Of Lives Worth Living

“Je suis Charlie Hebdo,” said the signs.  Terrorism is indeed a terrible thing, and understandably calls out sentiments of solidarity.  I would not call the Charlie Gard case an instance of terrorism, but it terrifies me and, as a mother, it terrifies me on a personal level.  If a court in England can decide when someone’s child no longer has a quality of life worth preserving, how long before a court in America can make that decision?  And what if, God forbid, it were my child whose case the court was examining?  So, to co-opt a phrase, Je suis la mère de Charlie Gard.

*                      *                      *

The other day, as some of us were discussing the matter, lines sprang to mind, lines familiar from childhood, imprinted in the static-y tones of an old cassette tape.

“If someone loves a flower, one single blossom among all the millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy, just to look at the stars—because he can say to himself, ‘Somewhere, my flower is there.’  But if a sheep eats the flower, then in one moment for him all the stars will be darkened.  And you think this is not important?!”

It was hard at first to articulate why the lines felt relevant to the case of Charlie Gard; but I think I have an inkling now.

The proponents of euthanasia talk about quality of life, and occasionally about dignity.  But they define these terms narrowly: generally, by observation of the purely physical.  They talk of pain and comfort.  I cannot recall an instance where they talked of love.  But it is love which, as Saint-Exupéry reminds us, makes us happy—not to talk with the beloved, not even to be with the beloved, but simply to know that they exist.  “If someone loves a flower … it is enough to make him happy … [to] say to himself, ‘Somewhere, my flower is there.’”

I suppose someone might retort, “Yes, that’s all very well; but if the flower is unhappy, or the flower does not even know of its gardener’s existence, why bother so much about the gardener’s feelings?  Isn’t he a bit selfish to ask that his flower keep blooming while he, planets and planets away, looks smugly at his millions of stars?”

If one is asking about the flower of Saint-Exupéry, then my rejoinder is that one ought to read The Little Prince.  But of course, one would really be asking about Charlie Gard, and Terri Schiavo, and all the rest of us who may some day be in their condition, or have a loved one who is.  And to that question, my answer would be this:

There is an economy of love that knows next to nothing of the physical world.  If someone loves a flower, this is good for the flower too—yes, even if the flower is for the time being through some circumstance neither pruned nor sheltered nor watered nor smelled.  The flower too is happy, in the old sense related to “hap”; the flower is fortunate.  And not fortunate because of the good things it received in the past or may receive in the future, but fortunate because it is loved, even if it is ignorant of that fact.

No one can deny that being loved is good, as being healthy or rich is a good.  Health, however, is useless to a hypochondriac and riches are useless to a man who does not know that they are buried in his field.  Health and riches are good for use; they are good when they are enjoyed; their value lies in their employment in various activities.  But love and being loved are not good for activities; they are activities.  One does not speak of “enjoying” loving or being loved (except callously); certainly we would judge that anyone who speaks of “using” love does not know what the word means.  Other things are given a value by the human beings who have them: by the market, or the taste of the individual, or the customs of the country.  But love works in the other way: love cannot be made greater because human beings value it highly, nor can it be made less because human beings undervalue it; rather, love gives us value.  We are what we are because we have been loved: by our spouses, our parents, our children, our friends, the strangers who change our bedpans—and by God.  Most of all, by God.

I suppose to anyone who does not already take a supernatural interest in things, this will sound irrational.  I am afraid that even to anyone who agrees with my ethical concerns, it may appear hopelessly soppy.  But I do think that this is one of the true reasons why it is wrong to take an innocent life: because there is an intangible value to each person’s existence, making it in some perhaps mysterious wise worthwhile to them, due to the love they receive, an everlasting love which nevertheless bears up their existence in this brief particular moment of space and time.

The Beauty in the Beast

Part 2 of a series.  Part 1 is here and the latter four parts are here, here, here, and here.

My claim in the previous post might be summarized as follows.  There is an impression running about and shouting (like a chicken with its head cut off) that fairy tales are supposed to be dark.  This is only partially true: fairy tales certainly contain frightening things.  But the fairy tale genre is stylistically ill-equipped to raise and answer psychological, cultural, or moral questions; consequently, a lot of the “darkness” that we see in adaptations of fairy tales is in fact a moral dinginess imposed by our expansion of their narratives.  And in expanding, we have a choice: we can emphasize what is creepy, or what is wholesome (not to sound too Richard Weaver about it).  A “dark” fairy tale movie reflects who we are as a culture as much as (or perhaps more than) it reflects the original fairy tale.

