Million Dollar Corpse Did you happen to catch the Oscars last Sunday night? I’m afraid I didn’t. I have enough memories of Robin Williams and Whoopie Goldberg-hosted awards shows to last me the rest of my life. I did, though, hear which films and stars walked away with the most trophies. Though I didn’t see the film, I must admit I was pulling for Ray , given the respected comments I’d heard about Jamie Foxx’s stellar performance and my own penchant for jazz and blues. Foxx, it seems, fully deserved the Oscar for best actor which now graces his mantle at home. My question is, does the one now sitting atop the mantle in Clint Eastwood’s Carmel, California home deserve to be there? Not the one for best director—he may have deserved that. The one I mean is his Oscar proclaiming Million Dollar Baby, his smash film, the best in the land. What factors are most important to determine a film’s quality? It’s artistry? Cinematography? Music? Writing? Plot sequence and ability to pull the viewer into a vicarious experience of the story at an intimate level? Those are all important. How about its entertainment value? Albeit highly subjective, that too plays a part in judging a film’s quality. Still, as a divinely ordained and professional shaper of worldviews (if being a Christian weren’t enough), I strongly believe the far and away most important element in judging a film is its message. What does it explicitly influence me to believe, value and do? More important still, what unspoken and subtle but equally strong perspective on certain life issues does the film move me to consider making my own? I’m afraid in the case of Million Dollar Baby, the question of worldview is not a subtle one. It’s decidedly alarming message, from a biblical perspective, hits one toward the end of the film like a slap in the face. The plot runs as follows: an aging boxing manager named Frankie (Clint Eastwood) hooks up with a tough girl named Maggie (Hilary Swank) who sees boxing as her ticket to self-satisfaction. Going after the championship title against a tough veteran, Maggie falls to a cheap shot, breaking her neck in the process. Paralyzed, bed-ridden and permanently on a ventilator, Maggie decides life is no longer worth living. She asks Frankie, who’s become her closest friend, to end her life. Frankie then goes through a struggle with his conscience and Catholic convictions. Yet, in the end he reasons that he owes it to Maggie to help her die. Injecting her with a massive dose of adrenaline, Maggie dies moments later. Suddenly, Frankie’s million dollar baby has become a million dollar corpse and, in my view, so has Eastwood’s worldview-deadly film. But not everyone thinks so. Many bioethicists hail the film as a triumph. For instance, Arthur Caplan, director for the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, recent printed a review stating that, “Dealing with quality of life decisions about these devastating forms of disability in a thoughtful way...is not selling any kind of value message or promoting a particular agenda. It is using the medium to explore some very tough ethical questions. And that is a very good use of cinema, one that ought to be celebrated not denigrated.” Is Caplan right? Marci Roth, director of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, disagrees. She was recently quoted as saying she hates Million Dollar Baby’s ending because it teaches and reinforces the message that having a spinal cord injury is a fate worse than death. “Unfortunately,” she told the Associated Press, “the movie is saying that death is better than disability.” Actually, from a biblical perspective, the film is teaching something far more dangerous than what Roth claims. Underlying the ‘death is better than disability’ mindset is a worldview which marginalizes the reality and sovereignty of God. Believing that euthanasia is wrong is good, but if such a conviction is based merely on humanitarian considerations, it equally dishonors God by exalting human life independent of His attitude and decrees. Our value of life must ultimately stem from the fact that God is the Creator and Sustainer of all things. Taking upon ourselves the right to sustain or end life—even our own lives—is an act of independence and rebellion against the only One Who owns that right. “I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God (Isaiah 45:5).” When it comes to issues of bioethics, whether it’s in a family discussion over a film like Million Dollar Baby or discussing life-support issues with a physician as a family member’s life hangs in the balance in the ICU, for us as Christians one thing above all others must shape our worldview: the fact that according to the Bible, only God is God.
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