Murderball

I have seen a couple online news headlines about the new flick "Murderball" and haven't paid any attention to it, figuring it was just another silly horror movie remake. Turns out, the film is a documentary about a quadriplegic rugby team that competes in the Para-Olympics. Several of the stars of the film were being interviewed on Larry King Live this evening and it was very inspiring. I was especially encouraged when King questioned them all about Stem Cell Research. None of them seemed too interested, and in fact, several of them said they wouldn't even be in line should a cure even be discovered. King seemed incredulous, but they insisted they were sincere, saying that there lives have been more accomplished and fulfilling since being in a wheel chair than they were when able bodied. Here are a few links of interest:

Movie Reviews

View the Trailer

Rolling Stone Magazine Movie Review

To Request the Film in a Theatre Near You

Larry King Live Appearance

The Real Million Dollar Baby

JT beat me to the punch once again. Here is an excellent article by Chuck Coleson about Katie Dallam, the woman that the movie Million Dollar Baby was more than likely based on.

Rick Lyman of the New York Times has also written an article about Katie.

The Independent also has a very long, but very thorough biographical account of Katie's accident and post-injury lifestyle.

Boxing the Straw Man

I have to get in at least one more Million Dollar Baby post (seeing as I doubt anyone will be talking about this film ever again in another week or so). It dawned on me last night that the storyline really went out of its way to make the Swank character’s life unbelievably pitiful -- poor, trailer trash, daddy’s dead and he’s the only one who ever loved me, scrimping dimes from a dive café’s tips to make ends meet. Wow – talk about every cliché in the book! And even after the accident – as if being paralyzed isn’t enough – they had to make a point to also amputate her leg, and have a desperate, over-the-top scene with the family all huddled around Swank’s bed, shoving a pen in her mouth, trying to greedily have her sign all her money over to them. Wow – it all really pulls at the heartstrings, doesn’t it?

But, is it realistic? Is the deck stacked that ridiculously against people in real life? Or was Swank’s character designed to draw on the sympathies of the audience by subtly lulling them into the “there’s nothing left for her to live for” myth?

We must watch movies with discernment. I know no one likes the party pooper who is always saying, “That would never happen in real life!” But it is a question that needs to be asked, especially in films like this where ethics that go against our cultural norms are being applauded.

We must watch movies with all of our “eyes” open (not just the ones in our head). Be consciously aware of the fact that the finale of a movie is grounded in all of the previous actions and decisions of its characters. So, when all of the scenarios, experiences, and outcomes of these decisions and actions are completely inconsistent to how the situations would really play out in real life – we have a problem. Undiscerning movie-goers leave the theatre questioning their current worldview, not even realizing that the outcome of the film was based on a dozen or more previous outcomes that never would have played out that way in a real-life situation.

Eastwood commits the “Straw Man” crime in this movie. A Straw Man argument is when a person ignores a person’s true position and substitutes it with a distorted or exaggerated viewpoint. Million Dollar Baby distorts and exaggerates the position that most quadriplegics have about the value of their lives. At the end of the movie, the “poor, miserable” quad who is put to death may appease a weeping audience, but it does not appease the real quads who, unlike Eastwood, have lived and experienced that life and know for a fact that despite all of the inconveniences and bad days, life is worth living. Life is a greater gift than two legs or boxing career. This is why rock climbers who get pinned under rocks in the middle of nowhere would rather painfully saw their own limbs off with a dull Swiss Army knife than be left there to die. We value our lives above everything and that is a fact that needs to be kept at the forefront of our minds before we walk into a movie theatre.

Go Ahead...Make My Day

As you all may well know by now, Million Dollar Baby picked up several Oscars last night. Eastwood won best director and the film won Best Picture. (Now we all know how Michael Moore felt on Election Day!) I am tempted to contemplate the philosophical impications of a society who applauds this movie as "art" - on the other hand, I can't get too worked up about it because my guess is, when it comes to the Oscars -- no one really cares. Half the viewers tuned in to see J-Lo's dress or to see if Chris Rock would drop the F-bomb. Ultimately, Even Hollywood is too wrapped up with who Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston showed up with to care two hoots about what flick won Best Picture. This too shall pass...

Round Two

Click here for Part Two of the O'Reilly/Eastwood video interview about the film Million Dollar Baby.

For a transcript of the entire interview, click here.

Round One

Click here to view Part One of a short interview between Bill O'Reilly and Clint Eastwood regarding the movie Million Dollar Baby. Surprisingly, O'Reilly comes off far more stomach-churning that Eastwood. I will post Part Two as soon as it becomes available.

The Passion of the Clint

Am I being overly philosophical to point out the hypocrisy between Hollywood bellyaching over the "scandal" of Mel Gibson making a film about Jesus Christ, only to see them turn around a year later and applaud Clint Eastwood for his soapbox epic, Million Dollar Baby?

The story of a perfect Man who sacrifices his own life so that he can offer redemption to a world of sinners (boo, hiss, snore) somehow lacks emotional value compared to the story of a no-name boxer who sacrifices her own life so that she can....well....umm...well, she died anyway.

