Paternalistic Doctors With Way Too Much Time on Their Hands
(p. C6) The American Medical Association is hulking mad at Marvel Studios.
Last week, the advocacy arm of the powerful physicians' group unleashed a tsk-tsk campaign against "The Incredible Hulk," a Marvel film that opened on Friday and is distributed by Universal Pictures. The complaint was of "gratuitous depictions of smoking."
In the movie, which drew a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, Gen. Thunderbolt Ross, a bad guy played by William Hurt, is rarely seen without a smoke-spewing cigar. (Presumably, the physicians' association worries that children who identify with the authoritarian general -- who wants to annihilate the Hulk, played by Edward Norton -- may be tempted to pick up the habit.)
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