"I see dead people." It’s not just a line proffered by a young boy with an exceptional range of vision, it’s now the case for all those working stiffs in search of emotional consolation who plump themselves down in front of the boob tube during prime time.
What the latter viewers are likely to see on network television has changed considerably over the years. "I Love Lucy" comedies and "Bonanza" Westerns morphed into "Laugh In" irreverence and Norman Lear commentary wrapped in domestic dysfunction. More recently viewers were treated to "Married With Children" cynicism--sit-com sleaze with a smirk. The question that then arose for TV moguls was this: Where do we go from here?
Having sated audiences with visions of firm flesh--and having convinced them that casual copulation after puberty is infinitely less important than inhaling second-hand cigarette smoke--the folks who regularly substitute shock-value for dramatic depth were perplexed. It wasn’t just a matter of where to push the envelope. It was a question of what envelope to push. As his "Crime Scene Investigation" programs indicate, producer Jerry Bruckheimer topped the long-standing industry obsession with sex with a clutch of shows featuring vivid images of death.
"Corpses R Us" might be an alternate title for these forensic dramas that exchange a fleshless Freddy Krueger for grotesque shots of bodies lying in various states of disrepair--either at the crime scene or atop an autopsy table. Close-ups of no-longer-vital organs being probed for admissible evidence prompts visceral reactions from viewers no longer aroused by gratuitous shots of animate mammary glands. Highlighted tissue isn’t distinguished by its beauty, but rather by its vulnerability to decay and displacement. Over against this vision of decomposition, the lyrical assertion: "All we are is dust in the wind," seems positively romantic.
On top of these haunting visual displays, CSI Las Vegas patrons are often treated to philosophical disquisitions that equate human life with the remains accessible during a post-mortem exam. "That’s all we really are," observed the bearded protagonist whose eyes gleam when discussing roller-coaster thrills but (like almost all the dramatic cast) has no room in his life for unnecessary chemical baggage--i.e. a wife and kids.
Donald Bellisario’s NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service), joins Bruckheimer’s small-screen trio in exploring the commercial possibilities of pathology. Besides mortuarial moments that match anything displayed by CSI., NCIS adds to the scientific mix a brilliant, dark-haired woman who "just happens to be" a fan of BDSM. Her spiked necklace and Gothish appearance don’t make it clear whether Abby inclines more to the BD or the SM side of the erotic ledger. But her expertise and perkiness make one thing perfectly obvious--what once was considered perverse, is now just another day at the office.
It isn’t surprising that folks in the entertainment business--bereft of intellectual depth or moral insight--should grasp at any straw they can lay their hands on to get an emotional rise out of audiences. In lieu of dramatic intensity, they settle for envelope-pushing. For creativity they substitute titillation. Instead of works that give to virtue a local habitation and a name, they peddle spiritual pornography. Anything for an audience.
As snuff-films and "bug-chasing" erotic parties grimly testify, the last rung on the cultural ladder that leads to oblivion is a preoccupation with death--a desperate fascination born of the belief that only a random biological fluke distinguishes a living soul from a corpse.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Monday, April 18, 2005
A LESSON IN HOW TO DIE
The Terri Schiavo case has led some observers to conclude that people of faith have a morbid interest in prolonging life at any cost. If true, this position would be highly ironic--given the beliefs that most pious individuals hold about an afterlife. The passing of Pope John Paul II provides, by contrast, a classic example of death in the Christian tradition.
Overwhelmingly, what is crucial to believers isn’t "life at any price" but rather the much-reviled notion that life isn’t ours to do with as we please. Instead, it is seen as a gift whose proper uses are divinely circumscribed. John Locke articulated this view as follows: "Since all men are the creation of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker... they are his property, made to live for his, not one another’s, pleasure."
This grant of life doesn’t require a person to employ any means necessary to prolong it. Indeed, in one’s final days decisions are often made not to engage in heroic measures to postpone what seems inevitable. Comfort is offered, last rites may be administered, but no surgery or resuscitation efforts are contemplated. In the language of ethics this scenario is called "allowing to die"--and it is perfectly compatible with all the religious traditions with which I am familiar. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord," is the passage from the book of Job often cited on such occasions.
A more complex end-of-life scenario involves the removal of life-sustaining mechanisms from individuals already utilizing these devices. When patients themeselves request that "extraordinary" care be withdrawn, there is, by and large, no religious problem. These persons are simply choosing to suspend treatment that, within the "allowing to die" paradigm, is never begun. When, however, others take this decision upon themselves, questions about substitutive judgment and "playing God" arise--especially if doubt exists about the patient’s medical condition or the trustworthiness of a surrogate’s judgment.
