In the movie Thank You For Smoking, big tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor embarks on a variety of escapades in manipulation, bribery, and twisted words that technically aren't lies. Throughout the movie, he is shown to have less and less redeemable qualities, and one striking example of this is his son, Joey.
Joey is first seen as a sweet kid who wants to spend time with his dad, and when he asks Nick for help writing an essay, he is met with the excellent advice to "tell them what they want to hear". As he spends more time with his father, Joey is seen adopting more of his manipulative mannerisms both in conversation with him and with his peers. He twists words to convince his mother to let him leave on a business trip with Nick and brings his class to applause for a speech that he had no emotional stake in.
Throughout the movie, Joey's slow regression into more scummy communicative behaviors is a sad thing to see, but hope still remains by the end of the film, which shows us Joey winning his school's debate championship. While his father may have used his rhetorical powers for more unsavory purposes, the scene grants us the possibility that his influence on Joey may not have been enough to send him down a similarly dark path,
Although you make a good point with Nick possibly corrupting his son with his not so innocent debating tricks - Joey did seem to take interest in how his dad did things. It wasn't as if Nick forced his son to sit down and listen to him or force him to take notes on these skills or anything. Joey did seem to really take an interest to his dad's job of persuasion. At least in my opinion anyways and how I was seeing things. I mean, maybe Joey was just really wanting to spend time with his dad and only seemed interested - we may never know.
ReplyDeleteI agree Nick's influence would not send Joey down a dark path. Although Nick taught Joey all of his scummy tricks, some good came out of all of it. Joey won his debate and learned how to argue efficiently. Joey looked up to Nick which meant he was most likely going to follow in his dad's footsteps. He did just that. I don't think Nick's manipulation skills had a detrimental effect on Joey rather than a good one. He made his dad proud.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that Joey did learn horrible habits from his father, but ultimately those traits do not influence his future. I also think that if Joey would not have learned rhetoric skills from his father, he would of learned them somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteJoey expresses interest in his dad's work, but just because he is showing these bad traits doesn't mean that he will go down the wrong path.
ReplyDeleteIt is not a bad thing that Joey is picking up traits from his father. Nick never forced these ideas onto his son. Now Nick is not a good influence for his son in the sense that he works for a terrible company. As long as Joey uses rhetoric for good, he won't end up like Nick.
ReplyDeleteWhile Joey did learn some bad habits from his dad such as manipulating his mom into letting him go with his dad on the business trip, he doesn’t seem to show interest in the dark side of Nicks job. Like you said at the end Joey wins his school debate championship, so this could show that he is going to use what he learned in a good way unlike his dad.
ReplyDeleteI think that Nick is teaching the good characteristics of his rhetoric skills. considering the only thing that makes nick Naylor seem like a bad person is the way he uses his rhetorical skills and not once in the movie did I see joey use persuasion to talk big tobacco out of putting a label on a cigarette box. it is not harmful to a child for them to learn or grow their relationship with their father. I feel as if Nick Naylor was teaching his kid the important things that he uses to be successful.
ReplyDeleteJoey became very interested in his dad work during the movie and learned from his dad how to use rhetoric to convince an audience. Although these skills may be dark and scummy, it was good that he learned it from his dad so that he may use those skills for a good cause.
ReplyDeleteJoey was influenced by his dad as he watched him execute his rhetoric all the time. Joey had Nick as an exeamplary function which was being misused by Nick as he learned his son how to argue.
ReplyDelete