We are clearly getting too uptight about a few things. And, by “we”, I don’t necessarily mean “we” as in “you” or “I”.
I just read an article in the NYT which quoted some idiot from some anti-tobacco association who was upset about Sigourney Weaver (who played a research scientist and is somehow always associated with any film involving aliens) smoking a cigarette in a scene in the movie “Avatar.”
In case you are wondering what he said, it is definitely worse than you could ever guess. Here’s a hint: it involves an ingredient for a nuclear weapon.
This is like someone just put a bunch of plutonium in the water supply.
Yes, exactly. Someone in a movie smoking a cigarette is exactly like someone putting plutonium in the water. Why didn’t I think of that before? There were a few children in the theater when I saw it- perhaps their parents should have kept them at home lest they actually were faced with the cold hard reality that some people in this country still smoke and might still smoke in the future. And, in case you are unsure, I am totally being facetious in this paragraph.
Although I can recognize that no, we don’t necessarily want to promote smoking to the new generation, the reality is that sometimes people smoke. Are we supposed to make every movie and every scene in a movie into a moral judgment? Where can we draw the line and how can we stop organizations from pissing and moaning so much about nothing? (Focus on the Family for example)
James Cameron and company already had to cut out a supposedly super-hot alien sex scenes from the movie (which I believe will be later available on DVD) in order to keep a PG-13 rating so the kiddies could come and now they are getting criticized for showing a person who (OMG) smokes? Give me a fricking break. There was so much more to that movie to notice and idiots are concentrating on a cigarette?
Thank God James Cameron, who is now probably now the most powerful person in the entertainment industry, is not bowing down to this pressure. In the article, he stated that Sigourney Weaver’s character was not intended to be a role model and that while he doesn’t support smoking, neither does Avatar.