Significantly, when life-support systems are discontinued, patients don’t inevitably die. Karen Ann Quinlan, for example, surprised doctors by continuing to live almost ten years after her breathing machine was removed. Such exceptions never occur, of course, when persons are denied not extraordinary care, but basic nutrition. Withholding food and water amounts to a death sentence whether one is sick or not. And when this act of deprivation is done without a patient’s consent, the result, morally speaking, becomes indistinguishable from homicide.
A final scenario occurs when someone actively brings about another’s demise by means such as lethal injection. In "mercy killing" the "angel of charity" becomes the immediate and active purveyor of death. Clint Eastwood’s character in "Million Dollar Baby" engaged in this illegal act for which, in real life, Jack Kevorkian now sits in a Michigan prison.
The religious objection to this option (as also to withholding nutrition) is that it clearly places ultimate responsibility for life in the hands of someone other than the One who created it. Both suicide and killing in the name of kindness are seen as acts of hubris by which individuals cross a bright line--a trespass that is even more flagrant when the coup de grace is unsolicited.
In a culture enamored with the notion of autonomy, religious concepts that highlight human boundaries seem outmoded. NBC’s Bryan Williams, commenting on the Pope’s passing, observed that the pontiff faced death "on his own terms." It was a singularly inept description--a self-inflating compliment employed to describe the final act of a supremely selfless life.
"My body is my own. I’ll do with it as I please," was a slogan common in the 60’s and 70’s. As those same baby boomers reach the age when bodies and intentions increasingly march to different drummers, the shortsightedness of that boast becomes more apparent. John Paul’s last years were an object lesson in bearing with grace the cross of physical infirmity.
For persons of faith, the crucial issue isn’t "quality of life" but rather one’s willingness to acknowledge, up to the point of death, that we are in God’s hands. Practically speaking, this acknowledgment means maintaining an attitude of humility vis a vis the ultimate outcome. "Thy will be done."
As it was when we entered life, so it is when we leave. The life we "control" is vanishingly small. Our spirit springs from a source beyond ourselves and flourishes in a matrix of interdependence. For those whose beliefs continue to derive from the religious wellsprings of Western culture, death confronts us with truths that modern culture yearns to deny: Life is a gift, not just a right--and the measure of that life is not mere self-assertion, but gratitude and service.
Overwhelmingly, what is crucial to believers isn’t "life at any price" but rather the much-reviled notion that life isn’t ours to do with as we please. Instead, it is seen as a gift whose proper uses are divinely circumscribed. John Locke articulated this view as follows: "Since all men are the creation of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker... they are his property, made to live for his, not one another’s, pleasure."
This grant of life doesn’t require a person to employ any means necessary to prolong it. Indeed, in one’s final days decisions are often made not to engage in heroic measures to postpone what seems inevitable. Comfort is offered, last rites may be administered, but no surgery or resuscitation efforts are contemplated. In the language of ethics this scenario is called "allowing to die"--and it is perfectly compatible with all the religious traditions with which I am familiar. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord," is the passage from the book of Job often cited on such occasions.
A more complex end-of-life scenario involves the removal of life-sustaining mechanisms from individuals already utilizing these devices. When patients themeselves request that "extraordinary" care be withdrawn, there is, by and large, no religious problem. These persons are simply choosing to suspend treatment that, within the "allowing to die" paradigm, is never begun. When, however, others take this decision upon themselves, questions about substitutive judgment and "playing God" arise--especially if doubt exists about the patient’s medical condition or the trustworthiness of a surrogate’s judgment.
Significantly, when life-support systems are discontinued, patients don’t inevitably die. Karen Ann Quinlan, for example, surprised doctors by continuing to live almost ten years after her breathing machine was removed. Such exceptions never occur, of course, when persons are denied not extraordinary care, but basic nutrition. Withholding food and water amounts to a death sentence whether one is sick or not. And when this act of deprivation is done without a patient’s consent, the result, morally speaking, becomes indistinguishable from homicide.
A final scenario occurs when someone actively brings about another’s demise by means such as lethal injection. In "mercy killing" the "angel of charity" becomes the immediate and active purveyor of death. Clint Eastwood’s character in "Million Dollar Baby" engaged in this illegal act for which, in real life, Jack Kevorkian now sits in a Michigan prison.
The religious objection to this option (as also to withholding nutrition) is that it clearly places ultimate responsibility for life in the hands of someone other than the One who created it. Both suicide and killing in the name of kindness are seen as acts of hubris by which individuals cross a bright line--a trespass that is even more flagrant when the coup de grace is unsolicited.