One of my favorite fairy tales, “Beauty and the Beast,” is a case in point.  Had I seen the Disney version at a young age, I am less sure it would have been my favorite; having no source beyond a cassette recording by “Children’s Radio Theater,” I fell in love.  But college came: innocence was lost: I saw Beauty and the Beast, and enjoyed it, without having it displace the original in my heart.

But Jean Cocteau’s version, which I saw about the same time, was different.  I thought then and still think now (subject always to the revision of another viewing) that Cocteau came rather closer to capturing the spirit of the story as it then was known.  As much as Linda Wolverton and co. at Disney borrowed from Cocteau (and observers have noticed all sorts of things, from a Gaston-like rival to an enchanted candlestick), they left out something important: the characters of Belle and the Beast.  These are not very fully fleshed out in the source (again, see my previosu post); but Cocteau’s film seems to develop what is already there, while the Disney team took another direction entirely.  As a result, Cocteau’s film for grownup audiences turns out, counterintuitively, to be less “creepy” than Disney’s, though no less frightening.

For frightening and creepy are not the same thing at all,

 as Meg Murry almost said.

My previous post noted that some viewers were reacting to the buzz around Disney’s new B&B by asserting that the story “glorified Stockholm Syndrome.”   More specifically, some denizens of the Book of Face expressed (perhaps merely rhetorical) concern that B&B implanted on the minds of impressionable young girls the notion that men who held them and/or their aged relatives captive and shouted and threw stuff about were no worse than a bit rough around the edges.  It was unclear, in the critical comments that I encountered, whether this criticism was leveled at the Disney movies specifically, or at all things bearing the title “Beauty and the Beast.”  Given our general state of cultural ignorance, I rather fear the latter.  But the accusation, if it was general, was not merited: there are large differences between the “original” fairy tale, the Cocteau film (1946), and Disney’s 1991 adaptation.  I would argue that these differences make all the difference between a story which “glorifies Stockholm Syndrome” and one which is more subtle and less potentially misleading.

If you have the time for it, I would request that you do a little homework.  Here is a summary of the original fairytale; here is a summary of the film by Cocteau; and here is a summary of the Disney film.

Note that I am cherry-picking based on what I have seen …

there are many versions of the story, from many cultures—

Norse, American Indian, etc.—and the “beastly” character

is sometimes female, as in the “loathly lady” tradition.

If you completed your reading and returned, congratulations!  If you skipped or skimmed your assignment, like ninety-eight percent of my former students, I’ll pull a teacher and powerpoint the relevant differences between Disney et al.

Details	Villeneuve/Beaumont (1740/56)	Cocteau (1946)	Disney (1991)
Entrapment of father by Beast	At first treated royally, the father plucks a rose and is accused of ingratitude/theft, and threatened with death.	At first treated royally, the father plucks a rose and is accused of ingratitude/theft, and threatened with death.	The father is imprisoned by the Beast for being lost.
Deal between father and Beast	The Beast relents when the merchant promises to either come back himself or send one of his children.	The Beast suggests that one of the merchant’s daughters can take his place.	Deal?  You think this Beast makes deals?
How the Beast initially receives Beauty	“graciously”	See left; the Beast explains that she has as much power to command as he.	Um … does the word “hostility” convey anything?
What life in the castle is like	Pleasant from the get-go; the Beast proposes nightly, and Beauty’s reaction is always: “Nice guy, but nope.”	Beauty is uncomfortable with the Beast’s proposals of marriage, but grows to enjoy his company.	Initial hostility and incivility on the part of the Beast is gradually overcome, and mutual regard established.
Why the Beast’s spell, anyway?	“… an evil fairy … tried to seduce [the prince] … when he refused, she transformed him into a beast.”	“… because his parents did not believe in spirits, in revenge the spirits turned him into the Beast.”	“An enchantress … offers an enchanted rose to a young prince in exchange for shelter … but he refuses. For his arrogance, the enchantress transforms him into a beast …”

In brief: The French Bête is a gentleman, and the American “Beast” is not.

Now, admittedly, the French Beast uses threats and chicanery to entice Beauty to his castle (offering to kill dear old dad is a questionable move by anyone’s standards).  Nevertheless, his kindness to Beauty once she appears suggests that, even with her father, his bark was worse than his bite ever would have been.  He is, from the first, a far cry from the grouchy—let’s be honest, a downright terrifying recluse of the Disney movie.