I guess a chick boxer is just way more amazing of a concept than a virgin giving birth to the Son of God.

Once again, Hollywood fails to recognize the true Million Dollar Baby.

Hollywood, but Hollyshouldnt

A recent Fox News poll finds that Hollywood is "out of touch" with most American's values. (Did they really need to conduct a poll for that)?

This is good news for those of us perturbed with airbrushed celebrities and big-name directors using their star power to trick the masses into watching their two-hour-long political soapbox speeches at $8.50 a crack.

The poll concludes that "few people believe moviemakers share their values, and there is widespread agreement that Hollywood is out of touch with Americans."

From young people to seniors, the story is the same — Hollywood is out of touch. Overall, more than 7 in 10 Americans think Tinseltown is out of sync with "average Americans." Self-identified conservatives (81 percent) are more likely than others to think Hollywood is out of touch, but majorities of moderates (74 percent) and liberals (58 percent) also agree.

Opinion Dynamics Corporation conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News on February 8-9.

Similarly, it is a small minority of Americans who believe Hollywood moviemakers share their values. Thirteen percent of the public thinks moviemakers share their values, while a sizeable majority — 70 percent — disagrees.

At 19 percent, Democrats are more than three times as likely as Republicans (6 percent) and twice as likely as independents (9 percent) to say filmmakers share their values.

Who are Hollywood moviemakers? A 61 percent majority of Americans think most people in Hollywood are liberals, 8 percent think they are conservatives and 14 percent say "both."

And as for the Oscars, while winning the gold statue can improve ticket sales, fewer than one in five Americans (17 percent) say movie awards influence which films they see.

Murder is Art?

My buddy JT had this posted on his blog on February 17:

Michael Medved--a self-described "skeptic regarding one of the most absurdly over-praised movies in recent Hollywood history" [Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby"]--explains why he's been so critical of this movie with its sympathetic portrayal of assisted suicide and with its implicit message that premediated murder can be the ultimate gift of love, especially if the alternative means life in a wheelchair or a hospital bed.

My post title was inspired by this paragraph in Medved's article:

"More recently, some of the film's most conspicuous promoters have taken another tack entirely, insisting that the movie never tilts one way or another on the death-with-dignity debate, even when it portrays premeditated murder as the ultimate gift of love. "Michael Moore and Mel Gibson aside," wrote Ms. Dowd, "the purpose of art is not always to send messages. More often, it's just to tell a story, move people and provoke ideas. Mr. Eastwood's critics don't even understand what art is."

List o' Links

Chuck Coleson's article (see previous post) ended with a fantastic list of links to topics related to his article. For those of you who may not have linked to his full article, here is that list of links.

Frederica Mathewes-Green, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Million Dollar Baby goes too far and not far enough ,” National Review Online, 2 February 2005 .

Sanda Allyson, “Million Dollar Baby Cost Too High,” Joni and Friends.

“The backlash over ‘Million Dollar Baby’ ,” CNN, 7 February 2005 .

Jeffrey Overstreet, “ Review of Million Dollar Baby,” Christianity Today, 7 January 2005 .

Learn more about the show House.

S. T. Karnick, “ Must-Believe TV: Christianity Gets a Fair Shake ,” National Review Online, 21 December 2004 .

Tom Shales, “ ‘House’: Watching Is the Best Medicine ,” WashingtonPost, 16 November 2004 , C01.

Roberto Rivera, “ Lean on Me: Dignity and Dependency ,” BreakPoint Online, 28 January 2004 .

Rita L. Marker and Wesley J. Smith, “Words, Words, Words: Terms used in the euthanasia debate—their use and abuse ,” International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.

Arthur J. Dyck, Life’s Worth: The Case against Assisted Suicide (Eerdmans, 2002).

Richard John Neuhaus, As I Lay Dying: Meditations on Returning (Basic Books, 2002).

Million Dollar Baby vs. House

***SPOILER ALERT***

Thanks to JT for forwarding this article to me. Chuck Coleson (BreakPoint, Prison Fellowship) got the same message out of the Million Dollar Baby film as I did...which is great comfort to me as I respect Coleson's opinions quite a bit. He also reviews a cable doctor show called "House" and gives it a thumbs-up.

For most of its two-and-a-quarter hours, Million Dollar Baby is a story about love and determination. Frankie and Maggie need each other because they both have something to prove, to themselves and to others. Under Frankie’s tutelage, Maggie rises through the ranks of women’s boxing.

Then tragedy strikes: An illegal blow causes Maggie to strike her head against the stool. She’s left as a quadriplegic. Frankie works just as hard at trying to help Maggie adjust to her new life out of the ring as he did helping her in the ring. But that’s not what she wants. She wants Frankie to help her end her life—which he does.

Why? As Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote, it’s not because she’s in pain or even because she’s depressed. Rather, it’s because “she can’t bear to be a has-been.” In the moral universe of the film, “anyone who comes to the end of their 15 minutes of fame is justified in seeking suicide.” The idea that, as with my friend, Joni Eareckson Tada, life goes on even after paralysis—and is even richer, perhaps—is alien to this universe.

