Gallagher Gets it Completely, Absolutely Wrong

(Note: Don't read this is if you haven't seen "Million Dollar Baby" and plan to.)

How is possible to completely misunderstand the point of a movie? Try reading Maggie Gallagher's column on "Million Dollar Baby" and you'll have an idea. Clearly she was so outraged by the ending of the movie that she immediately rushed home to her computer to write about it without pausing for, say, reflection, consideration or understanding. How does she feel about the movie? Let's see what she has to say about it:

"Million Dollar Baby" portrays murder as the ultimate act of love, teaching us the crippled human being killed wants death, deserves death, is better off dead. How else to explain the look of almost sexual ecstasy on lovely Hillary Swank's face when Clint Eastwood finally agrees to kill her?

"Million Dollar Baby" is a brilliant piece of propaganda that works because it is based on something deeply true: Human beings are afraid of physical debilitation; we are naturally repulsed by suffering we cannot cure. Science may tell us that after an adjustment period, quadriplegics are about as happy after their accident as they were before. No matter. The idea of living life trapped like that horrifies. Out of our horror, we dehumanize those who suffer. And then we celebrate murder as an act of love.

All around us are people who struggle with illness, debilitation, physical suffering. How (I wonder) do they hear the message of revulsion? Today, creative, intelligent, decent Americans are paid good money by the rest of us decent, hard-working Americans to produce movies and columns that say, crippled people are better off dead; it is OK to wish them dead and even (sometimes) to kill them.

She equates the movie to "propaganda", akin to the kind the Nazis used to justify the holocaust.

Gallagher misses the entire point of the movie, which is a damn shame because Eastwood shows a lot more compassion to the paralyzed character then Gallagher does. First off, she makes a mistake common to those who are quick to get into a huff about anything they see/hear/read in books, movies or TV; that the artist's story is necessarily metaphorical, and an effort to tell a larger story using characters as props. Eastwood may have been attempting to make a larger point about the right people should have to die...or, maybe he was just telling a painfully tragic story with characters we come to care very much for. Perhaps he intended us to wonder what we would do in similar circumstances. It is simply not possible to say that Eastwood's purpose in the movie is to make a larger point about a person's right to die; perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. The "message" of the movie is nowhere clear enough to say one way or the other. On the other hand, Gallagher is more then willing to exploit the movie to make her point. Whether or not Eastwood is even talking about whether invalids should be put to death(he's not)she's going to say that he is, and respond indignantly.

More importantly however...where is Gallagher's compassion? How can she not sympathize with the character in the film who chooses that she would rather die then live paralyzed? How does she miss the entire point of the film that Swank's character, quite reasonably to us in the audience who don't have a political point to make, would rather die then live out the rest of her life unable to move from the neck down, unable even to breathe on her own, in the light of her former life? Gallagher seems to miss the fact that it is this character who chooses to die, not Eastwood's character who decides to kill her. How can Gallagher, sitting in the theater, not have some empathy with this character's choice?

The fact is Gallagher has a larger point to make. In her column she says she's opposed to the invalid being killed, and speaks of society's "revulsion" of the physically invalid, our willingness to "see them dead." What revulsion? What willingness to see them dead? Does she know anyone in American who honestly believes that those who are paralyzed, handicapped, sick or invalid are of no use to society and deserve to die? Of course not. What Gallagher is really opposed to is the right of those who have decided they do not wish to live this way to end their own lives with dignity, instead of hooked to machines that force them to live. Gallagher would rather that we as a society force those who would rather die to live, because it suits our moral purposes about the "value" of life. Who cares if they themselves personally wish to die? What right do they have over their fates, their lives? None, Gallagher says. And to muddle the issue even further, so as to prevent us from seeing her true motive, she implies that allowing those in such circumstances to die is an insult to the dignity of those who wish to live. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is dignity in the choice to die rather then live in such a manner, and there is dignity in the choice to live and find meaning in such a life. The fact of the matter is that we as a society should not prevent either choice; we should not force those who wish to die to live, and those who wish to live to die. Their fate should be their own.

So don't be fooled. Gallagher's not interested in the fate of individuals facing this choice. She'd keep them strapped in the bed and hooked to machines so suit her intolerant, "moral" purpose.