What I'm sharing with you is the interpretation of the classic movie "Thank You For Smoking", a comedy film directed by Jason Reitman and starring Alan Eckhart, Maria Bello, David Cohenchane, and Katie Holmes. The film tells the story of Nick Neller, the chief spokesperson of the tobacco industry, who has engaged in a fierce debate with the government and the public about smoking with his eloquent ability.
"Thank You For Smoking" is about three top professional spokespeople who meet once a week, and they are the chief spokespeople for the U.S. tobacco, alcohol, and arms industries. They call themselves the MOD Group, the Dead Goods Group.
They gathered every week in restaurants to eat junk food, exchange anecdotes and anecdotes at work, and also give each other advice and discuss how to deal with the siege of researchers, doctors and media reporters. Sometimes it's also PK who endorses the products that are the most capable of killing, and as a result, Nick's endorsed cigarettes win by killing 475,000 people a year and causing 1,200 deaths in the United States every day.
The male protagonist in the film, Nick, is the dean of the Tobacco Research Institute, representing Camel, Marlboro, and the three major tobacco companies of 555. He doesn't make anything, he doesn't produce any social wealth, he eats guys with a mouth. Speaking of black as white and the dead as alive, his son adored him and called him "the king of distorted facts."
Nick's job is to constantly persuade people to smoke, as he puts it, "If every time you succeed in convincing a person to smoke, he earns the money back on the plane ticket, and it's back and forth." ”
As the spokesperson of the Tobacco Research Association, Nick wants to speak for the real sponsors of the Tobacco Research Institute, the tobacco industry tycoons, to persuade various public welfare groups, health groups, government organizations and individuals who oppose smoking and try to block the profits of the tobacco industry, to help the tobacco giants make greater profits, and the views he wants to express and the position he insists on are: "We must put all kinds of pros and cons in front of people, but in the end we feel that whether it is harmful and whether to smoke should be a personal choice, and others should not interfere...
Smoking has always been a very strange social phenomenon:
On the one hand, the government solemnly noted on all kinds of cigarette boxes: smoking is harmful to health, on the other hand, the government obtains a lot of taxes from the tobacco industry, on the one hand, it hypes anti-smoking and quit smoking in public places, on the other hand, it is selling cigarettes in every corner of the social city, on the one hand, parents try their best to prevent their children from smoking, on the other hand, they swallow clouds and spit mist in front of their children, smoking is harmful to health, idiots know, but why do people still produce it, and some people smoke it?
Governments around the world are promoting widespread health awareness campaigns that warn people not to smoke, but to no avail. Some foreign public propaganda to quit smoking will allow you to see a lot of horror pictures: such as a healthy and beautiful lady, looking in the mirror, suddenly become old; or photograph some people who have throat vocal cords cut due to throat cancer, and amputate their limbs because smoking causes rotten feet, because smoking can cause cancer and kill people; some also shoot bleeding, lungs destroyed by smoking, and so on.
These propaganda about the dangers of smoking will only remind people who do not smoke in the first place to continue to believe in the concept of not smoking.
If smokers who have become accustomed to smoking continue to encounter this kind of propaganda, and friends around him continue to tell him about the disadvantages of smoking, he will begin to turn a blind eye, listen to but not hear, which is called selective neglect or selective filtering of smokers.
These hardcore smokers argue that the 'bad' of smoking is not necessarily entirely true. Even if it is true, it may not happen to themselves, they will say: "You see Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Churchill and other great people who smoked, and they smoked all day long, but they all lived until they were seventy or eighty years old before they died, which was longer than those monks who ate vegetarian and did not smoke." ”
If you instill a little more 'intimidating' information like this, the smoker will later become more immune to this type of information. The reason for smoking will be more rationalized: "We are not saints, and men will have a hobby of eating, drinking, prostituting, gambling, and smoking, I do not prostitute or gamble, do not pit and do not turn, it is already very good!" If there are no habits, what is the point of living? ”
It's called selective distortion, and like Nick in the film, he's the king of distorted facts.
The great smoker who has reached a higher realm even promises his life for a cigarette, but even if he reaches the point of making a promise of life, will he really never be able to quit cigarettes? Nor is it!
