Anti-Smoking Advocate Criticizes "Avatar" for Cigarettes
By Jacob Sullum
Anti-smoking activist Stanton Glantz thought Avatar was "a great movie," except for the one detail that moved him to launch a publicity campaign against it: Grace Augustine, the environmental scientist played by Sigourney Weaver, has a cigarette habit. "This is like someone just put a bunch of plutonium in the water supply," Glantz tells The New York Times, with his usual sense of proportion. In addition to rousing the ire of Glantz's Smoke Free Movies project, Avatar, which is rated PG-13, earned a "black lung" from Scenesmoking.org. In response, director James Cameron says he considers smoking "a filthy habit" and does not view Weaver's character as "an aspirational role model" for teenagers:
She’s rude, she swears, she drinks, she smokes. 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 comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games....
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 is a bit too defensive, I think, but he is right to reject the notion that art should not only be didactic but that it should impart the lessons endorsed by the reigning ideology—in this case, "public health," which elevates the minimization of morbidity and mortality above all other values. The expectation that everyone who is not in the pocket of Big Tobacco will toe the official line is one of the creepiest aspects of the contemporary anti-smoking movement, as exemplified by Glantz.
I criticized the campaign for smoke-free movies in a 2003 column and discussed Glantz's wild claims about the impact of cinematic smoking in a 2005 column. Last month Peter Suderman raised some non-tobacco-related objections to Avatar.
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The smoking in avatar was so unrealistic. It was not a necessary part of the movie. What a waste of exposure to a stinking weed of death .
The surgeon general should call for an inquiry and a ban on the movie until the scene is removed.
the smoking has nothing to do with developing the character. It has everything to do with exposing millions to a message that is to be history . The is no art in smoking when it kills slowly but surely as well as maims.
Mayby we should have an amputation scene as well due to the effects of smoking on arterial bloodflow to sigornys character.
In 1988 Californians passed Proposition 99 which ultimately funneled literally hundreds of millions of dollars into "Tobacco Control" and such things as Stanton Glantz's "Smoke Free Movies" campaign. It was money , not rationality, that has brought us to an era where we see things like the craziness of going apoplectic over the sight of a single character smoking a cigarette in a movie. If this was like "putting a bunch of plutonium in the water supply" how then would one describe a Humphrey Bogart movie? What words would one cudgel up to describe "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Basic Instinct"?
Several years ago the antismoking group STAND attacked MTV, claiming it was "filled with smoking." I'd recently gotten a TIVO and taped 24 hours of MTV to skim at high speed. At "average" levels of smoking you'd expect to see 120 minutes of smoking during such a 24 hour (1440 minute) day of broadcast - to be "filled with smoking" one would expect a lot more, maybe double that amount: 240 minutes.
How much did I find? Three minutes and thirty-six seconds of actual human smoking, with two of those minutes occurring during a Frank Sinatra take off video . If you like, you can see the full analysis in Lie #2 at
http://TheTruthIsALie.com
Avatar isn't alone in being attacked by the nutsos: The TV series Dexter is about a serial killer *hero* who tortures and dismembers his victims in every episode, with sprinklings of sex , violence, drinking, and profanity in between. Three guesses what it's being attacked for: yep, one of the characters occasionally slinks out to sneak a cigarette two or three times in a season.
Censorship by intimidation and money isn't as frightening as censorship by government fiat, but it's close... because when the velvet glove doesn't get results you know the iron fist won't be far behind. "Smoke Free Movies" is a professional multi-million dollar endeavor that knows very well how to use Americans ' distrust of tobacco companies and our love for our children to overrule our common sense and love of freedom. Don't let them fool you: no matter what immediate goal they're after, they'll never be satisfied until they have it all.
Michael J. McFadden,
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
Glantz has a pursecution complex, mostly grandstanded by himself. I think he sees Big Tobacco in his rear view mirror.
Has anyone ever researched Glantz, his funding and his so-called economic studies from smoking bans ?
