From The Hays Code to Bad Moms: Women drinking on-screen wasn't a thing, until it was

Last week was the Venice Film Festival and here in Toronto, it’s TIFF week (Toronto International Film Festival). There will be glamorous movies, glamorous parties and definitely a lot of glamorous cocktails. A brief dive into the history of film making and drinking on screen seems apropos to kick off the week.

You’ve probably never heard of the Hays Code, but it was a pre-WW2 morality code that shaped many years of screenwriting and filmmaking in Hollywood. The code, and the department that oversaw its strict compliance, prevented movies from showing aggressive violence, women and men sleeping in the same bed AND drinking on screen unless ‘the plot depended on it’. If the gangster in the black and white film was a bootlegger then the film got the rubber stamp, but a women imbibing on a gin fizz in a coupe glass, a la Marlene Dietrich in the 40s and 50s, would have had to be supported by the plot.

The Hayes Code disappeared in the early 1960s and was replaced with the rating system we have today. This wasn’t an issue in the alcohol marketing space until the early 1980s when brands were king and product placement was invented. This opened a floodgate allowing alcohol brands more superfluous room on the big and small screen.

What does this have to do with rethinking drinking and mindfulness? Understanding where we are being exposed to marketing and social messages helps everyone to see it for what it is - an advertisement.

In the twenty year time period between 1997 and 2017, scenes of drinking on screen actually doubled. The statistic that will shock you is 87% of all movies released between 1997 and 2017 included scenes with people drinking. This includes movies that tweens and teens are watching too.

If you’re an early-00s film fan, you’ll remember Bridget Jones drinking alone at home in a bathrobe, drowning her sorrows in wine and cigarettes. We did this too - it felt good to see that on screen. She seems tame in comparison now to women in movies like Bad Moms and other movies created to entertain a female audience (full disclosure that we too once laughed at Mila Kunis rage-guzzling vodka straight from the bottle in the aisle of a big box store - and found it very relatable).

So next time you’re binging Netflix, pay attention to where and send me a DM if you catch any scenes with drinking in which the plot does not rely on it. You will be surprised at how often and in what format it shows up!

Lights, camera... action! Oscars time!