In a culture enamored with the notion of autonomy, religious concepts that highlight human boundaries seem outmoded. NBC’s Bryan Williams, commenting on the Pope’s passing, observed that the pontiff faced death "on his own terms." It was a singularly inept description--a self-inflating compliment employed to describe the final act of a supremely selfless life.
"My body is my own. I’ll do with it as I please," was a slogan common in the 60’s and 70’s. As those same baby boomers reach the age when bodies and intentions increasingly march to different drummers, the shortsightedness of that boast becomes more apparent. John Paul’s last years were an object lesson in bearing with grace the cross of physical infirmity.
For persons of faith, the crucial issue isn’t "quality of life" but rather one’s willingness to acknowledge, up to the point of death, that we are in God’s hands. Practically speaking, this acknowledgment means maintaining an attitude of humility vis a vis the ultimate outcome. "Thy will be done."
As it was when we entered life, so it is when we leave. The life we "control" is vanishingly small. Our spirit springs from a source beyond ourselves and flourishes in a matrix of interdependence. For those whose beliefs continue to derive from the religious wellsprings of Western culture, death confronts us with truths that modern culture yearns to deny: Life is a gift, not just a right--and the measure of that life is not mere self-assertion, but gratitude and service.
Friday, April 08, 2005
SEEKING A POPE WE CAN IGNORE
"I love you, now change." A popular theatrical work employs a version of this emotional about-face in its title. A similar duplicity characterizes the comments of many Americans about Pope John Paul II.
They express admiration for the pontiff’s courage. They applaud his role in bringing down communism in Eastern Europe and Russia. They recognize his spiritual stature. But then they complain that he didn’t keep up with the times. "Why couldn’t he have been," they aver in tones reminiscent of Rex Harrison’s in ‘My Fair Lady,’ "more like us."
It is indicative of our cultural presumption that folks whose lives are virtually devoid of danger should cavalierly dismiss ideas refined in the crucible of Nazi atrocities and Soviet repression. It doesn’t cross the minds of theological prima donnas that random notions absorbed from episodes of "C.S.I. Las Vegas" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" might not measure up to the wisdom derived from decades of devotion to priestly duties within a religious institution whose roots go back to the beginnings of Western civilization. Indeed, it frightens them to think that John Paul was great precisely because he wasn't more like us.
To have a widely respected figure stand over against the spirit of post-modernity is disconcerting for Monday-morning Monsignors. The idea that something might be seriously wrong with an undemanding "be yourself" ethic is not a thought that go-with-the-flow spiritualists are inclined to entertain. Instead, their version of tolerance demands that all major institutions conform to the lax canons of secular orthodoxy--or else. Unfortunately for them, John Paul II was hard to vilify.
Aficionados of "The da Vinci Code" would have loved to slander this Polish priest as a cynical and intriguing "Godfather"--a hypocritical "Sin City" prelate whose fangs dripped with blood. Most critics would have settled for a pope whose pronouncements infallibly coincided with New York Times editorial sentiment on issues like abortion, homosexuality, female priests, and starvation-with-dignity. Instead, what they got was a vigorous defender of traditional church doctrine whose widespread influence made him a KGB assassination target.
It is hard to imagine such a desperate plot being hatched, much less carried out, to silence a vicar exhibiting the "progressive" traits so prized by the late pope’s unauthorized consultants. To what point? Why would the Kremlin want to muzzle a pope welcomed at Hollywood cocktail parties--a Neville Chamberlain in ecclesiastical drag whose prayers call for nothing more than political accommodation and moral acquiescence? Better he should be given a very large microphone and preside at all those fashionable forums cravenly dedicated to reducing international tension.
In the biblical book of Acts, Peter says to a lame beggar, "Silver and gold have I none, but what I have, I give to you. In the name of Jesus ... rise and walk." Several centuries later one of the apostle’s institutional heirs boasted that the Church could no longer say, "Silver and gold have I none"--to which comment a faithful critic replied, "But neither can it now say, ‘Rise and walk.’"
A similar fate will befall any church that heeds the advice of persons supremely devoted to worldly approbation--an attitude that arouses neither fear in the heart of enemies nor admiration in the eyes of disciples.
They express admiration for the pontiff’s courage. They applaud his role in bringing down communism in Eastern Europe and Russia. They recognize his spiritual stature. But then they complain that he didn’t keep up with the times. "Why couldn’t he have been," they aver in tones reminiscent of Rex Harrison’s in ‘My Fair Lady,’ "more like us."
