Hollywood declares war

By Paul P.J. D'Andrea, Jr.
Op/Ed

Hollywood has just elevated Million Dollar Baby and by doing so has declared itself as an unapologetic advocate of killing people whose life does not measure up to a certain standard of physical or mental health. This movie is, first and foremost, a rhetorical argument in favor of mercy killing.

Its narrative's pathos is designed to convince us that when someone's quality of life passes below a certain threshold--as the quality of life of Hilary Swank's character is supposed to have done--death, even if it means murder, is the only loving response. By so elevating a movie that champions the concept of "quality of life" as a measure of who should live or die, Hollywood has declared itself an enemy of Christian civilization.

Meanwhile, in Rome, there is a man bent and broken, with slurred speech and contorted features who takes on the charge to defend human dignity from the healthy, tan, glib & glittering Hollywood elite. The Pope, by his steadfastness in decreptitude and frailty, is testifying against that terrible modern measure of "quality of life." He's reminding us that the true quality of a man's life, or of the man himself, can not be determined by any human or human society, particularly not by an elite society such as Hollywood.

Man is what he is because he is made in the image of God--the theological truth being demonstrated here is that man's essence precedes his being. His value already is and that always remains, it can be diminished by what he does or by what happens to him, it can be enhanced, but always there is value of some kind too mysterious for us to fathom, or forget.

By the measure of Million Dollar Baby, the Pope is not fit for his job: his "quality of life" has deteriorated past the point where he is useful to secular society, his diseased body and mental frailty have made him lose his value, as though he were a stock that's bottomed out or an operating system that was no longer was supported.

God and God's Church see it otherwise: he has only gained greater value because of his diseased body and frail mind. You could not have a more profound disagreement. Pope John Paul II is uprooting the tyrannical belief of our modern world that "quality of life," as determined by scientific, secular society, is the measure of man. By remaining steadfast as Vicar of Christ on Earth, the Pope reminds us that the divine gift that is our humanity renders meaningless any human measure, in film or in gulags, whereby our value is determined.

Without such a measure, Clint Eastwood's film, Million Dollar Baby, is an apology for murder most foul and the elevation of that film last night marks the beginning of the end of Hollywood's reign as our civilization's story teller.

Contact

Paul P.J. D'Andrea, Jr.
VA, US
Paul P.J. D'Andrea, Jr. - publishing, 703 851-9203

Email

pauldandrea@mac.com

Keywords

Oscars

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