One can barely imagine how relieved the movie critics now
climbing over themselves to defend Clint Eastwood were to see the right-wing
media going after Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. Suddenly they were free
to set the dispute into a broad culture war context as Frank Rich did last
week. They were free finally to ignore the true outrage of the movie. These
same critics failed millions of Americans with disabilities by accepting
as utterly plausible the plot-twist that a quadriplegic would sputter into
medical agony in a matter of months and embrace suicide as her only option
in a nation where millions of people with spinal cord injuries lead full
long lives. No, these critics would much prefer to talk about offenses against
poor victimized directors, comparing Eastwood to last year's besieged Michael
Moore rather than to talk about their own failings or about a group which
has never had any standing in the culture wars.
Plot twist is, in fact, an apt description of Million Dollar Baby's ending.
A spinal cord injury followed by a dolorous slo-mo sipping of Eastwood's
poetic hemlock avoids the inconvenient truth that a female athlete outside
of basketball and perhaps professional mud-wrestling has virtually no opportunity
to make a living in America. That might make a more plausible reason for
suicide than the rationale Million Dollar Baby supplies.
Hollywood loves this disabled suicide plot and Eastwood is hardly the only
director to be
enthralled with might be called the crip ex machina theatrical
convention.
How delusional is it for Hollywood to spend billions on teen flicks and big
budget films where teens and youth culture star and yet there is practically
never any mention that suicide is the number one public health concern for
American teenagers, one of the leading causes of teen deaths? Somehow teen-suicide
seems just nutty compared to depressed quadriplegics offing themselves. Maybe
the plot twist Hollywood seems so desperate to defend isn't really assisted
suicide. Maybe its Eastwood's own epic saga of slogging to the Oscar summit
that gets these critics all misty eyed?
As a right-wing culture war target, rather than an anti-disabled bigot, Eastwood
and the critics can certainly avoid mentioning the director's high-profile
campaign against the American With Disabilities act after he was sued for
owning an inaccessible restaurant. The thought of insulting or offending millions
of people who live full lives despite a myriad of restrictions on their freedoms
and a palpable sense of impatience that we're "not dead yet" at
all enter the minds of these movie culture warriors. Had it occurred to them,
they might have mentioned that Rush Limbaugh and his gang were among the biggest
critics of the ADA, have endorsed restrictions on healthcare support for people
in need of long-term rehabilitation and have eagerly used disabled rights
to further their own agenda when convenient.
If Mr. Eastwood is so convinced that his film is grounded in reality then
perhaps he might wish to accompany me to the U.S. Army's Walter Reed Medical
Center in Maryland where there are 1000 or so severely disabled soldiers from
Iraq whose lives are changed forever, who were told they fought for Iraqi
freedom and are now perhaps wondering, along with their families, who is going
to fight for their freedom to live a full life here in America. As a paraplegic
for three decades I can help them with that question. Would Mr. tough guy
Eastwood and his new pals Frank Rich and Roger Ebert have the guts to defend
Million Dollar Baby's "plausible" message of suicidal disabled people?
Would they offer to helpfully pull the plug on these soldiers? How's that
for a plot twist? Thank God there is another message of hope and strength
inside Walter Reed and in pockets of sanity in this country. I pray that someday
it's a plausible one in Hollywood and throughout America.
John Hockenberry is an author and correspondent for NBC News He lives
in New York with his wonderful wife Alison, and their equally wonderful kids,
Zoe, Olivia, Regan and Zachary.
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