With any big movie, you'll find advocates tripping over themselves, picking films apart for something to cry about. Lately, Scenesmoking.org, a site monitoring smoking in cinema, has been pointing fingers at James Cameron's Avatar (title incomplete without director's name attached).
Avatar is one of many films with a PG-13 rating that depicts smoking, and in this case, we see Signourney Weaver's scientist character enjoying a cigarette. Cameron, a man who really loves his work, was quick to come up with a rebuttal: the smoking scene is a metaphor. A metaphor for what, you ask? Dependency on video games, generally speaking.
Seems the character's use of nicotine and alcohol consumption are ways of showing her indifference toward her own human body. Similarly, according to Cameron, gamers are too caught up in their virtual bodies or avatars. See what he did there?
On the Night Elves avatar versus human body comparison, Cameron states:
“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."
Indeed, but one can never live too much in movies! Of course, with all that money people save by gaming less can go toward purchasing Avatar merchandise -- hang on, didn't they make an Avatar video game?
Just to make sure no one thinks he supports smoking, Cameron notes that smoking is "a filthy habit" that neither he nor his latest cash cow support.
Anyway, we're trying to figure out if that's the most absurdly obscure metaphor we've ever heard, though the allusive use of "avatar" should've tipped us off. Oh, that James Cameron is such a clever man.
Source:NYTimes.com
Alternate Source:GamePolitics
Sections:Console Games, PC Games
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