Avatar, the hit sci-fi fantasy movie, may be box office boffo, but its depiction of the 22nd century has one major black spot, it shows Americans still smoking, according to anti-tobacco groups.
The Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, intends to launch an “informational campaign” aimed at what it claims is the movie’s pro-smoking message.
“This is like someone just put a bunch of plutonium in the water supply,” Center Director Stanton A. Glantz told The New York Times. Glanz said the center’s Smoke Free Movies initiative would spearhead the campaign.
The controversy involves Sigourey Weaver’s character, Grace Augustine, a tough-talking, swear-like-a-sailor scientist who also chews up Marlboros.
As an environmental scientist, no less, you would think Grace would know better. And, that’s the group’s point. The smoking scenes seem pretty gratuitous and suggests that product placement fees may have had an influence.
Film watchdog, Scenesmoking.org, gave the PG-13 rated “Avatar” a “black lung” rating for smoking in the film.
If it’s any consolation, Warner Brothers’ “Sherlock Holmes” and “The Blind Side,” the Weinstein Company’s “Nine,” Sony Pictures “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” and “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” also earned “black lung” ratings, according to the Times.
Cameron told the newspaper he had never intended Grace to be “an aspirational role model” for teenagers, even though she’s the closest thing to a human heroine in the movie. “She’s rude, she swears, she drinks, she smokes,” Cameron stated.
“Also, from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comme’nt about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games,” he added.
Yeah right, now it makes total sense.
Cameron added: “I don’t believe in the dogmatic idea that no one in a movie should smoke. Movies should reflect reality. If it’s O.K. 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.”
Cameron called smoking a “filthy habit” but apparently lacks the courage of his own convictions when it comes to Big Tobacco.
Not to break anyone’s heart, but not only am I a regular reader here and somewhat progressive, but… gads…I also smoke! And it just so happens that I know an environmental scientist that smokes.
Can you imagine? Shocking!
Personally, although I am not a big fan of smoking in general (and wish I didn’t), I agree with Ms. Weaver wholeheartedly, not to mention that just because the act of smoking is not a “progressive thing to do” it does not necessarily meant that it is a “conspiracy” or that someone was “paid off”.
It’s a character in a film smoking…so what. It doesn’t make her evil, it exposes her as fallible she has a weakness.
And Weaver effecting young girls smoking habits? Really? Weaver is as old as my mother and I have a daughter in middle school. Do you recall grandma being cool and hip when you were a youngster?
I don’t smoke either, but this kind of whining makes me wanna go and light up one “coffin nail” right away. I wonder that people don’t protest against movies from 30s era viewed on TVs as well as they complain about Avatar. People back then were smoking ALL THE TIME! I don’t wanna know what’s gonna come up next.
What bothers me the most is that people really pay attention to this crap, but there’s no doubt that smoking is a lethal habit. BUT… thanks to the “black lung” thingy I begin to think that these rolled “anti-stress sticks” are not that bad at all, ’cause we might return back to debate of Films affecting Human Behaviour :-)
(btw, I’ve spend 15 years playing violent videogames, watching violent films (go Arnie!), I like listening to black and death metal, I also love Natalia Imbruglia and I drink alcohol. So, why the hell am I not a dull, violent, blood-thirsty, virgin raping satanist who tends TO SMOKE?!?!)
I was not planning on watching Avatar, but now that it is getting critsism from anti-smoking groups, I will buy a ticket on my next day off.
I don’t smoke for a variety of reasons, but that dosen’t mean that I believe nobody should. People smoke today, they will tomorrow, they will for a long while, and people saying that smoking is the worse thing you can see in a movie (and there are pelnty of things worse than smoking out there) won’t change that. Who are you to tell me what I should be offended at?
Every time I see a story like this it makes me want to watch/buy/use the product protested, just to piss off those who think they know how to live my life better than I do.
Nas-tay…nobody wants to look at someone smoking or pooping their pants, OK?
None of you get it- They put it in there because the point of the film is that people are bad… Right
SOOOOOOOO… the people behind it feel this way- That’s why it’s the story they picked- Right – when he said we killed our mother “the earth”
SOOOOOOOOOOOO…. They put in Ciggarets cause they want you to die.. NOT THAT HARD
I didn’t think the smoking added anything to the film. In fact, it struck me as out of place. Grace could just as easily have been sucking down shot after shot of espresso. She’s a classic type A with her staff, and most of us who interact with those types of bosses don’t take their cues from their smoking habits.