He's received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who owns stock in J&J, who gets rich off their J&J stock because RWJF owns Nicoderm & Nicorette. Glantz took a "grant" from RWJF for nearly $1.1 million to create a website called tobacco scam whose sole purpose was to claim the big bad tobacco claims smoking bans hurt the hospitality industry, while Glantz claimed it didn't. Ah..but Glantz studied RESTAURANTS, then makes the claim the entire hospitality industry doesn't suffer. It's a big trick of Tobacco Control. Ask Elizabeth Klein about HER study which has thoroughly been exposed. http://opponentsofohiobans.com/Documents/Seitz %20Lttr%20to%20Klein%20-%20study%20on%20indoor%20air%20act%20laws%205%2029%2009.pdf
A complaint was filed with the Office of Research Integrity, Health & Human Services, about the 2006 Surgeon General report on the economic impacts on bars and restaurants. A majority of the studies..done by Glantz. Here's a copy of the complaint (which the ORI claims they do not have jurisdiction over..then who does?) http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:pt3t9GVPkDUJ:opponentsofohiobans.com... interview +with+stanton+glantz&cd=22&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us and http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS143891 +29-May-2009+PRN20090529
Glantz was also forced to list his competing interests in a PLoS study he performed. After continued denials, this was posted, exposing all his competing interests. His own university concluded the source of funding influences the outcome of the study. Well, if it applies when big tobacco pays for it, it applies when big pharma (who profits from smoking cessation products) pays for it. http://www.plosmedicine.org/annotation/getCommentary.action?target=info %3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0050178 (read: Competing interests of Glantz must be declared)
http://www.velvetgloveironfist.com/index.php?page_id=64
Stanton Glantz is arguably the most influential anti- smoking activist of the last thirty years. To his friends, he is a pioneering hero; to his enemies, a dangerous crank. Whether under the guise of activist or researcher, Glantz has been involved in most of the major developments in the tobacco control enterprise since 1975. He was the main proponent of 'denormalisation' in the 1970s - long before the approach even had a name. In the 1980s, he founded American for Nonsmokers Right and led the fight for the first smoking bans in his home town of San Francisco. In the 1990s, he was the source for the claim that 50,000 Americans died every year as a result of secondhand smoke (a figure that was not accepted by the EPA). He was instrumental in bringing secret tobacco industry documents before the public and has written prolifically about almost every aspect of Tobacco Control. The truth can be found at the link above.
Glantz always throws a fit if it will get him noticed. He makes a good living pushing for Smoking Bans. He can whip up a study on SHS in the blink of an eye. Of course he never does a study that has any real truth. That's his job. Every study he has ever done could have had more science in it if a 5th Grader had done it. Of all the blowhards in Tobacco Control, I believe he is the best. He should be good at something.
Pharma giant Johnson & Johnson’s main shareholder and smoking ban shill, the RWJohnson Foundation, and others including Stanton Glantz, depend on their livlihoods from J&J making and marketing cessation products. They have hoodwinked many people and gov’t officials that without smoking bans forcing 1/3 of the entire population of the U.S. and the rest of the world into submission, that smoking and second hand smoke will kill. They have spent over one Billion dollars to influence legislation to take away freedom and private property rights in the grand marketing scam of the century, and their created obesity crisis, along with global warming . The U.S. Surgeon General managed to avoid testifying under oath to a congressional committee along with the commissioner from the FDA. I say that is a conflict of interest to say the least, especially with FDA regulation of tobacco . The publication of Passive Smoke: The EPA’s Betrayal of Science and Policy, by Dr. John Luik and Dr. Gio Gori, may go a long way toward changing this.
Seems since he hasn't been in the news lately and he would like to be by making this asinine statement about this movie.
I consider him public enemy no. 1 along with John Banzhaf of ash.org
Those two have done much damage to private business owners being able to cater to the clientele that chose to support these businesses in the first place.
The result of that is those of Glantz and Banzhaf's persuasion never supported those kinds of businesses and DO NOT NOW and we have seen many closings.
One can only hope for the entire truth about these men to be revealed for all the public to see. No one would support their premise beyond personal preference if they knew the whole truth.
I felt that the smoking helped support Sigourney Weaver's character. It was such an insignificant part of a incredible experience. Do you really think after the overwhelming special effects of this 3D masterpiece that people are going to suddenly be persuaded to run and buy a pack?
There are real things in this world that will never stop and trying to hide them is not effective. As long as money can be made on cigarettes , prostitution , drugs and porn amoung others it will continue.