It is indicative of our cultural presumption that folks whose lives are virtually devoid of danger should cavalierly dismiss ideas refined in the crucible of Nazi atrocities and Soviet repression. It doesn’t cross the minds of theological prima donnas that random notions absorbed from episodes of "C.S.I. Las Vegas" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" might not measure up to the wisdom derived from decades of devotion to priestly duties within a religious institution whose roots go back to the beginnings of Western civilization. Indeed, it frightens them to think that John Paul was great precisely because he wasn't more like us.
To have a widely respected figure stand over against the spirit of post-modernity is disconcerting for Monday-morning Monsignors. The idea that something might be seriously wrong with an undemanding "be yourself" ethic is not a thought that go-with-the-flow spiritualists are inclined to entertain. Instead, their version of tolerance demands that all major institutions conform to the lax canons of secular orthodoxy--or else. Unfortunately for them, John Paul II was hard to vilify.
Aficionados of "The da Vinci Code" would have loved to slander this Polish priest as a cynical and intriguing "Godfather"--a hypocritical "Sin City" prelate whose fangs dripped with blood. Most critics would have settled for a pope whose pronouncements infallibly coincided with New York Times editorial sentiment on issues like abortion, homosexuality, female priests, and starvation-with-dignity. Instead, what they got was a vigorous defender of traditional church doctrine whose widespread influence made him a KGB assassination target.
It is hard to imagine such a desperate plot being hatched, much less carried out, to silence a vicar exhibiting the "progressive" traits so prized by the late pope’s unauthorized consultants. To what point? Why would the Kremlin want to muzzle a pope welcomed at Hollywood cocktail parties--a Neville Chamberlain in ecclesiastical drag whose prayers call for nothing more than political accommodation and moral acquiescence? Better he should be given a very large microphone and preside at all those fashionable forums cravenly dedicated to reducing international tension.
In the biblical book of Acts, Peter says to a lame beggar, "Silver and gold have I none, but what I have, I give to you. In the name of Jesus ... rise and walk." Several centuries later one of the apostle’s institutional heirs boasted that the Church could no longer say, "Silver and gold have I none"--to which comment a faithful critic replied, "But neither can it now say, ‘Rise and walk.’"
A similar fate will befall any church that heeds the advice of persons supremely devoted to worldly approbation--an attitude that arouses neither fear in the heart of enemies nor admiration in the eyes of disciples.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
ROBERT BYRD’S RHETORICAL EXCESS
JUDGES, NOT SENATE RULES, THREATEN DEMOCRACY
There is no surer sign of intellectual bankruptcy (or senility) than the habit of comparing political opponents to Hitler. This type of metaphorical excess is par for the course on Air America and at MoveOn.Org. It is unusual for a Congressman.
Yet recently the very senior senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, compared a possible change in Senate filibuster rules for judicial appointees to the Enabling Act of 1933--the German law that concentrated absolute power in the hands of Adolf Hitler. Hitler, Byrd solemnly observed, always proceeded under "the cloak of legality." In this way the fiddling geriatric linked President Bush with the mustached Fuhrer and implied that any change in Senate rules (which Byrd himself modified as majority leader) would be tantamount to the suspension of representative government.
On the one hand we have complete concentration of authority in the hands of a dictator whose maniacal vision eventually led to a World War, at least forty million dead, and the near extermination of European Jewry. On the other we have a proposed revision of senatorial protocol. Hello, Bob! Is anyone home up there?
Let us be clear on the real issue that Byrd is addressing. Republican leaders, frustrated by unprecedented Democrat efforts to block votes on judicial nominees, now desire to revise the Senate’s rules in order to prevent filibusters on these appointees. We are not talking about changing the Constitution. We are not talking about subverting the right of Massachusetts residents to practice their unique brand of political masochism. We are talking about the "Rules of the Senate"-- which topic is covered by all of nine words in Article I, Section 5, of the Constitution: "Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings..." Had the Founding Fathers believed that democracy itself rested on this procedural point, they might have devoted at least a complete sentence to it.
What is a darn sight clearer than the superannuated senator’s hyperbolic historical analogy, is that the Founders of our country would be horrified by the way judges, in recent decades, have exchanged their limited interpretive function for the gratifying role of Philosopher-King. Thomas Jefferson in particular would be leading a new revolution to place the weight of self-government back in the hands of that branch closest to the people--the legislature.
With a finely modulated style that further miniaturizes the rantings of Senator Byrd, our third President observed: "The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary...working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped."
Can anyone honestly doubt that Jefferson would conclude, in light of recent rulings on marriage, the pledge of allegiance, and capital punishment, that the judicial usurpation against which he warned is virtually complete? Would not Jefferson urge his countrymen to rise up and to reclaim sovereignty from these rapacious robed eminences? Would he not denounce these despots who delegate to the people the task of arranging deck-chairs on the ship of state while they sabotage the hull of self-government with that infinitely flexible and destructive tool: a "living Constitution"?
