Posted on 01/23/2005 11:47:39 AM PST by wagglebee
Famed actor and director Clint Eastwood is being condemned by disabled groups who say his award-winning film, "Million Dollar Baby," perpetuates the view that lives of people with disabilities are not worth living.
Eastwood directs the film, in which he also acts, with Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman. It's been identified by critics as a top contender for an Academy Award since Eastwood and Swank won Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Actress.
The story about a young female boxer who seeks out an elderly trainer to help her achieve her dream of being the best takes a sudden plot twist when one of the leading characters is seriously injured in an accident, becomes crippled and begs to be killed. Warner Brothers has been accused of deliberately concealing the film's ending in its promotions.
"Warner Brothers never tells you the truth about a key plot twist that turns this pedestrian boxing movie into an insufferable manipulative right-to-die movie," says Michael Medved, noted film critic.
The National Spinal Cord Injury Association (NSCIA) has been particularly vocal in criticizing Eastwood, describing the film's last scene as a "brilliantly executed attack on life after a spinal cord injury."
Eastwood has a history of conflict with NSCIA. In 1977, the group attempted to have $7,000 worth of handicap-access modifications included in renovations made to a hotel the actor owns in Carmel, California. Eastwood spent over $600,000 fighting the group in court, according to the London Telegraph.
"Eastwood is remembered by many for his attack on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 2000," charges Marcie Roth, NSCIA's CEO of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association. "I’m saddened but not surprised that he uses the power of fame and film to perpetuate his view that the lives of people with disabilities are not worth living.
Stephen Drake, a researcher for Not Dead Yet, a group that fights assisted suicide laws, calls "Million Dollar Baby" a "corny, melodramatic assault on people with disabilities. It plays out killing as a romantic fantasy and gives emotional life to the 'better dead than disabled' mindset lurking in the heart of the typical audience member."
The group is critical of reviews that have ignored or glossed over the film's pro-euthanasia message.
"The biggest problem with Million Dollar Baby," says Diane Coleman of Not Dead Yet "is that some of the audience will be newly disabled people, their family members and friends, swept along in the critically acclaimed emotion that the kindest response to someone struggling with the life changes brought on by a severe injury is, after all, to kill them."
While Eastwood has refused to discuss euthanasia when promoting his film, he's made it clear he refuses to back down. "How people feel about that is up to them," he told one interviewer. "I'm not a pro-euthanasia person and this is a story about a giant dilemma and how one person had to face that."
The left has forced us to bend over backwards and spend billions of dollars to make the disabled "comfortable" in even the most unlikely scenarios -- and now, they want to adopt a Hitlerian solution to deal with them.
"Warner Brothers has been accused of deliberately concealing the film's ending in its promotions."
Thanks for posting this. I was surprised to learn that there was a depressing twist to this movie that causes it to end on a very dark note. Of course the review I read didn't reveal what that twist was. I think the ads are very misleading. I am opposed to movies without happy endings, and even though I was opposed to this one because it glorifies female boxing I thought maybe it was a good movie and I was misjudging it. Sorry to be right, yet again.
You want a REALLY controversial movie??
(I suppose this should be from scrappleface. . .)
Make a movie in which a pregnant woman decides at
the last moment NOT to have an abortion. . .
then show the life of the child who lived (instead of being killed)
Now THAT would be radical.
(But of course it's TOO radical and challenging for Hollywood. . .)
There was no way to advertise that element of the film without giving the ending away.
EVERYBODY wants to be a screen writer!
Me too! You could do good stuff with flashbacks in a movie like that!
And, if you had a good script, it could certainly be done on the cheap! Maybe a few special effects, CSI style, of the child pre-born.
Yes, I'm liking it. Will get back to you as soon as I hit lotto. We'll do lunch and take a meeting!
Clint Eastwood is on the left? How do you know the politics of either the screenwriter or the short story writer upon who's work the script was based?
Crap ...
" "Million Dollar Baby," perpetuates the view that lives of people with disabilities are not worth living. "
That's the social liberal side of Clint. He's pro abortion as well. He's not a Republican but an "Independent" who really fits the LIBERALtarian mold but typically votes Republican.
Let those who rail make their own.
"I wouldn't have wanted to live without having disturbed someone"
Jack Nicholson can relate to that given that he realized not long ago that he was raised by his grandmother as a son but in fact his sister was his mother.
Jack Nicholson is vehemently opposed to abortion btw.
"There was no way to advertise that element of the film without giving the ending away."
Fair enough, but the ads do make it seem like a classic American "under dog prevails" kind of a movie. I will probably never see this movie now, so I won't really be able to judge it.
I will say for the under dog prevails fans, like I've become, you can't beat Dodgeball.
Sometimes a movie is simply depicting a story. Such a story may or may not agree with your "world view". But, it's not necessarily trying to make a political point. Why do some people have to see an agenda in every film released or TV show produced? The liberal left often are guilty of this, and now I see some on the right are, too.
If every filmmaker, director, or screenwriter had to get everyone's permission to depict a story nothing would every get made -- or every film would be an episode of Leave It To Beaver. I'll take the Sopranos any day.
Some think that was the point ... first make a group of people a "burden on society," and then drop the other shoe: "Don't you wish we could be rid of *them* ...."
George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) basically self aborts his life by wishing he was never born. And gets to see what the world would've been like w/o him around.
8^)
I couldn't have said it better. These advocacy/watchdog groups serve some purpose I guess but if they all had their way we would be left with absolutely no dramatic possibilities at all.
But then a few weeks before the election, the leftist tried to make everyone believe that Bush was responsible for Superman's death, even though Bush has done more to advance stem cell research than Klintoon ever did.
The previews made it look cliched and predictable. That said, its being seriously overpraised.
The left wants unlimited embryonic stem-cell research, because that supports the dehumanization of unborn children; it also has no positive results so far. They don't support adult or autologous stem-cell research, which produces results.
One might get the impression that they just want people DEAD ... unborn, elderly, disabled ... as many people as possible DEAD.
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