For example, if one day an old smoker coughed up black blood and the doctor told him he had lung cancer, he would immediately throw away the cigarette in his hand. Because what he had been selectively ignoring had finally happened to himself, something he had been avoiding and unwilling to admit.
Although it was too late to regret it, he still resolutely abandoned the cigarettes that had followed him for decades, and the old smoking guns at this time really knew the harm of cigarettes from the heart, and most of the words they said at this time were known earlier, why should they sigh at the beginning, no one can be as bold as the original.
This is called bowing one's head in the face of one's original choice.
In fact, it's not all your fault that you choose to smoke, because the whole society is such a climate, and tobacco companies often spend a lot of money, bringing together a large number of experts and planners to study consumer psychology in the fog-filled conference room, and carry out concept marketing, seduction marketing, intimidation marketing, idol marketing based on human nature research.
This is difficult for adults, and it is even more difficult for teenagers to escape the temptation of cigarettes, there are parents as role models, there are movie idols swallowing clouds on the screen, such as the film to see the director to the tobacco company designed hollywood superstar smoking shots: Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta Jones, they just finished the first time, intoxicated in each other's body, they lie naked, suspended in the middle, Pete lit a cigarette, he began to blow smoke rings around, (You'll have to pay twenty-five million dollars for spitting out this smoke ring.)
There are many examples of such idols, including the "cool" image of Chow Yun-fat smoking in "Shanghai Beach" is still flying all over the sky, although the wild cowboys of Marlboro have all died of cancer, but their "cool" manhood, the image of men has been deeply rooted in the minds of teenagers, if the parents of these teenagers smoke, or the friends around them smoke, then the possibility of smoking in the future of this teenager is almost a foregone conclusion.
But the premise of their smoking is that they do not know the great harm of smoking, and knowing a little is only some fur, because the whole society indirectly promotes the atmosphere of smoking, so the harm of smoking can be basically ignored.
As Nick tells the Supreme Court at the end of the film, gentlemen: There's a thing called education that doesn't come from a warning on a cigarette box, but from our teachers, and more importantly from parents, and education is your job as a parent, to warn children of all the dangerous things in the world, including cigarettes. That way until one day when they grow up, they'll make choices for themselves.
It also reflects a value that should be promoted: there are all kinds of dangers and pitfalls in the world, you must understand the consequences of your choices, the government cannot take care of everything for you, so if you fall into the trap you can only blame yourself.
Respecting the right to know is the first step toward free choice, and attacking tobacco companies is not the most effective way (although it seems to be the most effective), the real solution is for every parent to responsibly educate their children about the dangers of smoking.
Tobacco companies don't want lung cancer patients to die, because then they're losing a consumer, and they want these addicts to live and continue to smoke; tobacco companies certainly want people to be healthy so it's profitable. Therefore, Nick, on behalf of the tobacco company, did not hesitate to bribe the cowboy who had advertised Marlboro cigarettes, and the cowboy who used to have unlimited scenery and full of wild manhood is now in the advanced stage of lung cancer due to smoking, and stands up to call for tobacco poisoning, which the tobacco company does not want to see.
Nick chose to do this "money-making" job, partly because he was good at debate, but the main reason was that he, like other people trapped in his job, had "loans" to pay back, and engaged in or assisted in the work of selling deaths every day, which was not the intention of these people.
But in the end, Nick refused to continue working in the tobacco company, and Nick gave up this higher position in the tobacco industry in order to educate his son that where there is no absolute, you must have your own choices, and do not be a slave to others to choose for you.
"If your child reached the age of 18, would you give him a cigarette?" The state legislator asked.
Nick replied, "If he really wants to smoke, I'll buy him my first pack of cigarettes."
But only if the child truly has the right to know, the rest is his own right to choose. Of course, Nick's intention is to hope that his son will choose to "not smoke" after the age of 18.
Tobacco, guns, alcohol, sexual temptations are everywhere; can we kill them all? If a plane crashes because of a pilot error, can you blame Boeing? If someone hits someone with a drunk car, will you run to the car manufacturer to settle the account?
Parents are responsible for completing the most basic education, not the cigarette warnings on those flashy cigarette packs, minors choose to smoke the first cigarette and adults who have already smoked choose to give up the last cigarette, which is the embodiment of free choice, and any choice that is not absolute, as long as they know their choices and their consequences and can be responsible for the consequences, then this choice is worthy of respect.