Were Byrd as insightful as he is loquacious and annoying, he would see that the true danger to republican government lies not in a revision of Senate cloture rules but in the continuing concentration of power in the hands of judicial elites. Indeed, the proposed change in Senate rules that Byrd portrays as Hitlerian is only a first, tentative step toward reigning in the power now capriciously wielded by Women and Men in Black. It is a step that Jefferson, if not Hitler, would heartily endorse.
There is no surer sign of intellectual bankruptcy (or senility) than the habit of comparing political opponents to Hitler. This type of metaphorical excess is par for the course on Air America and at MoveOn.Org. It is unusual for a Congressman.
Yet recently the very senior senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, compared a possible change in Senate filibuster rules for judicial appointees to the Enabling Act of 1933--the German law that concentrated absolute power in the hands of Adolf Hitler. Hitler, Byrd solemnly observed, always proceeded under "the cloak of legality." In this way the fiddling geriatric linked President Bush with the mustached Fuhrer and implied that any change in Senate rules (which Byrd himself modified as majority leader) would be tantamount to the suspension of representative government.
On the one hand we have complete concentration of authority in the hands of a dictator whose maniacal vision eventually led to a World War, at least forty million dead, and the near extermination of European Jewry. On the other we have a proposed revision of senatorial protocol. Hello, Bob! Is anyone home up there?
Let us be clear on the real issue that Byrd is addressing. Republican leaders, frustrated by unprecedented Democrat efforts to block votes on judicial nominees, now desire to revise the Senate’s rules in order to prevent filibusters on these appointees. We are not talking about changing the Constitution. We are not talking about subverting the right of Massachusetts residents to practice their unique brand of political masochism. We are talking about the "Rules of the Senate"-- which topic is covered by all of nine words in Article I, Section 5, of the Constitution: "Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings..." Had the Founding Fathers believed that democracy itself rested on this procedural point, they might have devoted at least a complete sentence to it.
What is a darn sight clearer than the superannuated senator’s hyperbolic historical analogy, is that the Founders of our country would be horrified by the way judges, in recent decades, have exchanged their limited interpretive function for the gratifying role of Philosopher-King. Thomas Jefferson in particular would be leading a new revolution to place the weight of self-government back in the hands of that branch closest to the people--the legislature.
With a finely modulated style that further miniaturizes the rantings of Senator Byrd, our third President observed: "The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary...working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped."
Can anyone honestly doubt that Jefferson would conclude, in light of recent rulings on marriage, the pledge of allegiance, and capital punishment, that the judicial usurpation against which he warned is virtually complete? Would not Jefferson urge his countrymen to rise up and to reclaim sovereignty from these rapacious robed eminences? Would he not denounce these despots who delegate to the people the task of arranging deck-chairs on the ship of state while they sabotage the hull of self-government with that infinitely flexible and destructive tool: a "living Constitution"?
Were Byrd as insightful as he is loquacious and annoying, he would see that the true danger to republican government lies not in a revision of Senate cloture rules but in the continuing concentration of power in the hands of judicial elites. Indeed, the proposed change in Senate rules that Byrd portrays as Hitlerian is only a first, tentative step toward reigning in the power now capriciously wielded by Women and Men in Black. It is a step that Jefferson, if not Hitler, would heartily endorse.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
CLINT'S MILLION DOLLAR MANIPULATION
Imagine a boxing movie whose plot belatedly shows the need for animal experiments because its badly injured protagonist is denied a crucial drug derived only from this banned practice. Can you imagine flick gurus like Roger Ebert failing to mention the film’s political agenda? More to the point, would you assume that the sacred duty not to reveal climactic plot twists would prevent the sedentary Chicagoan from blasting the production for totally misrepresenting the facts? I doubt it.
Yet such is the case with Clint Eastwood’s poignant “Million Dollar Baby.” The professional obligation not to spoil the public’s viewing experience apparently trumps everything else, even blatant falsification, when it comes to discussing a typically Hollywood take on assisted suicide.
I say “typically Hollywood” because caricatures replace complex portraits whenever the switch is needed to promote a help-me-pull-the-plug political agenda. Thus, realistic relatives of the fallen fighter are scratched for a gaggle of trailer park hicks who’d tempt even healthy folks to pull the trigger--one direction or the other. Similarly, incompetent care, unlikely medical scenarios, and even an unsympathetic priest are trotted out to make clear to aficionados of “Cider House Rules” that a single grim option is available to Maggie's (Hilary Swank) doting manager.
