About a month ago, Scarlett Johansson was involved in a surprisingly political and politically sensitive incident. Scarlett signed on to be the spokesperson for Sodastream, a company that will turn your bland water into bubbly, fizzy soda with the push of a button. The problem was that the Israeli company has a factory in the West Bank and they employ Palestinian and Israeli workers. Scarlett has many endorsements and ad campaigns, but this was the first one that actually threatened her work as an ambassador to Oxfam – Oxfam made a public statement about Sodastream and the West Bank, but Oxfam was basically like, “Eh, she can do what she wants but we condemn any company that sets up shop in the West Bank.” Scarlett later resigned from Oxfam and kept her Sodastream contract.

Many people thought she was selling out, but I tended to think that the issue was much less black-and-white than Scarlett’s critics claimed, which is saying something because I’m usually not a Scarlett defender. Anyway, in Scarlett’s interview with Dazed, she makes a reference to the incident without talking about it explicitly:

Scarlett Johansson has insisted she does not see herself as a role model and is not comfortable with the tag. The actress, 29, made the comments in her first interview since she stepped down as an Oxfam ambassador last month over her links with SodaStream, an Israeli company operating in the occupied West Bank.

Oxfam opposes all trade from Israeli settlements, saying they are illegal and deny Palestinian rights. Johansson said she had a “fundamental difference of opinion” with the charity and kept her role as brand ambassador at SodaStream.

In the interview, with Dazed magazine, she did not address the issue directly but said: “I don’t see myself as being a role model; I never wanted to step into those shoes. I don’t profess to know more or less than anybody else. If that’s a by-product of whatever image is projected on to me I don’t feel responsible as an artist to give anyone that message. It’s not my jam.

“How could I wake up every day and be a normal person if I was completely aware that my image was being manipulated on a global platform. How could I sleep? You have to have peace of mind. You’ve got to be able to protect those things. How else could you exist? You’d go crazy, anybody would go crazy.”

Johansson also described how the popularity of smartphones means she often encounters over-zealous fans trying to take her picture.

She said: “Now it’s crazy with iPhones and social media. There are moments where I’m like, ‘What do you want? You gonna sit there with your cameraphone and photograph me for this whole meal? Like, really? What, were you raised in a barn?’ There are still moments like that where I go, ‘Oh my God, people are unbelievable!’ ”

[From Dazed Magazine via The Standard]

I would continue to defend her if she had directly addressed the Sodastream controversy and even gave her perspective – however controversial – on the company’s decision to have a West Bank factory. But I think this is too cute by half: “I don’t see myself as being a role model; I never wanted to step into those shoes. I don’t profess to know more or less than anybody else.” Well, actually, Scarlett, that’s on you. You have professed to know more about various subjects, and that’s why you became an ambassador to Oxfam in the first place. If you were only in Hollywood to act, to make money and to monetize your name and your brand, then maybe you could play that “I never wanted to be a political animal” game. But Scarlett politicized herself, not just with Oxfam but with her political activism and fundraising for political candidates, and now when she’s criticized for it, suddenly she’s trying to play it like we’re putting that on her unfairly.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Dazed.