Banning Smoking Even in Theatrical Productions
As we toil to finance their lavish lifestyles, bureaucrats fill their empty hours snuffing out the last stray embers of freedom:
During a key scene in the play “Venus in Fur” the lead actress lights up a Marlboro from her purse and takes a drag, tilting her head backward while exhaling a long stream of smoke.
Vanda smokes for only about a minute before dropping the cigarette into her coffee mug, but it’s a pivotal moment that begins the character’s transformation into an assertive woman. And some theater employees say it wouldn’t feel nearly as raw if the actress couldn’t smoke an actual cigarette on stage.
“If you’re going to be authentic to that aspect of a play, it’s essential,” said Bain Boehlke, artistic director at The Jungle Theater in Minneapolis, where “Venus in Fur” currently is playing. “Just the smell of the cigarette smoke is part of the world of the play.”
Those moments of authenticity could become harder to pull off in Minnesota if lawmakers amend the state’s smoking ban to eliminate an exemption for theatrical productions. Now that alternatives exist, a state senator says there’s no reason actors should subject the audience to tobacco fumes or glorify smoking on stage, and she has introduced a bill that would ban the practice.
Liberals will always find something else to forbid or micromanage; that’s what they do. The same logic applied here will dictate that all old movies and photographs be edited to remove politically incorrect cigarettes, or to replace them with lib-approved doobies.
On a tip from Sean C.
While I agree with the sentiment, I must disagree. My wife and I had season ticket to a local theater. Despite a ban on smoking in public buildings, directors found play after play where the actors would light up.
After a while, my wife and I solved the problem by giving up our patronage of the theater. However, if statists are going to enforce their rules on the population at large, then the statist-supporting theaters should live under the same thumb of oppression.
This is yet another example proving what i’ve been saying for a long time. If you look at everything the Left does, everything, you will see a common thread running through all the laws, rules, and regulations they love to impose on everyone. That thread is, CONTROL!
Whether it’s smoking, guns, foods, cars, etc., they are all meant to give Leftists control over the everyday lives of all of us. And the tactics they use are always the same. First demonize something in the weak minds of the public, then use the MSM to turn lies and exaggeration into fact using their favorite tools, fear, lies, and hysteria.
Do you know in which court you will find the weakest minds? The court of public opinion.
Alternatives? What alternatives? Oh wait, State Senator Barb Goodwin, a Columbia Heights Democrat, is talking about PV’s (aka electronic cigarettes). Well Senator, you better get on the phone with the progs at the FDA who are on the verge of bending over for BigPharma to “deem PV’s a regulated tobacco product, thereby crushing any competition with BP’s cessation products (which don’t work), or their more lucrative cancer treatment products (which smokers will need because they were denied a safer alternative).
Hold the phone! Maybe Senator Goodwin is only looking for more tax revenue.
Does this apply to only live theatrical productions, or will it expand to include movies as well? This would mean that showings of Casablanca would be banned, but Earth in the Balance wouldn’t be?