ALCOHOL PORTRAYALS IN MOVIES: NOW WE KNOW THEY'RE THERE, WHAT NEXT?

Abstract

Dal Cin and colleagues [1] may well expect to receive criticism of their methods and findings from both the alcohol industry and researchers who sympathize with the industry's viewpoint. In the area of alcohol advertising we see that the research on adolescent exposure—such as that conducted by medical researchers [2] and the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) [3]—has been criticized in pro-free market publications [4] and by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) [5], arguing that advertisers do not target adolescent readers deliberately (that is, they are ‘accidental’ audiences) and that there were methodological flaws in the CAMY study. There is a growing body of research into the effects of alcohol advertising on young people, with a general level of agreement that there is an association between exposure and alcohol expectancies [6,7], between exposure and drinking intentions [7–9], and even between exposure and current or future drinking [10,11]. It is likely that alcohol portrayals in movies will have an even stronger effect on young people, particularly in relation to perceived social norms and alcohol expectancies. Perhaps even more important than the direct effects on consumption, it has been shown that alcohol advertising has a strong effect on young people's perceptions of drinking and their normative behaviour [12] and the reinforcement of gender and racial stereotypes [13]. This latter suggestion is particularly salient, given Dal Cin et al.'s finding that exposure to alcohol advertising in movies is higher among African American youth. This study adds to the evidence base on which to build an understanding of the influence of alcohol exposure in the entertainment media on young people's drinking (e.g. [14]). However, there is a need to go beyond quantifying exposure (as does this study) and providing evidence of associations between exposure and consumption—which, with the possible exception of the study by Sargent and colleagues [14], could be vulnerable to an argument of reverse causation (i.e. drinkers differ from non-drinkers in their entertainment preferences and choose to watch movies that are likely to include alcohol consumption). The first step is to provide further, good-quality longitudinal studies of the size and reliability of the association. In the area of alcohol advertising, three recent longitudinal studies [7,15,16] have been credited with providing much-needed evidence of the direction of relationship between advertising exposure and youth drinking with important implications for policy change in this area. Further, as with alcohol advertising, there is a need to consider the nature and context of the exposure, not simply its extent. Studies of youth exposure to alcohol advertising have been criticized rightly for ignoring the messages in the advertisements, and focusing solely upon their frequency. Australian research has found consistently that alcohol advertisements contain imagery and messages that young people interpret as suggesting that alcohol consumption will have positive psychological and social outcomes [17,18]. The existing studies on alcohol in movies focus upon the frequency and duration of the alcohol portrayals and draw conclusions about their composite effect on young people's attitudes and behaviours. There is a need for research into the nature of these portrayals, the specific messages that are conveyed and received and the differential effects of these messages on young people's alcohol-related attitudes and behaviours. The other important question is the extent to which alcohol appearances are actually paid for by the industry, with product placement being shown to be increasingly common and to have a positive effect on brand image and purchase intentions. It has been predicted that 75% of US prime-time TV programmes will include brand placements by the end of the decade [19], and a recent Dutch study showed that brand image improved following repeated exposure to an integrated placement in a television series, regardless of memory [20]. It is likely that as product placement increases alcohol portrayals will become both more frequent and more integrated into the plot of the movie. Thus, there is a need for research into young people's perceptions of the reasons for alcohol portrayals in movies, and other entertainment media, and the influence of differing levels of integration of alcohol (and specific alcohol brands) into the plot. This study provides an important starting-point for our consideration of alcohol portrayals in popular movies, and should act as a call to action for researchers to undertake more detailed studies of the nature of these portrayals and their effects on young people. If, as is likely, these portrayals are as potent in influencing perceived norms and expectancies, as tobacco portrayals have been shown to be, this evidence base will be crucial to efforts to ameliorate the effects of such portrayals. None.