Smoking Jumps, Profanity Decreases: Oscar Nominees

Smoking Jumps 313% While Profanity Decreases 31% Among Best Picture Oscar Nominees

LOS ANGELES – In a comparative analysis of this year’s to last year’s Academy Award Best Picture nominees, FamilyMediaGuide.com reported a 313% increase in measurable instances of tobacco use and a 31% drop in overall profanity.

The amount of tobacco use jumped from 38 instances among the 5 past nominees to 157 among this year’s hopefuls. This resulted largely from Good Night, and Good Luck’s 67 instances, which represented twice as many depictions of cigarette, cigar and pipe smoking as any other film this year. Munich, Capote and Brokeback Mountain each contained over 25 instances, while Crash - the only film that is not a period piece - contained only 6.

Profanity decreased from 444 occurrences among last year’s finalists to 307 among this year’s contenders. The most profane nominee this year with 182 expletives, Crash, contained more profanity than all of this year’s other nominees combined, and more than any Best Picture nominee from the past five years. Crash also contained 99 uses of the “F-word,” or about 1 mention per minute.

In other measures, the amount of violence increased 65% after a steady 2 year drop, with Munich as the most violent nominee of the year with 107 instances. Sex dropped 45% from last year, mainly due to the lack of sexual content in Capote and Good Night, and Good Luck. Not surprisingly, Brokeback Mountain broke out as the most sexual nominee of the year with 22 instances.

See the full data set, including trends in specific content areas over the past 5 years and predictions based upon statistical formulae, in the “Special Report” at http://www.FamilyMediaGuide.com/.

About FamilyMediaGuide.com

FamilyMediaGuide.com, a subsidiary of Media Data Corporation (MDC), provides free entertainment media content analysis directly to consumers. Based on extensive database-driven technology which utilizes approximately 4000 rules and algorithms, a specially trained staff of auditors record instances of profanity, sex, violence, substance use and illegal behavior in current film releases, DVDs, TV programs, radio programs, music videos and video games. The data then goes through 3 independent stages of validation and results in the most accurate and comprehensive content analyses available anywhere. This objective methodology is superior to existing industry association-based approaches which assign ratings based upon the subjective opinions of a select group of individuals employed by their respective industries. FamilyMediaGuide.com supports individual choice based upon one’s own personal standards of suitability. The company is independently owned and operated and has no political or religious agenda.

© Scoop Media