Not Dead Yet and movie critics are still arguing over the Oscar-winning film from Clint Eastwood.
Some movies are designed to make audiences think. For certain members of the disability community, four-time Oscar® winner Million Dollar Baby, about a grizzled old trainer in the 1930s taking on a promising young woman boxer to mentor only to see her incapacitated by a brutal blow, brings to mind an unresolved question: Is Hollywood stacking the deck against disability?
In January 2005, before the film was released nationwide, the Chicago-based disability rights group Not Dead Yet staged a protest. “We protested the Chicago Film Critics Association calling this the best film of the year,” recalls Stephen Drake, research analyst for the group. “None of their reviews revealed the movie’s ending; they just said, ‘It’s an extremely moving experience, and you should all go see it.’ There was absolutely no clue as to the ending. This was being marketed as a female version of Rocky, with no clue given that viewers were in for a different kind of movie. That’s the deceptive part. It’s rated PG-13, and, based on the ads that they were seeing on TV, there were a lot of parents probably bringing kids in, and they were unprepared to even talk with their kids about how the movie was going to end, because they didn’t know.
“We had a couple of issues with the movie,” Drake says. “One is that it gives a completely unrealistic and hopeless picture of what rehabilitation from a spinal cord injury looks like. In this movie, Maggie [played by Hilary Swank], a woman in topflight physical condition, endures a series of pressure sores in a relatively short period of time. One of them is so serious that it becomes gangrenous, and her leg has to be amputated. This is all in the context of getting top-flight medical care. What you see on the screen doesn’t resemble what rehabilitation looks like. You never see another person with SCI in the facility.”
“The idea that any assistive technology is even present is not evident anywhere, except in one feeble remark made by Clint Eastwood’s character, Frankie, to the effect of, ‘We can get you a chair that you can operate on your own.’ Quadriplegics have told me that, if you’re able to sit in a chair, that’s one of the first things they do in rehab.
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John B. Kelly, a member of Not Dead Yet’s Boston chapter, says Million Dollar Baby “puts out the message to the newly injured…that there is no hope.”
Framing Popular Conceptions
“Most of what people know about disability does not come from people who have disabilities,” Drake continues. “What people know is from popular movies and presentations, and here we have a movie that got some of the most incredibly over-the-top reviews that I’ve ever seen. It reinforces the pre-existing attitudes toward disability in the media. By the time this woman asks Clint Eastwood’s character to kill her, the audience, even if they’re not fully in agreement with it, will be comfortable with the decision he made, thinking, ‘What else could he do?’ The deck was stacked that way, including a rather repugnant comparison between her situation and that of a lame dog that was put down.”
Drake blames these unfair comparisons on inaccurate media portrayals. “These movies don’t bear a lot of resemblance to the real-life stories of people with disabilities. Very few disability stories get out there. We have a very skewed presence in the movies. Ray Charles is no more typical of the disability experience than the character of Maggie is, and yet, those are the things that get out there.”
What about the onslaught of awards the film has received? “If it had come in the beginning of 2005, I don’t think it would’ve won the Oscars,” Drake asserts. “They wanted it to be fresh in everybody’s mind, without giving them a chance to think about it. The impact of this huge manipulative melodrama is powerful, but short-lasting. That’s what they were counting on.”
Out of the Picture
That may be so, but the nation continues to feel its reverberations. Drake credits film critic Roger Ebert’s response to the controversy for this. On his Web site, Ebert writes, in part: “I have known people in wheelchairs all my life. I have dated one.” To read the rest of the essay, go to: rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ article?AID=/20050129/ESSAYS/501290301.
“Ebert’s essay started an assault that marginalized and wrote disability out of the story,” Drake maintains. “Around Oscar time, almost all of it concentrated on the so-called right-wing critics. Syndicated columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich of The New York Times portrayed this as nothing but a right-wing attack, and either totally eliminated or marginalized any mention of the disability community. Bill O’Reilly and Pat Buchanan both defined the controversy as one of conservative attacks on the movie. It’s almost like the right and left wing conspired to write us out of the picture.”
“We wanted to come at the controversy a different way, instead of being serious,” says John B. Kelly a Not Dead Yet member and a C-4 complete quadriplegic who protested the film with a satirical flyer that the group handed out in Boston. “We wanted to show what this kind of rehabilitation actually looks like, and by making fun of it, show how absurd and dangerous it is for casual moviegoers to think that’s what happens after you have a SCI. My objection to the movie is that the last third of it is organized to make it look like Frankie’s act is one of compassion and redemption for him. It puts out the message to the newly injured and their families that there is no hope.”
Will Eastwood’s heroic image survive this? “Absolutely,” says Drake. “Thanks to these writers and critics, he wound up looking victimized.”
Another Perspective
Freelance film reviewer Jeff Shannon, a C-5-6 quadriplegic who contributes frequently to The Seattle Times and reviews DVDs for Amazon.com, declares, “This controversy will blow over. Eastwood is at the point in his career where he’s a real Hollywood icon.”
Jeff Shannon, a film critic for The Seattle Times, says, “As a movie, [Million Dollar Baby] needs to be accepted as a fictional story.”
Eastwood said in The Los Angeles Times article, “‘BABY’ Plot Twist Angers Activists,” dated January 27, 2005: “I’ve put my money where my mouth is with the disabled, so I don’t feel like I have to apologize for that.” Regarding the film, he said, “I’m just telling a story. I don’t advocate. I’m playing a part. I’ve gone around in movies blowing people away with a .44 magnum. But that doesn’t mean I think that’s a proper thing to do.”
“As a movie, it needs to be accepted as a fictional story,” says Shannon. “On that level, I like the movie, and have praised it. If you look at the movie in the light of hard reality, that’s when the controversy and protests become more valid. I do appreciate that fact. I also think it’s possible to admire the movie’s storytelling.
Lori A. Wood is a frequent contributor to Orbit.