The film’s most egregious manipulation puts Eastwood in the same class as that past master of mendacity, Oliver Stone. “Million Dollar Baby” would have us believe that a lucid quadriplegic totally dependent on a respirator cannot legally refuse medical treatment. This state of affairs is as palpably false as my fantasy that animal experimentation has been banned.
Diane Coleman, President of Not Dead Yet, should be aware of the law in such cases. After all, she suffers from a debilitating spinal disease and has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of eleven. At night she even uses a respirator. Coleman noted that, contrary to script, Swank’s character could have refused treatment at any time. After all, she was conscious, verbal, and clearly competent.
For those unwilling to believe the word of an advocate--or loath to think that a filmmaker would grossly mislead his audience--a glance at California law might help. Specifically, I direct skeptics to a 2001 ruling by the state Supreme Court (Conservatorship of Wendland) that reiterated (rather than established) the right of lucid patients to refuse heroic medical treatment.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law. The reason for this adage is that laws are necessarily general--made to cover a variety of circumstances, not tailored to fit worst-case scenarios. The same could be said of “easy” cases--those in which factors that usually complicate things all point in the same direction. “Million Dollar Baby” not only goes out of its way to make things as easy as possible, it lies to do so.
It’s a shame that critics, reflecting the lawless ethos of the industry they cover, don’t see that telling the truth about matters of life and death is vastly more important than knee-jerk loyalty to a fraternal code of silence. I strongly suspect that these same critics would be eager to proclaim the truth--any time, any place--if the themes being misrepresented were ones to which they gave an enthusiastic thumbs up, politically.
Yet such is the case with Clint Eastwood’s poignant “Million Dollar Baby.” The professional obligation not to spoil the public’s viewing experience apparently trumps everything else, even blatant falsification, when it comes to discussing a typically Hollywood take on assisted suicide.
I say “typically Hollywood” because caricatures replace complex portraits whenever the switch is needed to promote a help-me-pull-the-plug political agenda. Thus, realistic relatives of the fallen fighter are scratched for a gaggle of trailer park hicks who’d tempt even healthy folks to pull the trigger--one direction or the other. Similarly, incompetent care, unlikely medical scenarios, and even an unsympathetic priest are trotted out to make clear to aficionados of “Cider House Rules” that a single grim option is available to Maggie's (Hilary Swank) doting manager.
The film’s most egregious manipulation puts Eastwood in the same class as that past master of mendacity, Oliver Stone. “Million Dollar Baby” would have us believe that a lucid quadriplegic totally dependent on a respirator cannot legally refuse medical treatment. This state of affairs is as palpably false as my fantasy that animal experimentation has been banned.
Diane Coleman, President of Not Dead Yet, should be aware of the law in such cases. After all, she suffers from a debilitating spinal disease and has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of eleven. At night she even uses a respirator. Coleman noted that, contrary to script, Swank’s character could have refused treatment at any time. After all, she was conscious, verbal, and clearly competent.
For those unwilling to believe the word of an advocate--or loath to think that a filmmaker would grossly mislead his audience--a glance at California law might help. Specifically, I direct skeptics to a 2001 ruling by the state Supreme Court (Conservatorship of Wendland) that reiterated (rather than established) the right of lucid patients to refuse heroic medical treatment.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law. The reason for this adage is that laws are necessarily general--made to cover a variety of circumstances, not tailored to fit worst-case scenarios. The same could be said of “easy” cases--those in which factors that usually complicate things all point in the same direction. “Million Dollar Baby” not only goes out of its way to make things as easy as possible, it lies to do so.
It’s a shame that critics, reflecting the lawless ethos of the industry they cover, don’t see that telling the truth about matters of life and death is vastly more important than knee-jerk loyalty to a fraternal code of silence. I strongly suspect that these same critics would be eager to proclaim the truth--any time, any place--if the themes being misrepresented were ones to which they gave an enthusiastic thumbs up, politically.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
TSUNAMIS: NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL
"We must live differently in the world, according to these different assumptions: (1) that we could always remain in it; (2) that it is certain that we shall not remain here long, and uncertain if we shall remain here one hour. This last assumption is our condition." Recent events in Asia put an exclamation point on Blaise Pascal’s concluding sentence.
Few contrasts are more jarring than the juxtaposition of scenes from Indonesia and Sumatra with typical television fare in America. The absurdity of reportorial excitations over toppled trees or flooded streets is obvious when placed alongside the massive destruction caused by walls of ocean water that traveled hundreds of miles to unleash their fury. Next to this awesome display, the breathless promos hyping "The Amazing Race" or "Desperate Housewives" are embarrassing.
Indeed, most of our everyday concerns are ruthlessly exposed as trivial diversions when viewed through the lens of an event that ripped the life from thousands of human beings and is draining the vital force out of thousands of survivors.
