Stupid Moments in Public Service Advertising

by Charles Miller on June 24, 2003

A Cancer Council of Australia billboard advertisement parodies the Pulp Fiction poster, showing a (bad) Uma Thurman look-alike with an oxygen mask, and the headline “Chronic Disease Never Looked So Glamorous!”

(All Rights Reserved: Image not placed in the Creative Commons for obvious reasons)

I'm sure the Cancer Council of Australia think they're making a really incisive point here. But why, oh why, oh why did they pick Pulp Fiction as the movie to parody? I suppose it was just because it's a well-recognised poster, but it rather kills the message.

Let's see. Aside from smoking, Uma Thurman's Pulp Fiction character is a cocaine addict. She also snorts heroin (thinking it's cocaine), overdoses, and ends up having to have a very large needle plunged into her heart by John Travolta. Most of the other characters in the movie go around gratuitously killing each other, being raped by Deliverance-types in a pawn-shop basement, or both.

But, of course, it's the smoking that's unhealthy.

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