Anyone who watches classic movies will see that almost everyone smokes.

Smoking was “cool” and socially acceptable, from the upscale elitists offering their lady friends cigarette from silver cases or to a thoughtful professor puffing on his pipe. Cowboys rolled their own cigarettes and gangsters had butts dangling from their lips, and to start a fight, just blow smoke into a person’s face. Remember how a father, to celebrate his newborn child, always offered a cigar to his friends?

My, how things have changed — smoking is now decidedly “uncool.” It took the movies 25 or more years to taper us off the tobacco habit and hooray for that.

And now? Guns all over the place. The movies, TV and videos — how James Bond has survived, I don’t know, having faced a fusillade of bullets in every episode. The Godfather films are another example. How cool! All arguments settled with a gun.

If only the media could understand what they are doing and quit all the gunplay, we might have a chance to “uncool” this fascination with weapons. It may take a while, just like the old movies.

And speaking of old movies, the ever-popular Sherlock Holmes never fired a shot, but used his head instead.

Lloyd Davies

Victoria

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