I am totally against smoking, have never smoked and never will. But just because a character in the movie smokes doesn’t mean it is promoting it. I do think grace would think more of her Avatar body and some people, even doctors and scientists do smoke. I agree that role model characters should not smoke in movies but she was hardly that, in fact I think that is part of the reason why she seems like such an arrogant jerk in the beginning of the movie.
Charles,
I fully agree with your comments, with the exception of one thing…
You can bet that there was thought behind this and that somebody got paid very well. Tobacco companies are very limited these days with how and where they can advertise and movies are probably their best vehicle for advertising. There is no way that this was not planned.
I’ll grant that maybe only ardent non-smokers find the spell broken but, it is worth noting that for a film that strives for grounding in plausible science, the film’s consulting botanist and several of her colleagues noted “that Grace smok[ing] could be a problem in the lab. The tobacco mosaic virus is common on cigarette tobacco and can easily be transmitted from a smoker’s hands to biological samples and contaminate them.”
The bad smelly inclusion of merchandising of cigarettes in the film Avatar – with smoke invading the theater in 3D – is just regrettable and unjustifiable. Surely Cameron and Sigourney (yes, the actors also take part in its merchandising) should have received a hefty considerable from tobacco industry to commit this suicide in a job that is supposed to go down in cinema history as a revolutionary production. Moreover the weak screenplay – which is merely a poorly disguised avatar of Pocahontas – we still have this excrescence. A film that intends to convey a message of full protection of life against the ignorance of the world today, boasts that, 150 years from now, mankind will not yet overcome the aberration of smoking habit, with the aggravation that the smoker’s avatar is a biologist who struggle – supreme contradiction – agains the preservation of nature. It’s just pathetic! If the movie wanted to convey a message of optimism for the future, Cameron put his everything to lose with this tremendous relish. To complete, Cameron already had a number of ready-made (completely tattered) answers to explain the questions that inevitably would arise on this abominable “detail” of the movie. No argument is able to defend or explain the presence of an ecologist biologist smoker in the film, expect the public could swallow their ridiculous explanations is above all a foolish and an underestimation of people’s intelligence.
are you people stupid? I don’t see anyone complaining that she turns to whisky to when she gets stressed that they are going to kill off hometree. get a life, the smoking establishes where here concern is and shows how stressful her job is. it helps define her just as the cussing does. its just cigarettes people, if you don’t like them than don’t smoke. get a life.
Tobacco companies consider teen girls a big growth market for cigarettes, according to the NYTimes. Cigarettes are promoted in subtle ways as weight loss aids and symbols of sexiness, hipness and independence, all of which play on teen girl insecurities. Could that be why strong, independent Grace Augustine smokes in Avatar? The reality is more women die of lung cancer than breast cancer. It really is a black spot on the movie.
When Sigourney Weaver lit up a cigarette, her character and the film itself lost all credibility for me. It took me right out of the film and broke the spell. Regardless of whether it was paid for or not, it significantly reduced my enjoyment of the film. My lasting impression of Avatar is not wonder at the visual effects but irritation at what appears to be product placement for big tobacco in a film targeted at teens. After 14 years worth of work and with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, I doubt that this was the special effect that James Cameron was hoping to achieve.
You’re missing the point Charles. Honestly, out of everyone in the movie would a scientist who is keenly tuned into the environment and trying to save the Na’vi be the logical person to smoke? What about the rough, tough soldiers, Colonel Miles Quaritch, or the twit running the project? Why aren’t they smoking? Because they are the bad guys. Instead one of the good guys/girls with the positive image, who is aligned with the treehuggers smokes. If that isn’t product placement what is?
Honestly, because the director shows people being real people, he’s in the pocket of big tobacco? It’s people like you who make smoking seem cool, because your antismoking rhetoric is so moronic. Outside of the fact that real people do things like this, and you can’t have a remotely interesting film with every human vice bleached out to create Partridge Family clones, the entire point of the film is that human beings have ruined themselves and their world. Weaver’s character is a wonderful example of this. I laughed out loud when she asked for that smoke in the beginning – it was so real that it grounded the story. Your types would have a bunch of PC films with zero relation to humanity, zero interest, worth nothing.
You should work on YOUR vice – blind self-righteousness.
[...] Avatar’s Black Spot; Cigarette Smoking Grace Augustine Smoking in Avatar Ruffles Feathers and Highlights Hypocrisy So, what do you think? Should the ratings on movies be raised if there is smoking or significant amounts of smoking in a film? Our big tobacco companies paying off directors to get smoking in films? [...]