Ragged Edge E-Letter Critiques New Films Supporting Euthanasia

Million Dollar Baby has just brought Clint Eastwood a Golden Globe for Best Director. The Sea Inside has brought Alejandro Amenábar a Golden Globe for best foreign-language film. What links both movies? The message that it's the kind thing to do to kill someone who's become a quadriplegic. "A corny, melodramatic assault," says Not Dead Yet's Steve Drake in his review of Eastwood's latest.

The Sea Inside opens with the sound of quadriplegic Ramon Sampedro breathing. Jessica Yu's 1996 Academy Award winning Breathing Lessons started the same way. Yu's film celebrated disability, says Art Blaser, while The Sea Inside is "a seductive but socially irresponsible film of what can only be called disability defamation."

Disability groups are starting to raise a stink about these movies. Not Dead Yet activists are picketing and distributing protest leaflets at this evening's Chicago Film Critics Association awards gala at the Union League Club of Chicago (info at http://www.notdeadyet.org/docs/bigotpr.html) The National Spinal Cord Injury Association has just issued a news release calling Baby "a brilliantly executed attack on people with spinal cord injury." Check PR Newswire at http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/ to read the release. Steve Drake offers suggestions as to what you can do to protest the movie, too.

Ragged Edge editor Mary Johnson wonders about the appearance of two crip snuff films at the end of 2004, propping up what is likely the most contentious public issue since abortion.

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