Thank You For Smoking

[Qwertz]

Obligatory Spoiler Space:

Thank You For Smoking: Big Tobacco's 'sultan of spin' examines his motives for doing the kind of job he does while trying to raise his son in this well-written comedy. Often quick and witty, this satire of caricatures contains little else of value, is based on bad premises, and at least once explicitly states that multi-national corporations don't deserve competent representation in court.

Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, lead 'spin' artist for a tobacco lobbying organization in Washington, D.C., trying to improve the tobacco industry's image in the public and congressional eye. The movie starts from the premise that tobacco companies are, in fact, evil, are hiding the fact that smoking causes cancer, and are thus in need of a con artist to improve their public image. In discussions with his young son, Naylor demonstrates that being right doesn't matter in an argument: all that matters is proving your opponent wrong. When asked by his son what makes America's government is the greatest in the world, he responds "our endless appeals process," and begins a relativist dissertation on why such a question is, in fact, unanswerable. Yet in his job, 'spinning' the tobacco industry, he often says things which are true and which would stem from a rational, capitalist philosophy, except that we the viewer know that they do not, and so everything about him, including his sentiments about freedom of individuals to weigh the consequences of smoking for themselves, become fodder for satirical lampooning. When telling his son that the 'disenfranchised multinational corporations' like loggers, cigarette makers, and, nonsensically, baby seal poachers all deserve competent representation, both legally and publicly, the implication is, quite clearly, the opposite.

Naylor is also paradoxical in that he has a genuine sense of responsibility for his son's mental, rational and physical well-being. His son looks up to him, and eventually grows closer to him through the course of the film, and Naylor manages, on occasion, to pass on some valid points to his son (check the validity of arguments from authority, learn to argue correctly*, and several others), but again without any firm philosophical backup, either explicit or implicit. This relationship becomes very interesting because of this conflict between how he perceives his work (he tells a reporter he does it "for the mortgage," a line which is repeated several times throughout) and how he perceives his role as a father, but unfortunately it is back-burnered to the 'big tobacco' satire and is left undeveloped and, largely, unexplored.

Eckhart's performance is one-dimensional, though whether this is due to his acting or the character is debatable. Naylor is a shallow guy who delivers canned lines to achieve a desired end - the performance reflects this, though even when we expect Naylor to be conflicted about something (such as his testimony before the senate panel, see below), we really get very little sense of any kind of inner processes in the character. Congruently, Naylor doesn't undergo any significant change in the end, which reads as though the filmmakers ended up somewhere - led there inevitably by the truth they were trying to discredit - where they didn't want to be, and so tacked on an ending which would please their target audience and coincide with the implicit premises of the film.

William H. Macy, however, gives a thoroughly enjoyable performance as Naylor's nemesis, Senator Ortolan K. Finistirre (D-VT), who is shepherding a bill through the Senate which would require cigarette manufacturers to label their products with a large graphic of a rotting skull and bones. Recognizing Naylor's ability to win an argument, Finistirre is reluctant to allow him to testify at the Senate's public hearings on the bill, yet he is eventually pressured by the press into allowing it. At the hearing, Finistirre first asks Naylor if he, Naylor, believes that smoking can lead to lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease and death, to which Naylor unexpectedly replies in the affirmative, and proceeds to argue, rather effectively, that most people already know this, and that the label is unnecessary. When reminded that the label is for those who don't know, he (again rather persuasively) argues that such labels should be affixed to aircraft, automobiles and Vermont Cheddar Cheese (leading to a genuinely funny line from the Senator: "The Great State of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese!"). Naylor argues that it is up to parents and schools to educate children about the dangers of smoking, and to raise them with the capacity to weigh evidence and make decisions for themselves. Finistirre, believing he's backed Naylor into a corner, asks about Naylor's own son, and whether Naylor would allow him to smoke. After a literalist throwaway ("He's not 18, it would be illegal"), Naylor concludes that, should his son choose to smoke at age 18, he, Naylor, would buy him his first pack.

Amidst all this seemingly good sentiment, however, there is never a shred of defense for the tobacco industry and its right to produce and market a product to consumers who choose to buy it. The industry is depicted as doing many reprehensible things, such as paying off the Marlboro Man to keep his lung cancer diagnosis out of the press, and Naylor never really passes any kind of moral judgment on them. At the end of the film, he says that some things aren't worth doing, even for the mortgage, but there is never any evidence that he arrived at any kind of moral judgment whatsoever. But then, the reason the film is devoid of any philosophical defense of the tobacco industry is because the filmmakers don't believe any such defense is possible.

One notable image: after Naylor is kidnapped by anti-tobacco terrorists, he is deposited pietà-style on the Lincoln Memorial, covered in the nicotine patches with which the terrorists tried to assassinate him. The similarity to Michelangelo's Pietà is unmistakable. As to whether the reference means anything, I have yet to speculate.

-Q

* - The line is "If you argue correctly, you're always right," which is obviously meant to be satirical, but is, in a way, correct - learn to use logic correctly, and you (your process) will always be correct; only your premises can be wrong.

[JASKN]

Good review. Thanks.