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Mar

12

What Did Million Dollar Baby Say About Euthanasia?

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Parableman wrote the following comment at FunkyDung’s Ales Rarus post of his friend’s positive review of MDB:

This[Maggy's death] is most definitely voluntary, active euthanasia. He injects her with something, making it active, and she asks for it, making it voluntary. This is also clearly illegal, since active euthanasia is never allowed except in assisted suicide cases in a few states, and the patient has to do the killing herself.

Clint Eastwood said in an interview that the priest expresses Eastwood’s own view and the view the film was trying to get across, so this review gets it right.

You can find the quote from Eastwood where he says the priest was right during an interview with Bill O’Reilly at the bottom of a lengthy post by Bill Wallo at Wallo’s World.

I tried to comment on Wallo’s world that, since Eastwood did not write the short-story that the movie was based on, perhaps his personal view on the matter was not the end of the story. He likely may have added the addendum where the skinny kid comes back after having been badly beaten, which is interpreted as saying we should keep living rather than accept defeat.

My own view is that I think it’s tragic for us to over-generalize from the situation. I earlier posted that I didn’t see Maggie as turning her back on God and the world, or committing suicide. I saw her as accepting the nat’l consequences of the tragic event that happened to her. As I understand her, she had a very particular calling/vocation that made her unwilling to continue living when she was no longer able to serve in that vocation. If she had been someone dedicated to the life of the mind, like myself and Diane Coleman then it would have been a different issue. I could still record my thoughts and read if I was permanently paralyzed from the neck down. Although, I bet that it would be a bit difficult to surf the internet. In the case of Maggy, modern technology merely delayed the inevitable and permitted her to say goodbye to her loved ones. Likewise, I do not believe that Clint’s character murdered her. He made sure she died peacefully, since she no longer wanted to be kept alive with the technology.

One of the interesting spins in parableman’s thoughts is that he has a very different interpretation of the actions of the priest. In his view, he stands for centuries of Church teaching and is vindicated when Clint’s character is alienated from everything that matters to him in life. My impression was that the priest failed in his pastoral role and that the complete isolation of Clint’s character at the end was a self-fulfilling prophecy. He was so alienated by the Church he still clung to that he pretty much gave up.

But having gone through all that, I think it is more important for us to focus on how Eastwood said that MDB was not meant to be a political statement about Euthanasia. It was meant to tell a compelling story of human relationships. A compelling story that I believe is so compelling because it fits with the Biblical world-view. It speaks of the brokenness of us humans, our desire for forgiveness for our past wrongs, our natural fearfulness for the future and the ways we can bring new hope into other’s lives and form relationships that transcend familial bonds. We should be using the movie to draw others into the faith, not just air out our differences as Christians.

dlw
ps, There is another well done post by Gerald Nora at Ales Rarus on the movie that considers Clint Eastwood’s other recent movies and shows that they all are anti-killing people. He cites me and I left a comment and hope the conversation can continue…as I continue to procrastinate…
dlw

Comments

One Response to “What Did Million Dollar Baby Say About Euthanasia?”

  1. Bill Wallo on March 13th, 2005 9:37 am

    Thanks for the link; your comment came thru but I have comment moderation on so there’s a delay while it asks for approval.

    As for your interpretation of the film, I find it intriguing but I’m not certain I can agree with it. Then again, that’s what “interpretation” is sometimes about.

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