Tragedies, whether manmade or natural, have the bitterly redeeming virtue of focusing our attention on what is important--if we choose to pay attention. But for most of us, so much of our time is consumed with petty activities that we are tempted to reimmerse ourselves, as soon as possible, into concerns that could only be justified if our lives lasted forever.
One way to deflect attention from what stands grimly before us is to smother the event in political or ecological quibbles: Did the Bush Administration miss an opportunity to show its concern for victims of the tragedy? Has America’s response to the disaster been stingy? Has Western consumption of shrimp and the lure of luxury vacation spots led to the destruction of lagoons that might have buffered populated areas from deadly waves?
Such questions are sophisticated ways to avoid the obvious. They are reminiscent of Ivan Ilych’s focus on the terms a medical specialist used to describe his worsening condition--"vermiform appendix" or "floating kidney." What Tolstoy’s self-absorbed character finally came to realize, amid constant pain, was that Death was starring him in the face.
By all means, let us aid those who suffer and set up warning devices and study ecological patterns that might mitigate future disasters. But let us not lie to ourselves about the larger truth revealed by this event. Our lives are short, fragile, and uncertain. No government can guarantee even seventy healthy years. We ought, therefore, to live in a way that acknowledges these facts--not fritter away our hours mired in sleaze, partisanship, and mindless consumption.
To do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God are the bare essentials set forth in the Old Testament book of Micah. It is a trinity whose actualization rests in large part on the realization that Asia’s mourning is also our own.
Of Gerasim, the servant who served Ivan so cheerfully in his last days, his master said, "How easily and well you do it all." To these comments the strong peasant replied, "We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?" The tawdry popular cultures of America and Europe cannot survive an insight of that magnitude.
Few contrasts are more jarring than the juxtaposition of scenes from Indonesia and Sumatra with typical television fare in America. The absurdity of reportorial excitations over toppled trees or flooded streets is obvious when placed alongside the massive destruction caused by walls of ocean water that traveled hundreds of miles to unleash their fury. Next to this awesome display, the breathless promos hyping "The Amazing Race" or "Desperate Housewives" are embarrassing.
Indeed, most of our everyday concerns are ruthlessly exposed as trivial diversions when viewed through the lens of an event that ripped the life from thousands of human beings and is draining the vital force out of thousands of survivors.
Tragedies, whether manmade or natural, have the bitterly redeeming virtue of focusing our attention on what is important--if we choose to pay attention. But for most of us, so much of our time is consumed with petty activities that we are tempted to reimmerse ourselves, as soon as possible, into concerns that could only be justified if our lives lasted forever.
One way to deflect attention from what stands grimly before us is to smother the event in political or ecological quibbles: Did the Bush Administration miss an opportunity to show its concern for victims of the tragedy? Has America’s response to the disaster been stingy? Has Western consumption of shrimp and the lure of luxury vacation spots led to the destruction of lagoons that might have buffered populated areas from deadly waves?
Such questions are sophisticated ways to avoid the obvious. They are reminiscent of Ivan Ilych’s focus on the terms a medical specialist used to describe his worsening condition--"vermiform appendix" or "floating kidney." What Tolstoy’s self-absorbed character finally came to realize, amid constant pain, was that Death was starring him in the face.
By all means, let us aid those who suffer and set up warning devices and study ecological patterns that might mitigate future disasters. But let us not lie to ourselves about the larger truth revealed by this event. Our lives are short, fragile, and uncertain. No government can guarantee even seventy healthy years. We ought, therefore, to live in a way that acknowledges these facts--not fritter away our hours mired in sleaze, partisanship, and mindless consumption.
To do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God are the bare essentials set forth in the Old Testament book of Micah. It is a trinity whose actualization rests in large part on the realization that Asia’s mourning is also our own.
Of Gerasim, the servant who served Ivan so cheerfully in his last days, his master said, "How easily and well you do it all." To these comments the strong peasant replied, "We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?" The tawdry popular cultures of America and Europe cannot survive an insight of that magnitude.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
BOSTON LEGAL: REPRESENTING HOLLYWOOD MORALITY
Boston Legal is a prime example of the World According to Hollywood--even more reflective of the industry’s mindset than the show’s sleazy domestic partner, Desperate Housewives. At least the latter program acknowledges the existence of children.
By contrast, the Shatner-Spader-Bergman production proceeds with a cast devoid of marital devotion. As was true on Captain Kirk’s starship, sons, daughters, wives and husbands are virtually absent from the scene. Only alien civilizations and criminal defendants, it seems, exhibit the bonding patterns and rituals that once characterized planet Earth.
