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Spoiler Alert: This commentary gives away the ending for Million Dollar
Baby.
One of the favorites for this year's Academy Awards is Million Dollar
Baby. The film tells the story of Frankie, a boxing trainer, and
Maggie, a fighter he reluctantly agrees to train and eventually comes
to love.
The film has earned a "Best Picture" nomination, as well as nominations
for director Clint Eastwood, who also plays Frankie, and Hilary Swank,
who plays Maggie. It has also earned some well-deserved criticism for
its handling of the most important question of all: what makes life
worth living.
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.
Given what this says about the quality and worth of the lives lived by
the disabled, it's not surprising that disability-rights groups have
protested the film.
You might not expect anything different from Hollywood, but there is
one alternative. The new Fox hospital drama, House, tells the story of
a diagnostician named Dr. Gregory House. He's not what you would call a
"people person." As he says, "humanity is overrated." Add the fact that
he is in constant pain, which causes him to pop painkillers like candy,
and you've got the man who put the mis in misanthrope.
And while House dislikes people, he hates death. Thus, he has no
patience with people like Maggie who won't fight as hard to preserve
the gift of life as they did in less important pursuits. When patients
say they want to discontinue treatment and die, House calls them
"idiots" and disputes their sentimentality about "dying with dignity."
Death is always messy and always represents a waste-so much so that he
even disregards the occasional "do not resuscitate" order. Instead of
hastening death, he insists on "practicing medicine for a change."
Exactly. While Christians shouldn't fear death, we don't prefer it to
life. Like Dr. House, we know that death is an interloper. There comes
a time to let go of life; but only after we've put up a good fight
worthy of the gift of life. Because Maggie didn't understand this, her
life, like her death, was a waste. She didn't die a "has-been," but a
"never-was" who refused to embrace this most glorious of all gifts,
life.
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