Warning: Movie May Cause Boredom

Rating: 2/10 (18 September 2002)

Whether the defendant is a squealer or a whistle blower depends on which side of the social border the judge sits on. If the informant betrays secrets about an organization we support, then he's a squealer or a spy. If we hate the organization, then he's a civic-minded whistle blower. It's kind of like being a "terrorist" or a "freedom fighter."
In this case, there's no doubt that Jeffrey Wigand was a flawed but full-blown whistler. He tattled on "Big Tobacco," as it's consistently called, a conspiratorial corporate entity everyone hates. What did he have to gain? Not much. He admits to having a bad temper and feels he was fired "for no good reason," but for most of us that would be a weak motive for risking your bountiful severance package and your family. (Of course, who knows what's in a man's heart?)
There are death threats that show up on his PC and a bullet appears in his mailbox, or so we are told. People may be "surveilling" him at places like a golf driving range. If so, the surveillers are pretty obvious about it. Writers, and viewers as well, need to be careful with this kind of material. After he was sent to jail, G. Gordon Liddy, a paranoid if there ever was one, describes in his book, "Will," how he made killer enemies in prison and concluded that on a given night they were going to make an attempt on his life. He chose bravely to sleep out in the open with a blunt object for defense nearby. Nobody showed up that night. He believes his audacity frightened the killers off, whereas most reasonable readers would suspect that his enemies, like Son of Sam's social life, were all in his head. At any rate, as it turns out, Wigand loses just about everything dear to him.
Another brave whistle blower is Lowell Bergman the CBS producer who brings the whole tawdry story to light by blowing the whistle on CBS to the New York Times. He quits his job. (The movie makes it appear that he quits immediately after his victory, whereas in fact he didn't quit until two years later.) The movie is based on Bergman's version of events.
The question is: aside from making us feel good because, by means of all this sacrifice Big Tobacco gets it in the chin, what other purpose is served? What startling exposition is there in Wigand's suppressed interview? Certainly not that cigarettes are bad for you. The Surgeon General's report demonstrated that in 1964. And even that report was a redundancy since just about everyone, from scientists to morons, knew that cigarettes make you ill. The first use of the term "coffin nail" or "nail in your coffin" used in reference to cigarettes appeared in 1888, when cigarettes were just beginning to be used in addition to cigars and pipes.
Here's a headline from the Chicago Daily Tribune, 15 July 1897, "Unconscious From Cigaret Smoke: George Decker of Jersey City Succumbs to an Excessive Use of 'Coffin Tacks.'" (That's from Dictionary of American Regional English.) In Chinese, the character representing "tobacco" is the same as that for "opium," a stylized picture of a man imprisoned by four walls.
There is an interesting datum on how ammonia compounds are added to tobacco to facilitate the impact of nicotine -- but that's the whole point of smoking. No one ever claimed that cigarettes TASTED good. Enhancing the impact of nicotine is an example of good old American know-how.
At least from what we can see, the two main contributions of the controversial interview are (1) that the CEOs lied when they testified that they did not believe tobacco was an addictive drug, and (2) sound bites -- "Cigarettes are nothing more than a delivery system for a drug." (We hear that last bite quoted 3 times.)
Well, Big Tobacco (and little tobacco for that matter, if that term can be applied to users) had already been demonized. The whole affair, in all its complexity, seems to have cemented even more firmly in place those prejudices most viewers will already hold. The film was careful not to indict smokers because, after all, these addicts go to the movies. The film poses as an expose, when in fact it has about the same sensational value as the revelation that Benedict Arnold sold West Point to the British.
And who wound up paying for all this? Big Tobacco came under a great deal of expensive litigation, and remains there today. Penalties were levied on the corporations. The corporations passed these additional costs on to the users by tripling and quadrupling the cost of cigarettes. Most of the people who are addicted to cigarettes (we're not talking about the conspicuous consumption of expensive cigars) are working and lower class. The result is a regressive tax, in which the chief burden falls on those least able to pay. Forty years ago, a carton of Camels could be had for 90 cents. Today, in New York, you pay between five and six dollars a pack. That's an increase of roughly 6,111 percent. (I think. If that figure's wrong, it's my calculator's fault.)
One might think that, having finally brought the addictive properties of nicotine out into the open, the public and its representatives would feel some sympathy, or even pity, for its victims, but no such sentiment has surfaced. The hatred we feel towards smokers seems boundless and almost gleeful. Here's a poster on the door of a professor of social science in an Eastern university: "Cancer Cures Smoking," in huge blood-red letters. The last time there was such widespread and righteous wrath must have been during the anti-communist fervor of the early 1950s.
In return we have the warm self-satisfied glow that comes from knowing that we rooted for the right side in this really rather simple-minded and exploitative movie.