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."
Miramax pulled such a trick with The Crying Game to hype a film in America that did "ho hum" business in England.
"Don't give away the ending!" "What is the secret?" "Have you heard about the Crying Game?"
"That said, its being seriously overpraised."
It is probably Hillary Swank, she's made a stock in trade of these "gender bending" roles, but I do think she's very good. Although I really haven't seen her in anything, I'm just a very presumptuous person I suppose.
They have used medical "hopes" as the justification for infanticide; but I think you're right, in the end they want a nation full of people who look and think like them. Anyone who doesn't fit their elitist "mold" is disposable. I think one of the reasons the left despises George W. and George H. W. Bush so much is the fact that the left thinks they should be leftists (Andover, Yale, Harvard, wealthy New England family, etc.), but they aren't -- anything that confuses the left is seen as evil by them.
Well their job is to get as many people as possible to see the movie and mysteries like that are a good way to do it. I think it's almost impossible to convey what's good about a movie through trailers. They either make the film seem worse or better then it is.
At this point in time suicide has remained a crime.
Suicide and abortion are both permanent solutions to temporary problems. They are also both selfish acts.
If suicide is made legal, should we see abortion limited only to instances where the mother agrees to end her own life?
There are terminal conditions in both scenarios (suicide and abortion). If the mother (in extremely rare instances) does not abort, she may face death (and there could perhaps be justification for terminating the pregnancy). If the invalid does not commit suicide, he could die - wait a second, if he does not kill himself, he could wait LONGER to die.
Interesting point about the Bushes. I suppose the left hates Steve Forbes for the same reasons.
Your post makes no sense. The groups mentionned in theis article supporting the ADA are against euthanasia and the movie while Clint Eastwood was against ADA.
Forbes is a little different, the Bushes are seen as "old money," they should either be Democrats or RINOs (like the Rockefellers). As far as the left is concerned, GHWB went to Texas in search of even more money and the family became greedy Republicans.
Malcolm Forbes inherited "Forbes" magazine, but it was not the big success that it is now. He didn't have enough money to live off his inheritance and never work, which is basically the elitist criteria.
I see. Wow, the rich are like a whole other country!
It's odd that the radio commercials don't hint at this at all. You think it's all about a girl who wants to be a boxer.
LOL!
The fact that Eastwood fought against adding a handicap ramp to his hotel in 77 is irrelevant. That was before the ADA, so he was not obligated under law and may well have been fighting the ramp on purely business or aesthetic grounds.
That said, I'm surprised Eastwood would consent to produce a movie like this. And he can't disconnect himself from the message any more than a producer could who did a movie about Hitler trying to exterminate the Jews if it paints Hitler in a kindly light.
He should stop scoring his films! Someone needs to tell him that his composing skills are...wanting.
Eastwood is a libertarian and is part of a sizeable group of people who see nothing wrong with euthanasia.
First off, let me say that People who deliberately ruin the ending of a movie for others are the worst type of inconsiderate jerk-off. I don't care the reason; leave a movies surprises for others to see.
Anyway, I doubt a serious, thoughtful examination of one of the most complex political'personal issues of our time (whether we have a right to choose our own deaths or not) will not change my overall opinion of the film, and I will see it as soon as it makes it to theaters in my local area. I trust Clint as the solid, no-BS storyteller that he is, and have loved his movies in the past, from Dirty Harry and The Outlaw Josey Whales to Unforgiven, Heartbreak Ridge, A Perfect World, and Mystic River. He has earned by benefit of the doubt. The major Oscar consideration expected for the film on Tuesday morning also whets my curiosity in the film.
Thanks ... that's two of us. ;)
What's the rating for this movie?
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