Looking at Liberal and Conservative Viewpoints in Film

Today in class we continued watching the film "Thank You for Smoking" that we has started yesterday. However, we began class with a short review of Liberal and Conservative values. In addition to this, the class examined the term Lobbyist. The term “Lobbyist” was determined by the class to mean someone who is with a large company who tries to convince the regular public and the opposition to see things from their perspective. They also will speak to congress or state/local governments while keeping the company’s interests in mind. Connecting this to the film, the main character would be considered a Lobbyist, since he speaks on behalf of the cigarette company and tries to convince people that the industry is not “evil” and that they should perhaps take up smoking. This obviously is keeping the company’s interests in mind. 

After going over the term “Lobbyist”, we reviewed both Liberal and Conservative viewpoints on the topic. In general we determined this: 

-Conservative: Companies have a right to have a Lobbyist, it’s part of a free market.

-Liberal: Big companies having a Lobbyist is morally corrupt and the government should perhaps step in to stop this.

The class then continued watching the film “Thank you for Smoking”. To summarize what has happened, the main character took his son on a big business trip in California where they meet a very corrupt business owner. They talked about his plan to bring cigarettes back into film so they would be more popular, and he thought it was a great idea. After the meeting he had another job to do which involved essentially paying a big anti-smoker to stop speaking out. He was about to speak to this man where we left off. There were plenty of moments I found to display liberal ideas such as the businessman being so corrupt he works with literal criminals and purposely wanted to sell cigarettes to minorities and criminals. On the other hand, we see the senator who hired the anti-smoking scientist to speak on the show the main character was on saying some absolutely horrible things about the kid who had cancer, not caring at all about him. This would be showing how they corrupt political side of things is not much better, and fit into the conservative viewpoint. In general the whole film is going into some very political and sensitive issues that people in real life have strong opinions about. It reflects corrupt business and political practices of the real world, although exaggerated for comedic effect. Although it’s satirical it is still compelling to watch from a political lens.