Thank You For Smoking

Thank You For Smoking is a political farce, along the lines of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Loved the Bomb, that engages its audience through the life and lies of political lobbyist Nick Naylor; a man who spins the political positioning of the multi-billion dollar cigarette industry. Aaron Eckhart's performance of Naylor is deliberate and self-assured with several voice over monologues- none better than his self aggrandizing introduction,

few people on this planet know what it is to be truly despised. Can you blame them? I earn a living fronting an organization that kills one thousand two hundred human beings a day. Twelve hundred people. We're talking two jumbo jets a day of men, women, and children. I mean there's Atilla, Genghis, and me, the face of cigarettes, the colonel sanders of nicotine.

The film's core political message deals with the absolute lunacy of lobbyists in Washington D.C. who advocate on the behalf of the highest paid dollar. When lobbying becomes the preeminent form of governance, the public well being hangs in the balance, and individual lobbyists place their own twisted goals over common decency and morality.

             Lobbyists contort the will of society by hiding behind  falsifications of free speech. Dollar signs have become synonymous with legitimacy. Money buys public opinion. Naylor is nothing more than a vocabulary assassin for hire. The real danger he represents is the false belief that the perception is all that matters, while substance takes a back seat on all debates facing modern society. The intrigue, however, is that no matter how much one wants to hate Naylor and his greed, the audience can't help but become intoxicated by his character's persuasive undertones and comedic timing. Naylor embodies the confident spirit in each individual that yearns to think for themselves and challenge authority by framing the debate on the topic in question to best fit their own personal need. The film proposes the question, if lobbyists are so hated by the majority of modern day Americans, how do they continue to be so pervasive and successful at what they do?

            Through the film, Naylor calls his own morality into question by the frequent urging of his son, Joey. At first, Naylor's inner narration proudly brags about his weekly lunches with the "M.O.D. squad" or merchants of death who are closely aligned lobbyists working for other questionable employers, who arrogantly spend their time disputing over which industry kills the most of its' customers. Naylor's confidence as a father wavers on teaching his son how to survive in his twisted version of the real world, but his view begins to crumble as his work leads him spiraling out of control down the bowels of corruption, psychotic propaganda, and collusion. Joey and Naylor take a business trip together, where Naylor has to tip toe across his tightrope of rehearsed/compromised values while carrying the weight of his best intentions as a father. Ultimately, Joey learns the importance and power of lying.

            As a comedy, the film successfully portrays corporate interests so detached that one can't help but choke on your own laughter. The political process and reality have no chance of being reconciled. Corruption is so inherent to the nature of modern political structure that the film's implied ridiculousness is overshadowed by a reality that truly is stranger than fiction. Nietzsche argues, "“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” This film furthers this notion, through the relationship between Naylor and Joey where the audience can bear witness a father justifying his life's lies, in the eyes of his son. Is it any wonder American idealism continues to gasp, generation after generation?