Look't this! I've been published in Oz! Make MY Day, mother f*cker! Take that!
Spoiler Alert! If you don't wish to learn how the movie Million Dollar Baby turns out read no further...
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Letters/The-unasked-million-dollar-question/2005/02/20/1108834657104.html
The unasked million dollar question
February 21, 2005
Notably absent from Frank Rich's polemic supporting Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby ("How Dirty Harry Turned Commie", Opinion, 18/2) is any recognition of the widespread opposition to the movie by the very community most directly affected by the film's troubling conclusion: people with disabilities.
By focusing instead on right-wing opposition to the film's nightmarish depiction of quadriplegia and, moreover, the assisted suicide of disabled people, Rich conveniently sidesteps the larger issue: the "better dead than disabled" mentality that sparked the uproar over Million Dollar Baby in the first place.
In the article, Eastwood states: "I never thought about the political side of this when making the film." There's the rub. Eastwood and his film's liberal supporters have somehow failed to see - and perhaps worse yet, failed to examine - why disabled people would be hurt and offended.
Is the notion of preferring to die rather than choosing to live with a disability so commonplace it merits no reflection by able-bodied movie directors, film critics and audiences? Moreover, are the feelings of real, live disabled people so irrelevant in our culture they aren't even considered when movies such as Million Dollar Baby are made?
To reduce the debate to a ideological tug-of-war misses the point. Cinema, when done well, has always sparked controversy. D. W. Griffith first sparked cinematic squabbling with 1915's Birth Of A Nation, a racist retelling of the Reconstruction era from a segregationist, white supremacist point of view. President Woodrow Wilson, who screened the film at the White House, added fuel to an already explosive situation when he remarked "my only regret is that it is all so terribly true".
Like Birth of a Nation nearly a century ago, Eastwood has every right to offend people from all over the political spectrum. But unlike Griffith's film, Million Dollar Baby plays more to the largely irrational fears of what having a disability might be like rather than the reality of living one's life with a disability - a crucial point largely missed thus far by film critics and newspaper columnists.
Rather than frame the issue of one of partisanship, this poses a more difficult, but equally important question regarding sensitivity: would films like Million Dollar Baby be embraced by left-leaning culture warriors such as Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd and Roger Ebert if they alienated other, more politically powerful minority groups such as gays or people of color?
No one can say for certain, but it is a question well worth asking.
Lawrence Carter-Long, (aka. PosterBrat, yeah me...) serves on the Board of the Center for Independence of the Disabled, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Spoiler Alert! If you don't wish to learn how the movie Million Dollar Baby turns out read no further...
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Letters/The-unasked-million-dollar-question/2005/02/20/1108834657104.html
The unasked million dollar question
February 21, 2005
Notably absent from Frank Rich's polemic supporting Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby ("How Dirty Harry Turned Commie", Opinion, 18/2) is any recognition of the widespread opposition to the movie by the very community most directly affected by the film's troubling conclusion: people with disabilities.
By focusing instead on right-wing opposition to the film's nightmarish depiction of quadriplegia and, moreover, the assisted suicide of disabled people, Rich conveniently sidesteps the larger issue: the "better dead than disabled" mentality that sparked the uproar over Million Dollar Baby in the first place.
In the article, Eastwood states: "I never thought about the political side of this when making the film." There's the rub. Eastwood and his film's liberal supporters have somehow failed to see - and perhaps worse yet, failed to examine - why disabled people would be hurt and offended.
Is the notion of preferring to die rather than choosing to live with a disability so commonplace it merits no reflection by able-bodied movie directors, film critics and audiences? Moreover, are the feelings of real, live disabled people so irrelevant in our culture they aren't even considered when movies such as Million Dollar Baby are made?
To reduce the debate to a ideological tug-of-war misses the point. Cinema, when done well, has always sparked controversy. D. W. Griffith first sparked cinematic squabbling with 1915's Birth Of A Nation, a racist retelling of the Reconstruction era from a segregationist, white supremacist point of view. President Woodrow Wilson, who screened the film at the White House, added fuel to an already explosive situation when he remarked "my only regret is that it is all so terribly true".
Like Birth of a Nation nearly a century ago, Eastwood has every right to offend people from all over the political spectrum. But unlike Griffith's film, Million Dollar Baby plays more to the largely irrational fears of what having a disability might be like rather than the reality of living one's life with a disability - a crucial point largely missed thus far by film critics and newspaper columnists.
Rather than frame the issue of one of partisanship, this poses a more difficult, but equally important question regarding sensitivity: would films like Million Dollar Baby be embraced by left-leaning culture warriors such as Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd and Roger Ebert if they alienated other, more politically powerful minority groups such as gays or people of color?
No one can say for certain, but it is a question well worth asking.
Lawrence Carter-Long, (aka. PosterBrat, yeah me...) serves on the Board of the Center for Independence of the Disabled, Brooklyn, NY, USA
So, from the perspective of opening eyes to handicap culture, I think that, despite the upset, the outcome of the film might be positive, as it forces audiences to assess their feelings about a really complicated question.