Sure, it’s a romantic movie. They are inherently ideological and silly. I cried when they went to Mozart. I laughed when she sat on his lap to dance. I was happy when they went to a tropical island. I dreamed when they talked about going to Paris. I long desperately when they kissed. But the whole time I was watching, absorbing the ideology even while critical, I think I was placing myself both in the position of caregiver and cared for. What Hollywood does not appreciate, among many other things, is how much disabled people can care for others. Indeed, the main character didn’t appreciate this, so the film went from annoying to disturbing.
You see, the melancholy main character had made arrangements with the assisted dying organization DIGNITAS. He had made an agreement with loving parents, that he would kill himself in six months if things did not improve. He was a physically active and vibrant man before his accident, and so he could not withstand living this kind of life, one very similar to mine with more money and better care, anymore. It may be right for some people, but it wasn’t right for him. I can’t begin to imagine the different kind of loss one experiences with an acquired severe injury. Nevertheless — and this proves that heteronormativity is operative and dangerous — I don’t think the inability to have an erection or see all the sights in Paris are legitimate reasons for suicide. Fortune was quite cruel to me in some aspects — and so also to the majority of the people in the developing world, who are not British aristocrats. But I don’t have erectile dysfunction, whatever other issues I may have, owing to our hyper- sexualized culture. So I don’t know what that is like. I do, however, know that unrealistic standards of able-bodied normative masculinity, if left unchallenged, cause depression and, in many cases, actual suicide. The man had everything I’ve ever wanted in life — someone to love, Mozart Concerts, and the ability to travel. This is more than most people get. Still, he was unsatisfied. He selfishly threw everything away to maintain the man he thought he was, and the audience is encouraged to think this is romantic, noble, and or a difficult moral situation. It isn't. He is a very selfish man, and she is facile and incredibly weak for indulging this childish outburst against fortune. Neither of them is mature or selfless enough to actually understand what love is. The movie is like a more awful and ablest version of Romeo and Juliet without any redeeming poetry. Glorifying this on film sends a very clear message that such prejudicial attitudes are acceptable. They are not; they cause devastating harm.
I cherish each and every one of my friends and family. I gained so much from them, continue to learn from them every day, and I am extremely grateful to be alive, so that I can be with them, and hold them, and love them, and teach them, and help them. Any partner or friend that I have is going to miss out on things, and he or she will have to do more for me. Honestly, I both want that and need that. Disabled people are more work than able-bodied people. I would be in denial, if I claimed otherwise. I have put incredible strain on parents, friends, teachers, care providers, administrative staff, and politicians. It’s probably empirically true that life would be easier without people like me. “The walking man” does enjoy the easy path most of the time. Nevertheless, good people like to hike, and even more virtuous people — whether disabled or not — like to climb mountains. From those high peaks, they give the middle finger to the unfortunate mood swings of fortune.
The main character chooses to end his life because he doesn’t want to hold his new girlfriend/caregiver back. He goes so far as to leave her money, so that she can go to France on vacation and begin a new life without him, when returning to the United Kingdom. The movie closes with a “touching scene” of her reading a letter describing how he is much more good to her dead than alive. She’s seemingly is okay with this, even though she begged him not to commit suicide, but somehow then traveled to Sweden, in order to condone his needless, selfish, and cowardly death. I am not a burden to anyone remotely strong. “Carrying” the disabled allows everyone to become stronger and our world to be more egalitarian. I have striven to make the world a better place, and I deserve to love and be loved in return. The only thing tragic about my life is that people keep seeing it as a tragedy.
When someone decides to be with me, they will have to sacrifice a lot. Indeed, they will have to sacrifice more than most people. It will be painful. Even though most of what you sacrifice when you interact with disabled people is an allusion, it doesn’t mean that the loss of allusion doesn’t hurt. Such concessions notwithstanding, I make it a personal mission to make sure almost everyone receives more than they give. We should all do this as a way of resisting the implicit capitalist logic of exchange that governs most interactions. It is a wonderful and scary feeling to be completely vulnerable and loved for who you are unconditionally. Very few people get that, but everyone deserves that, no matter who they are or what has happened to them.
I’m pretty sure my cat attacked my birthday flowers, and they’re starting to die. I love flowers. I cry when anything dies. I remember being a kid and becoming so mad because people ripped birch bark off of trees, because they look like they were in so much pain. Truthfully, I still cry when I see this in a forest, and I have to avoid ecological disaster videos, if I want to have a good day. My flowers were so beautiful. Everything, no matter how beautiful, is subject to death and chance, even though I took many photos of them. As with Christmas trees, as silly as this sounds, I had to psychologically prepare myself for the eventual fact of their death. I get sad every January, which is why I don’t have a Christmas tree. Life is so fleeting and beautiful. Everything I love I will eventually lose, no matter how hard I tried to hold onto it. My body will decay. My family will perish. My friends will leave. My standard of living may change. That doesn’t mean, however, that I can simply ignore what a tremendous gift life in more varieties than I could possibly imagine is.
To be clear, I support the right to access safe and legal abortion and assisted dying. I wonder, however, whether in some cases we conflate what is legally permissible with what is morally right. One could suggest that I am using covert theological arguments, but my objection to the widespread acceptance of abortion and euthanasia have much more to do with virtue ethics. I think abortion and suicide are wrong, in the same way that eating large amounts of animal protein is wrong. I’m not going to make any of these activities illegal, however. I don’t think it speaks well of a person or society, when the typical response to a problem is to ignore it or get rid of it. There is something so aesthetically unappealing and in human about that reaction, understandable though we may find it. There may be instances in which suicide and abortion are preferable and laudable but, I don’t think those cases represent the majority, constitutional protection notwithstanding.
People must make their own choices. The state cannot compel matters of conscience on which there is disagreement. We lose something, nevertheless, when we too readily surrendered to death, as I personally have been tempted to do many times. I would be the last person to condemn anyone for 'depressive thoughts or committing suicide. I also would be the last person to advocate state control over individual bodies, when the actions of those bodies do not cause direct or immediately foreseeable harm to already existing legal persons. I also believe that legislation is not morality, but it does raise the sticky problem of what kind of world the liberal order creates, and how will we collectively handle its unforeseen consequences. I don’t by the slippery slope argument against assisted suicide. Yet, if this movie is any indication, it does seem to cause ideational harm on an already beleaguered, underfunded, and underrepresented minority group. The state ought to do a better job at redressing this crisis. We need to focus on creating meaningful disabled lives, as opposed to deifying disabled deaths. I noticed that in discussions of “death with dignity” we rarely mention the evacuation of bowels and bladder postmortem.
I believe the Stoics were wrong. There is no honor in killing yourself willfully, unless perhaps if pain is excruciating and incurable. It shows a weak constitution. We show strength when we strive relentlessly and joyfully against the absurdities of life, never settling for anything less than what we want. And what does it say about our society that perhaps the majority of persons with intellectual and physical disabilities are now aborted? Is this the world in which we desire to live? Do we really want a movie such as this one to be acceptable and seen as sentimental? I hope not. There is much talk about building compassion and interdependence. Nonetheless, this film raises the question of how exactly we are going to do that, if we eradicate individuals who may be dependent or need care before they are born and systematically marginalize the ones that do not get eradicated once they are born. As the movie demonstrates, this is performed for the sake of fictive romance and able-bodied normativity, against which everyone is compared and made to feel inadequate
.Thankfully, as my life and so many others demonstrate, real love, real disability, and real mortality are far more complicated. As a result, they are extraordinarily more wonderful
brilliantly said, as always
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