In lieu of characters with familial attachments, we are given promiscuous professionals--rutting barristers whose personal standards of deportment are as low as their political ideals are high. What matters in this forensic free-for-all is not what happens, as Barbara Bush noted, "in your house," but what happens in the courthouse. James Spader is the show’s number one amoralist--pursuing every willing skirt in the workplace, living in a hotel suite, exhibiting contempt for traditional standards of civility, yet heroically advancing any political cause that can be stuffed into his hyperactive legal briefs.
One wonders what familial carts all these legal superstars fell off of. Were they raised by wolves--or on alien planets and transported, Star Trek style, to the home of the bean and the cod? Did they reach puberty under the care of Father Flanagan’s abusive successor and then bolt to the big city--a scenario that would explain their visceral aversion to Catholicism?
What is clear on Boston Legal is that neither promiscuity nor civility have anything to do with morality--nor, for that matter, do intact families or children raised by dedicated parents. Instead, what matters is one’s position on political issues--the environment, the FDA, homosexual relationships, civil rights, big business, and so on. This way of ordering things has the benefit of excluding from evidence all those habits that would dispose the public to look unfavorably on the Hollywood set--to render negative judgments on folks whose not-so-private lives regularly display all the moral dignity of drug traffickers.
What counts in this Brave New World is not how parents raise their children but whether one supports "reproductive (i.e. non-reproductive) rights." Marriage isn’t considered that important--unless it concerns the legal standing of partners biologically incapable of producing a child. Nor is civility a trait that requires vigorous defense, since all that really matters is what transpires under judicial auspices.
The philosophers Andrew Oldenquist and Daniel Callahan have noted that law inevitably fills the breach created by a crumbling social order. Do’s and don’ts increasingly become functions of legal decree and less matters of cultural stigma. A corollary to this shift in ethical emphasis is the tendency to view the Supreme Court as a deus ex machina--an institution whose statutory authority keeps things from falling apart while putting its stamp of approval on acts that, absent such endorsement, would generate debilitating pangs of conscience. In such a society it’s easier to derive a sense of rectitude from the presumed virtuosity of legal arguments than from personal character or time devoted to raising one’s offspring.
By contrast, the Shatner-Spader-Bergman production proceeds with a cast devoid of marital devotion. As was true on Captain Kirk’s starship, sons, daughters, wives and husbands are virtually absent from the scene. Only alien civilizations and criminal defendants, it seems, exhibit the bonding patterns and rituals that once characterized planet Earth.
In lieu of characters with familial attachments, we are given promiscuous professionals--rutting barristers whose personal standards of deportment are as low as their political ideals are high. What matters in this forensic free-for-all is not what happens, as Barbara Bush noted, "in your house," but what happens in the courthouse. James Spader is the show’s number one amoralist--pursuing every willing skirt in the workplace, living in a hotel suite, exhibiting contempt for traditional standards of civility, yet heroically advancing any political cause that can be stuffed into his hyperactive legal briefs.
One wonders what familial carts all these legal superstars fell off of. Were they raised by wolves--or on alien planets and transported, Star Trek style, to the home of the bean and the cod? Did they reach puberty under the care of Father Flanagan’s abusive successor and then bolt to the big city--a scenario that would explain their visceral aversion to Catholicism?
What is clear on Boston Legal is that neither promiscuity nor civility have anything to do with morality--nor, for that matter, do intact families or children raised by dedicated parents. Instead, what matters is one’s position on political issues--the environment, the FDA, homosexual relationships, civil rights, big business, and so on. This way of ordering things has the benefit of excluding from evidence all those habits that would dispose the public to look unfavorably on the Hollywood set--to render negative judgments on folks whose not-so-private lives regularly display all the moral dignity of drug traffickers.
What counts in this Brave New World is not how parents raise their children but whether one supports "reproductive (i.e. non-reproductive) rights." Marriage isn’t considered that important--unless it concerns the legal standing of partners biologically incapable of producing a child. Nor is civility a trait that requires vigorous defense, since all that really matters is what transpires under judicial auspices.
The philosophers Andrew Oldenquist and Daniel Callahan have noted that law inevitably fills the breach created by a crumbling social order. Do’s and don’ts increasingly become functions of legal decree and less matters of cultural stigma. A corollary to this shift in ethical emphasis is the tendency to view the Supreme Court as a deus ex machina--an institution whose statutory authority keeps things from falling apart while putting its stamp of approval on acts that, absent such endorsement, would generate debilitating pangs of conscience. In such a society it’s easier to derive a sense of rectitude from the presumed virtuosity of legal arguments than from personal character or time devoted to raising one’s offspring.
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