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January 13, 2010
Avatarded
Avatar movie image (4), originally uploaded by tamilbluefilm2009.
Did you see Avatar? I myself have not yet, but plan to. Chances are, you did, because the movie is now the 3rd highest-grossing movie of all time. Would you still see it if you knew that every single interest group has something in the movie to ridicule?
Republicans hate it. Democrats hate it. The Catholic Church hates it. Word it, even Switzerland is not impressed. The truth it, they're all a bunch of nitwits.
Conservatives are aghast because the movie appears to be anti-military. (Yes, I know Ald. Balcer is a Democrat, but he'd never be mistaken for Barney Frank.) Meanwhile, some liberals say the movie glorifies imperialism and genocide. The Vatican claims it directs people to worship nature as a god.
My favorite has to be the anti-smoking lobby. Sigourney Weaver's character smokes, and some tobacco foes see this as billions in free advertising for Joe Camel:
Having caught up with James Cameron’s 3-D science fiction thriller, “Avatar,” over the holidays, Stanton A. Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, said his Smoke Free Movies initiative would soon come out swinging with an informational campaign aimed at what he saw as the movie’s pro-smoking message.
“This is like someone just put a bunch of plutonium in the water supply,” Mr. Glantz said in a telephone interview last week. He was referring to scenes in which an environmental scientist played by Sigourney Weaver drags lovingly on a cigarette as she works to save the moon Pandora sometime in the 22nd century.
Oh Jesus H. Christ. The idea that no movie character can smoke is patently absurd. I know movies are hugely influential, but I also know most people don't seriously take movie characters as role models, especially a villain. People in real life smoke, so should people in movies. If movies were happy little places without racism, killing, bad role models, smoking and drug use, I have a nagging suspicion nobody would watch!
entry no. 1422
Posted at January 13, 2010 12:15 PM