‘Avatar’ in hot water for its hidden pro-smoking agenda
Tobacco Center slams Sigourney Weaver’s ‘Avatar’ character for smoking
Just when you thought Avatar’s press was solidly pro-blue (you know, except for the hard-right conservatives ripping the film a new one and hard-left liberals building alters to it), the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California has denounced the film thanks to its portrayal of (wait for it) smoking.
“This is like someone just put a bunch of plutonium in the water supply,” said Standon Glantz, director of the center, who gave the film a “black lung” label for its evil depictions of smoking. Evidently Sigourney Weaver has some scenes where she’s puffing a death stick.
Director James Cameron is not taking the press lightly…or filtered, calling Weaver’s character “an inspirational role model” for kids. “She’s rude, she swears, she drinks, she smokes,” says the surly director. “Also, from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace [Weaver's character] doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body.”
She also teaches the Na’vi kids about…wait, what is she teaching the kids? To smoke?
He added: “I don’t believe in the dogmatic idea that no one in a movie should smoke. Movies should reflect reality. If it’s OK for people to lie, cheat, steal and kill in PG-13 movies, why impose an inconsistent morality when it comes to smoking? I do agree that young role-model characters should not smoke in movies, especially in a way which suggests that it makes them cooler or more accepted by their peers. It is a filthy habit which I don’t support, and neither, I believe, does Avatar.”
Doctors also took aim at the 2008 version of Hulk for it’s cigar smoking.
Source: NY Times
I didn’t even consciously acknowledge the smoking; it’s a normal thing to do nowadays, not great, but normal. Just accept it. And if you don’t want to then a lot more than banning it in films is going to have to be done…maybe stop selling the things would help? Like Cameron stated, you have violence and other stuff in the films which are far worse than smoking. It’s just a film! (Avatar being an amazingly awesome film I might add
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I thought they used the electronic cigarette in part of it? Not sure if the company paid for it but I thought it was ProSmoke. I think their site is http://www.ProSmokeStore.com
lol, if not maybe theyll edit e-cigarettes into the DVD. but any publicity is good publicity right? lol
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The main objection to Avatar's smoking is that it takes the viewer out of the world Cameron's trying to create. The audience is suddenly going "WTF?" Smoking 150 years in the future? And in a moon lab?? What's up with that? Without an explanation, it takes people out of the movie.
Cameron claims the smoking was to present Weaver initially as unsympathetic, and to show Weaver's character didn't care about her human body. Huh? As Sigourney herself will tell you, keeping a 60-year-old body that buff is not easy. Her character obviously takes VERY good care of her body. To follow Cameron's supposed rationale, Grace Augustine should have been obese and slovenly (a more interesting choice; she could have awoken shouting, "WHERE'S MY TWINKIE?").
Cameron: "Movies should reflect reality"
Reality? OK, this in a movie with bird-riders and soul-trees, but still:
1. In 150 years, apparently no one smokes–EXCEPT Sigourney Weaver. Not even the military. She's the only one in the entire movie who smokes. Unrealistic.
2. This would be a seriously atypical scientist. 44% of cigarettes are sold to the mentally ill; most smokers are poor and uneducated. Unrealistic.
3. Smoking in the tightly-controlled-atmosphere of a moon-lab is jarring to the viewer, and unrealistic in so many ways. In 50 years of space flight, there has not been a single instance of cigarette smoking–not even by the Russians. Plus, tars and nicotine in tobacco smoke get _everywhere_, including sensitive electronic equipment. Tobacco mosaic virus is common on cigarette tobacco and can easily be transmitted from a smoker's hands to biological samples, contaminating them. Let alone space-flight weight restrictions, storage issues, SHS regulations and coworkers' objections. Unrealistic on a number of levels.
4. It's certainly unrealistic to expect nicotine addiction to take _exactly_ the same form as it does today. 150 years ago, it was snuff, or smokeless, or cigars. NOT cigarettes, which were laboriously hand-rolled. 150 years from now, it'll be orbs, or snus, or inhalers, or patches, or e-cigs, or long cigs, short cigs, fat cigs, blue cigs –you get the point. Something _else_.
In all, Weaver's smoking is aberrant, distracting, and doesn't makes sense realistically OR cinematically.
So why IS there smoking in Avatar?
Considering Cameron's Titanic, in which he also reaches anachronistically (15 years into the future) to spout similar ad copy (women who smoke are independent) — it's hard to excuse Augustine's smoking as unconscious.
It's propaganda, pure and simple.
Avatar is an ad for smoking, and what it's telling audiences is that strong, tough, independent, smart, accomplished, sassy, healthy, buff, moral, _heroic_ women smoke.
And, judging from the number of kids in the theatre, the stacks of booster seats(!) outside Avatar screenings in the multiplexes, all the reported repeat viewings, and all the prime-time TV exposure in the future–millions upon millions of kids around the world will be getting the message for decades to come.
omg its just a film! get over it! do you seriously have nothing better to do than this?
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