Tobacco Blues

The past year seems to have been videodom's Year of the Farmer. The history and current plight of the small farmer have been chronicled in works ranging from David Sutherland's moving study of a Nebraska farming family, The Farmer's Wife (VL-5/99), to Charlene Gilbert's Homecoming (VL-9/99), a meditation on the history of African American farmers. Tobacco Blues is also largely about the hard times which have befallen the folks who speed the plow...with a major difference: the crop being discussed is poison. The video focuses on the rapidly changing fortunes of four tobacco raising families caught in the crossfire between the tobacco industry and anti-smoking lobbyists and legislation. For all four families, it is obvious that tobacco is more than a profitable cash crop; it is a way of life and a heritage on the verge of imminent extinction. The program effectively provides some sense of the painful moral and economic dilemmas being faced by these families, and the varying ways in which each is dealing with the changing circumstances of their industry and lives. However, while the subject material is definitely interesting and timely, Tobacco Blues falls short on several counts. A surer hand at the editing deck would have made this a considerably stronger work: there's an aimlessness in both the narrative line and the camera work--too many establishing shots and narrative bits (why include historic TV ads for cigarettes, which add nothing to this particular set of stories?). More seriously, there's an oddly flabby point of view here--a misguided and failed attempt at balance, perhaps. One farmer laments that critics of tobacco aren't looking at the farmers' heritage--"they're ready to throw it all out." The Center for Disease Control indicates that ten million people in the U.S. have died from smoking-related deaths since 1964: what about the family heritages of those victims? An optional purchase. Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)