series of studies that indicate an alarming rise in the number of young Asian women becoming smokers, this article therefore draws attention to an area under-explored in media and film studies. While much has been written on the glamorization of smoking in Hollywood films and its use as a visual and narrative device, surprisingly little research exists on the portrayal of smoking in Asian cinema. This chosen text shows that a gendered aesthetic is constructed in contemporary Asian films around the ‘stylized repetition’ (Butler [c.1988] 2003) of smoking as an important factor in issues of body image and cultural identity. With reference to Jean Mitry's reasoning that any screen image is a ‘materialized invocation’, this article reveals how films from Asia construct glamorized tobacco imagery of empowered female protagonists.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented as a conference paper at the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies conference in Tokyo, July 2009, with the kind support of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS), The University of Adelaide.

Notes on contributor

Peter C. Pugsley teaches Asian Screen Media and Advanced Media Theory in the Discipline of Media at the University of Adelaide. He is the author of Tradition, Culture and Aesthetics in Contemporary Asian Cinema (Ashgate, UK, 2013) and has published widely on Asian media.

Notes

^1. Yati's choice of a kretek in these opening scenes is itself multi-layered. Kreteks are seen as cheap Indonesian cigarettes, generally favoured by older, less-refined smokers. Yati's cultural capital is being expressed here as a counter to the norms, as a player in the ‘alternative’ set, her coolness is exemplified by her tacit approval of a ‘crass’ product.

^2. To use the prevalent term in health communications (see McGee and Ketchel 2006 or Polansky and Glantz 2009).

^3. While box-office figures are important, like many countries in the region, Malaysia is awash with pirate video, VCD and DVD copies. Khoo (2006, 226, note 20) suggests that by 1999, ‘video and film piracy is estimated to have increased to 90 percent’. The one-year delay in the official release of Spinning Gasing had seen it circulate widely well before it could profit from box-office takings.

^4. US studies, for example, have drawn on extensive health agency data to conclude that smoking in movies leads almost 390,000 adolescents each year to start smoking and creates $4.1 billion in revenue for the US tobacco industry alone (Alamar and Glantz 2006). See also, Chapman and Davis (1997); Gilman and Zhou (2004); Distefan, Pierce, and Gilpin (2004); Sargent et al. 2005, Stockwell and Glantz (1997); Cancer Council Australia (2009) and Polansky and Glantz (2009).

^5. One extensive study, for example, included responses from almost 2000 women, and found that Taiwanese women began smoking at around the age of 20 for reasons that ‘revolved around their desire to control their weight and handle their emotions’ (Tsai et al. 2008, 971).

^6. However, it is difficult to find consistent data on smoking rates in countries across the region, with even World Health Organisation results relying on inconsistent smoking-related data from ‘participating countries only’ (WHO 2009).

^7. Strategies across global markets have included the packaging of cigarettes in packets of 14 rather than 20 to make them cheaper and more handbag friendly in terms of size and design to attract young female ‘starters’, as well as a concerted push for ease of access to tobacco products for all young people including higher visibility point-of-sale displays (Wen et al. 2005). Tobacco companies have also been creating TMDs that include establishing companies for non-tobacco products and naming them after a cigarette brand, or ‘brand-stretching’ where the company can quite legitimately point to the fact that it is selling watches or clothing, but not (necessarily) cigarettes (see Assunta and Chapman 2004; Wen et al. 2005). The British American Tobacco group in Malaysia has similarly moved towards ‘parallel communications via non-tobacco products’ (Assunta and Chapman 2004, ii64), aligning particular brands with other services or products including ‘Kool Jazz Promotions’ and pop music concerts such as the 2004 ‘Salem Craig David concert’.

^8. For more on this procedure see, for example, Dobke, Chung, and Takabe (2006) or Kim and Bhatki (2005).

^9. These methods seem to have met with considerable success. In 1995, Taiwan had an 8% rise in smoking rates for girls in one year, and that the prevalence of smoking had ‘sharply increased among women aged 18–24 years’ (Tsai et al. 2008, 976). In Beijing, government-supported research showed that smoking rates for women grew from 8.76% in 1997 to 10.4% in 2004. See also, Wen et al. (2005); Chen and Winder (1990); Lee, Gilmore, and Collin (2004) and Hafez and Ling (2005).

^10. Although with minimal success in some regions. For example, Hong Kong efforts at curbing exposure to tobacco-related images have been lacking, and from 1992 only a partial ban has been placed on TV, radio and cinema ads. However, partial bans of cigarette advertising are notoriously ineffective and only comprehensive bans on the promotion of tobacco products can reduce tobacco consumption (Assunta and Chapman 2004; Saffer and Chaloupka 2000). Such bans, however, rely on the strength of concerned governments, citizens or lobby groups who must ‘battle against an industry that both down plays effects and that is far more responsive to the profit motive than to ethical issues’ (Valdivia 2009, 192).