Celebrities Without Makeup

This is proof that we don't need plastic surgery, we just need great lighting, an airbrush, and a professional makeup artist.

Celebrities without makeup:

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/celeb.html

http://www.hereinreality.com/makeup.htm

http://members.rogers.com/rebeccax/bp/beautifulpeople2.html

True Thighs

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis recently posed for a photograph with no make up, no special lighting, no airbrush. What a relief to us ordinary folks...Hollywood actresses are just ordinary folk too! The article below first appeared in USA Today (written by Ann Oldenbburg).

Jamie Lee Curtis is posing for More magazine in a sports bra and tight spandex briefs that reveal what she looks like when she's not glammed up as a movie star. For one photo, Curtis spent three hours prepping with a team of 13 people making sure she looked just right.

Curtis then asked photographer Andrew Eccles to shoot with her no makeup, no manicure, no professionally done hair, no diamond jewelry or high fashion outfit, in unforgiving light with a full-body straight-on shot.

She says she doesn't have a perfect body.

"I don't have great thighs," she tells More. "I have very big breasts and a soft, fatty little tummy. And I've got back fat. People assume I'm walking around in little spaghetti-strap dresses. It's the insidious Glam Jamie Jamie, the Perfect Jamie, the great figure, blah, blah, blah. And I don't want the unsuspecting 40-year-old women of the world to think that I've got it going on. It's such a fraud. And I'm the one perpetuating it."

Curtis is promoting her fifth children's book, I'm Gonna Like Me: Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem. It hits bookstores this month, and its message is what prompted Curtis to pose in her unflattering undies.

"In the recovery program I'm in for addiction problems, they talk about peeling an onion, exposing more layers," she says. The myth of the perfect Jamie is something she "actively participated in and, by the way, profited from. Now, I'm sitting here on my high hill, debunking the very foundation that I sit on. Don't think I'm not afraid of it. I'm not financially independent enough that I don't rely on outside income still."

She admits she has gone under the knife to improve her looks. "I've had a little plastic surgery. I've had a little lipo. I've had a little Botox. And you know what? None of it works. None of it."
So now, she's on a mission, she says in the September issue of More, which hits newsstands next week.

"I want to do my part, as I develop the consciousness for it, to stop perpetuating the myth. I'm going to look the way God intends me to look ... with a little help from Manolo Blahnik."

The Million Dollar Follow-up

Posted just this afternoon on www.foxnews.com:

Critics Enter Ring Against Eastwood:
Marcie Roth, executive director of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, said her group has been working to improve conditions for the disabled since 1948, "yet lo these many years later, many people still think having a spinal-cord injury is a fate worse than death. Unfortunately, a message like the one in `Million Dollar Baby' just perpetuates exactly what we work so hard to dispel."

To read the NSCIA full statement: http://www.spinalcord.org/news.php?dep=1&page=0&list=281

To read the Fox News article in it's entirety: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,146328,00.html

In related news, visit: http://www.notdeadyet.org/

Million Dollar Baby

***SPOILER ALERT***

I saw the movie "Million Dollar Baby" on Wednesday night. I had never even heard of the movie and had no idea what it was about. The guys I was with just said, "It's about a girl boxer." Indeed, that is how it began. But half way through it, the movie completely and unexpectedly came to a screeching halt and shifted gears. The boxer (Hilary Swank) broke her neck and got laid up in a hospital. She was on a respirator and eventually had a leg amputated due to bed ulcers. I was encouraged at this point that the movie was going to turn from a shallow "guts and glory" storyline to a Joni Tada theme of courage and overcoming odds. Not so. After a time, Swank gets sick of being bedridden and asks her trainer (Clint Eastwood) to do the loving thing and put her out of her misery. He goes through a very brief see-saw of emotions and the movie culminates with Eastwood unscrewing her respirator tube.

I could list probably a dozen things wrong with the message and theology of this movie's storyline so I will do my best to stay off my soapbox and merely discuss the one topic relevant to this blog. And that is the myth that disabled people are miserable and want to die. Swank's speech, appealing to Eastwood, was noteworthy. The reason it was all over for her was because, "they used to line up to see me, they would chant my name, I was in magazines...."

This movie fails to differentiate between two very distinct things, namely, living a valid, happy, fulfilled life vs. living a life of fame and glory. It wasn't that Swank couldn't be happy without a leg, it was that she couldn't box without one. It wasn't that people wouldn't love her anymore, but that she wouldn't be loved by thousands of adoring fans. It wasn't the loss of quality living she dreaded, it was the loss of her own glory.

The message of this film goes far beyond euthanasia. The film perpetuates the myth that our purpose in life is to acquire fame, stature, and glory and if our physical body restricts us from achieving that goal, there is no reason left to keep going.

This man-centered approach to life will result in nothing but depression and failure (whether disabled or not) because we were not put on this earth to achieve our own glory, but to give our glory over to Christ.