Brother Octopus sorts out smoking cessation quotes:
"Abstinence is not a solution to addiction." "Quitting smoking has nothing to do with willpower, it has nothing to do with age, breaking this myth". "The internal friction of smoking and quitting smoking is a war between one's left hand and one's right hand, just like breaking one's wrist with oneself, a war that is doomed to be won or lost."
"Fight with nicotine, do you have the strength?" It's a war that's doomed to fail, because you're not just fighting nicotine, but also fighting culture, customs, advertising, environmental warfare, and your power is too small."
"The fight between your cells in your body and hundreds of carcinogens in tobacco every day is no less than that of Hollywood blockbusters, but the attack points of carcinogens in tobacco are too extensive, and the healthy cells in your body are exhausted every day, and one day they will be exhausted." "For the satisfaction of the brain's nicotine addiction, the destruction of other parts of the body, sooner or later will be retaliated by those organs."
"It's an unfair bet to bet on whether smoking or not you get sick with your body, and when you roll the dice, only one of the six sides represents health, and the other five sides are disease and cancer."
"In peacetime, there is no environment of war to prove whether you have betrayed in the face of torture and temptation, but quitting smoking can be considered one of the ways to prove to others that you are not a traitor." "If a man can quit smoking successfully, then he can succeed in almost anything". "Quitting smoking requires no willpower, just attention".
"There are often addicts who say that they don't want to live too long, but when they are critically ill, they invariably spare their lives more than ever, and they will spare everything they have to live longer." "For addicts, nicotine is the boss, you are a slave, and if you kill the boss, you are the boss." "The person who sells cigarettes is the same as the person who sells guns, and every box of cigarettes is twenty rounds of ammunition."
"Tobacco producers are the makers of weapons of mass destruction, and there is government support." "Tobacco companies should provide products similar to range hoods to pump out tar and particles from the lung wall." "Buying a cigarette for a loved one is hiring a murderer to kill him in installments, but no one is criminally liable for it."
"If a dose of chronic poison takes thirty years to kill, then almost no one will be convicted of murder, and cigarettes are the legal chronic killing poison." "Cigarettes are the only legal suicide or murder weapon in the world today". "Cigarettes are soft knives that kill people, and they also let people experience a long period of life before dying."
"The smell of smoke floating in the air is as impossible for non-smokers to avoid as the smell of farts." "Kissing a smoker is like kissing an ashtray." "Smoking for more than twenty years, cigarettes and Viagra will become a golden pair". "Ostensibly you're smoking but actually nicotine sucking you up, sucking up your life nutrients like roundworms in your body." "Nicotine addiction gun can not die, water flooding does not die, fire does not die, can only starve it."
"The formation of smoking habits and the formation of exercise habits are the same, they have to experience the initial discomfort, adapt to it and then start to become addicted, but the consequences are very different." "If smoking is really a very enjoyable thing, you should sell it for 100 yuan a cigarette, so that every time you smoke a cigarette, you will really enjoy it." "As long as a person can not smoke when he is seriously ill and not smoke when he sleeps, it proves that smoking is just a heart addiction."
"Smoking, you hurt the person you are closest to." "Smokers are present and tested, subtly demonstrating their children's best way of educating themselves." "Smoking is a huge debt hidden in your life". "Some people are addicted to smoking to the point of even taking their lives, but those who are not even afraid of death are still afraid of quitting smoking?" "Young ambitions do not say anything, teenagers do not smoke."
"Smokeless and light, why not enjoy it". "Hate him and let him smoke, but if you love him, you can't force him to quit smoking. "No matter how old the smoking gun is addicted, cigarettes are to be quit sooner or later in this life, and you can choose whether to quit now or in the future when you lie in a hospital bed." "No one said before they died: If only I had learned to smoke a few years earlier, I would have enjoyed more cigarettes." "Drug use begins with smoking, and four out of five drug users are smokers."
"Smoking creates a prison for all organs of your body, and all organs except the brain try to escape, of which your lungs are the leaders of the prison escape."
This sharing is to interpret the classic movie "Thank you for smoking" has all ended, thank you for reading!