The Symbolism of Smoking

The Symbolism of Smoking in Cowboy Bebop, by Brian Westover

Our first glimpse of Spike shows us the first use of a highly important and symbolic image – a ‘prop’ if you will. From the very beginning, all of the main characters are shown smoking. Even in the opening credits, in the images that first introduce them, we see Spike, Jet and Faye shown with cigarettes in hand, and smoke curling around them. The ever present cigarette is not there merely by chance, nor does it serve no purpose. Indeed, the use of smoking is highly symbolic and makes a clear statement about the characters and the story.

Spike’s cigarettes are always there, even in circumstances where they wouldn’t normally be seen. In the pouring rain, we see him smoking. In the casino in ‘Honky Tonk Women’, where smoking is prohibited, Spike not only smokes, he smuggles a cigarette in with him. In ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ as he goes, ostensibly to his death, he grabs a cigarette and lights up what might be his last smoke. The smoking is prevalent in the series from beginning to end.

In a way, the use of cigarettes and smoke are symbolic of human imperfection. It’s a symbol of the characters own frailty, the realization that they can’t do everything right, and couldn’t, even if they tried. It’s representative of their own mortality, a blatant expression of defiance, a simple way of always saying ‘I don’t give a damn.’

Think for a moment about how smoke moves and flows. They breathe it in and breathe it out. It’s in their mouths and out their noses. It fills the air around them, hanging like a haze, and it clings to their clothes. What one is smoking, the others breathe in as well. They pass the cigarettes back and forth, lighting one off another. It doesn’t just affect one person, it affects everyone around them. It’s not something superficial, it’s deep, it’s an addiction – it’s a part of them. Even when they’re too broke to buy food, there always seems to be a cigarette present. It’s as if, even though they can’t quite manage to feed themselves, they can always feed their nicotine addictions.

Some have also noted that Spike’s cigarettes are always bent, tweaked just slightly. What is that about? It this just another instance of Spike being sloppy? Is it just that his smokes are as rumpled as his clothes? It’s been suggested that this is a tip of the hat to jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, who used a custom made trumpet with the trademark bell cocked up at an angle. While I think that this is true, I also think that it’s no accident that Spike’s cigarettes are the bent ones. Not only does he recognize his own mortality, he has a wry view of it, almost a humorous bent (pun intended).

At other times in the series, such as when Spike is lying unconscious in ‘Asteroid Blues’, the burning of a cigarette is used to show the passage of time. As the Bebop crew goes from one experience to the next, they leave a wake of destruction behind them, often sustaining serious injuries along the way. Like the burning of a cigarette, the damage that accumulates wherever they are is like a stockpile of entropic effects. If the mayhem, the bruises, and the carcinogens are like little bits of death being accumulated for every experience of living, then the Bebop crew is living fast and hard.

One might also notice that two main characters don’t smoke – Ed and Ein, arguably the only ‘innocent’ characters in the show. As a young girl and a dog, they are pure in their motives, and never acknowledge their own mortality. Additionally, though they play some role in the adventures chronicled in the series, neither one are involved in the heavier matters from the past. Spike has his past with the Syndicates, Jet has his past with the ISSP, Faye has her past with… uh, her past, but Ed doesn’t have so much going on. She’s been accidentally abandoned by her nut-job dad but doesn’t much seem to care. Even when he shows up again, she’s the same old Ed, in all her nuttiness. Ein is no normal dog, and we know that he’s unusually intelligent, but once he joins the Bebop crew, his past is behind him. He escaped his past when he escaped from the lab and from Hakim. Where Spike, Jet and Faye all continually struggle with their pasts, Ed and Ein don’t. Returning to the smoke metaphor, they don’t have to deal with the clinging stink of cigarette smoke. Smoking, being addictive, can in many ways represent the characters inability to let go of the past or to escape the mistakes of yesterday.

As always, Ed and Ein provide a lighter side to a story that would be quite dark without them. They are the innocent Yin to the murky Yang of Spike, Jet and Faye. They provide a contrast that provides both balance and perspective to the lives of their crew mates. Ed and Ein represent the optimistic, the fact that life does go on – a fact that the others may have missed. It is ironic that those three are so wrapped up in their pasts, living in their yesterdays while the young and innocent live for tomorrow. This seems to be a common thread throughout the series, and the use of cigarette smoking is but another way to illustrate this.

This illustration seems to become even clearer in the episode ‘Boogie Woogie Feng-Shui’, in which the hard boiled Jet gets thrown together with the young girl Meifa. In many ways, Meifa is like Ed and Ein. She’s youthful, with the innocence of youth. It should be noted that Meifa does not smoke; in fact, she coughs on Spike and Faye’s cigarette smoke. It’s foreign to her, and her lungs revolt against it. At this point, we are shown just how attached Jet has become to Meifa by the fact that he establishes a non-smoking area on the ship, in an area where he himself is known to smoke. For a short period, Jet has been able to lose his demons and devote himself to helping someone without thought of the reward. For this episode, he seeks the innocence he has lost. It is a short lived change, but it provides a perfect example of this symbolism.

Finally, looking at the presence of the cigarette as a symbol of mortality, guilt and an inescapable past, it is telling that Spike’s final scenes are smoke free. Starting in ‘The Real Folk Blues part 2′, Spike and Julia arrive at Annie’s store to find her dying. Spike begins preparing to finish his business with the Syndicate and grabs guns and ammunition which are kept, interestingly enough, in cigarette cartons. At the end of the episode, Spike’s last words before his one man assault on the Red Dragons are, “I’m not going there to die. I’m going there to see if I really am alive.” He has left behind the cloying haze of smoky death and embraces his past as a part of him. He then leaves to wage his war, and to finish business that is long overdue.

In one sense, it is still an inability to leave the past behind. He reunites with Julia only to watch her die – a fate that may have been inevitable all along. He has returned to the Syndicate that has haunted him for years, and faces Vicious, the man who has come to embody every mistake and wrong that Spike has ever done. It is both a return to his past and the final step in leaving that past behind. By losing Julia, he can now be free of her memory, free of the life that might have been and still could be. By facing Vicious he confronts the demons of his past; squaring off against the man he used to be. When all is said and done, Spike is alone. Mao Yenrai is dead, Annie is dead, Julia is dead, Vicious is dead, the Red Dragons have been destroyed and all ties with the Bebop have been cut. The past has been dealt with, and Spike can finally die. It is only fitting that he dies, not with the subtle smoke of a cigarette, but with a bang.