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Indeed, given today's increasing utilitarianist tendencies in health care, bioethicists, social workers, and doctors involved with her care might well have repeatedly reminded her of that fact (hint, hint). Thus, she could have ordered her respirator turned off. In reality, she would have had the legal right to refuse medical treatment - even if it meant that she would die. For example, the movie depicts Maggie as a mere slave to medical protocols. Whatever the case, the bigger sin of the movie is its peddling of dangerous ignorance. Rather than pushing an agenda, it seems to me that Eastwood - like so many others in Hollywood before him - merely saw the mercy killing angle as good drama particularly when combined with Frankie's conflicted Catholicism. Nevertheless, the message of the rightness of mercy killing is more than implied: Frankie's act is depicted as heroic by the film's narrator, played by Morgan Freeman.Ĭlint Eastwood has stated adamantly that he did not intend "Million Dollar Baby" as a showpiece for legalizing euthanasia - and I believe him. In "Million Dollar Baby," Frankie is devastated by what he has done and disappears, never to be heard from again. The primary difference between the two movies is that "I Accuse" ends with the husband righteously defending himself in the dock against criminal charges, pointing an accusing finger at the camera proclaiming, "I accuse!" at society for not permitting the compassionate and purely voluntary ending of lives no longer worth living. Both men initially resist weakly but come to see that killing their beloved is the only way to avoiding pointless suffering. Both heroines beg their primary male companions (the husband in "I Accuse" and surrogate father in "Million Dollar Baby") to put them out of their misery. In "Million Dollar Baby," the heroine's neck is broken, resulting in quadriplegia.). (In "I Accuse," the heroine contracts multiple sclerosis and loses her ability to play piano and fears becoming a quadriplegic. In both, the heroine becomes seriously disabled and unable to pursue her life's dream. It is striking and disturbing how similar the plotline of "Million Dollar Baby" is to the voluntary euthanasia story in "I Accuse." In both, the tragic and doomed heroine is a very talented and independent woman a boxer and brilliant pianist respectively. The most notorious of these is the 1939 German movie, "I Accuse" (Ich Klage An), a film that, with Goebbles's blessing, both promoted voluntary euthanasia as well as the propriety of killing disabled infants - to blockbuster success at the box office. Indeed, in the past movies were made as explicit propaganda to promote the legalization and legitimacy of active euthanasia. Nor is this a story line of recent vintage. Indeed, not only have most contemporary television dramas - "ER," "Law & Order," even "Star Trek Voyager" - resorted to mercy killing as a plot point, but so did "The Sea Inside," the Spanish movie Academy members voted this year's Best Foreign Film. But depicting mercy killing as compassionate and loving has been used as a plot devise so often that it has become a cliché. The makers of "Million Dollar Baby" and the Academy members who voted it Best Picture probably believe the film was innovative and courageous. The intent, of course, is to leave not a dry eye in the house. So, in his love for her, he overcomes his Catholic guilt and murders Maggie by removing the respirator and injecting her with an overdose of adrenalin. Fourthly, after trying to kill herself in a terribly painful way, she is force-sedated to prevent further suicide attempts.įrankie is in anguish over his friend's plight and concludes that he is actually killing Maggie by letting her live. (Apparently the writers didn't know that proper medical care prevents most bed sores.) Third, her venal and uncaring family refuses to visit, and when they do, she is pressured into signing over control of her assets. Despite supposedly receiving the best of care she soon develops bed sores so serious that one of her legs is amputated.
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But Maggie's life as a disabled woman is anything but ideal. That would be difficult to adjust to even under ideal circumstances. First, Maggie becomes a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic, after once living a life of utter physicality.