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. "Im 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."
That's what I thought too. I'm a movie-goer, and I don't feel like seeing this. Right now my mother is suffering from Parkinson's, and I often take her to the movies. I definitely will not take her to see such a depressing movie while she's struggling to get through each day.
Oddly enough, this at a time when we are closer than ever before to solving the problem of spinal cord injuries. There has been much positive work done in this area and I read in some (admittedly very popularized) report that either regeneration or bridging of certain spinal cord injuries will be possible in the not too distant future.
But heck, it's probably cheaper and faster to kill them. Of course, you could say that about people with any disease, I suppose. Why was all that money spent on AIDS when it would really have been cheaper and easier to let them die?
You don't need to see that movie either as a caregiver of someone facing that disease. I think it's a bit of false advertising IMHO.
Gee, thats a novel idea! Hype a move in your ads but don't tell the people how it ends......How despicable is that?????
Well, finally, a comment from someone who's actually *seen* it. Personally, I can't stand it when people rail against movies they haven't even seen. I loved Mystic River and Eastwood as a director in general, so I think I'll see this one.
Thanks for the link, but I don't care to partake of it. As far as I'm concerned, any jerk-off who calls themself the "movie spoiler" should be roundly beated with his own pocket protector until he promises to play fair with the moviegoers of the world.
Title: The Stephen Hawking Story. Imagine what even one of the more than 40 million killed in the USA could have accomplished.
I agree with what someone posted who said that just because the world view of a movie doesn't agree with your own, doesn't make it a bad movie. The movie is raising an issue to be debated.
The movie is very powerful and is crafted exceedingly well. I am vehemently against euthanasia, but am mature enough to understand that not all agree with me. From watching this movie, I believe there can be a good argument against euthanasia.
When my father was very ill with cancer, we took him out to a movie to get him out for a while. It was about horse racing so we thought he would enjoy it. Turned out the related plot was about a person dying from cancer.
But it was not the producer's fault that it made us doubly sad.
No, it is not being overpraised. It is a very powerful and moving story. Just because I don't agree with the outcome doesn't mean I am going to slam it.
Oh I'm not saying that for that reason. I just felt it was a simple minded melordrama, every element of which had been done many times before.
It seems that being offended is becoming America's greatest pass time.
The previews for the Sound of Music didn't show them getting caught escaping and then hiding in the abbey. How misleading!!!! LOL
I don't care to watch a movie about suicide.
Well I for one thank for posting the link to moviespoiler. I don't like to watch too many movies, but I do get curious about them. Some movies I won't watch at all, for example horror movies, because they freak me out too much and make me afraid to go down to my laundry room. No, I'm not kidding at all. But just finding out what happens doesn't scare me. With the horror flicks I can usually get my brother to tell me "the whole story". I'm sure I'll make good use of this site!
"The previews for the Sound of Music didn't show them getting caught escaping and then hiding in the abbey."
No, but the movie still had a happy ending. I think that is the problem with this situation, the movie is basically being portrayed as a feel-good story, and I guess it is really not.
Other movies I've hated for their sad endings were "Sugarland Express" and "Lady Sings the Blues". But in those cases I was just mad at hubby for starting to watch them on TV late at night, falling asleep, and leaving me crying at the end!
I can accept that ususally, a cigar is just a cigar. But consider Hollywood. If Hollywood movie-making is a money-making machine and they don't care about the message of the film so long as the money is there to make a profit and produce more movies, then I ask:
1. Why did Hollywood feel a need to hide the "twist" of MDB if movies about winning boxers are good box office?
2. Are there enough people who would really want to watch a movie about a successful boxer who becomes a quadrapeligic and is murdered by her trainer to cover the cost of making it?
I doubt somebody in the character Maggie's situation, on a respirator, unable to move any part of her body would find herself in a movie theater watching this movie. Unfreakinbelievable.
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