I’m not entirely sure why Disney made the changes—perhaps to up the ante in terms of obstacles to love? or to make Belle’s initial rejections of the Beast seem less shallow?  Whatever the rationale, these changes simultaneously call her character and intelligence into question when we witness her acceptance of the (now ex?) monster.  We are supposed to move, in the course of a three minute song, from believing that the Beast is “mean … coarse … and unrefined” (not to mention mentally unstable and abusive), to judging him a pretty decent bloke who just needs some better hair-styling advice.  This is farcical if you don’t take it seriously, and bad role-modeling if you do.  But such is the power of music that we accept it unblinkingly, at least until the credits role and the lights come up again.

Perhaps the goal for Disney was less to strengthen Belle’s character than to provide a stronger story arc for the Beast.  And certainly, going from handsome but arrogant numbskull to violent captor to genteel and ultimately altruistic fur-ball is a trajectory.  But there are so many other possible trajectories that could have been forged from the motherload.  For example:

B&B, Continent-Man-Gains-Virtue Edition: The Beast is initially focused simply on finding a girl to break the spell; as his respect for Beauty as a person develops, he realizes this is unfair to her, and lets her go home, knowing it will doom him to permanent enchantment.

B&B, Old Style Therapy Edition: The Beast has initially given up hope that his spell can ever be broken; eventually Beauty helps him regain his self-respect and hope.

B&B, Modern Therapy Edition: The Beast is initially focused simply on finding a girl to break the spell; as his friendship with Beauty develops, he comes to accept his ugliness.  (Yeah, that’s a little too Shrek for me, but still …)

B&B, Ann-of-Green-Gables Edition: The Beast is initially looking just for companionship, because he’s totally cool with being ugly; his interactions with Beauty lead him to realize that love would be even more awesome, and that he would really like to earn her love as well as her friendship.

That’s four possibilities, just off the top of my head …

I know what you’re thinking.  Naw.

There’s no way I’ve ever worked on

my own adaptation of this story.

… possibilities which Disney ignored—in favor of … what, exactly?  A stronger Belle?  OK, let’s try developing her character too then.  In the original story, her main obstacle to accepting the Beast’s marriage proposals is seemingly the Beast’s appearance.  That’s a little shallow, maybe.  So what about …

B&B, Righteous Woman Edition: Beauty initially goes to the Beast’s castle terrified of the Beast and his evil deal with her father.  She eventually gets up enough courage to call out the Beast on his selfishness; he lets her go home, she eventually returns of her own free will, and they start from scratch.  (This obviously pairs well with B&B, Continent-Man-Gains-Virtue Edition.)

B&B, Old Style Therapy Edition: Beauty initially goes to the Beast’s castle thinking that, unlike her sisters, she was going to stay single for dear old dad’s sake; taking dad’s place with the Beast is merely an extension of the sacrifice.  Over time in the castle, she comes to realize that her apparent self-abnegation is actually a form of selfishness: she has been avoiding romantic love out of fear that [her heart will break OR it will look selfish of her OR need to be needed by dad OR …].

B&B, Modern Therapy Edition: Beauty initially goes to the Beast’s castle thinking that she’s looking for the perfect man to love; her time with the Beast leads her to realize that romantic love is overplayed anyway, and they can just be platonic friends while she pursues her REAL dream as a sustainable forestry entrepreneur.

B&B, We’re Only Human Edition: Beauty initially goes to the Beast’s castle resenting her father and the Beast for making the deal.  She comes to understand the pressures under which the Beast cut the deal, when she makes a similar deal herself (I’ll go home for three days—oops, yeah, sorry, that was three weeks, jk, right?), and realizes her hypocrisy.  (May or may not pair with various Beast stories.)

BONUS:  B&B, Canon Lawyer Edition (Catholic audiences only): Beauty initially turns down the Beast’s proposal of marriage because, while she’d love to help him out, she’s concerned that maybe marriage with him might violate a norm or two.  Fr. Jacques-Phillippe assures her that (1) the Beast is a rational animal, and thus technically human; and (2) the Beast’s backstory indicates that they have a pretty good chance of procreating ten kids, none of whom look even vaguely lionesque.  A lovely wedding ensues, with the Beast scattering gold coins everywhere like Alan Rickman, and the villagers remarking that, since he’s rich and she’s handsome, it’s nbd, but what an atrocious lack of lace! Selena would stare when she heard of it …

Are these all great movies in the making?  Perhaps not.  But they are different stories—different takes on the fairy tale; different enough to suggest, I think, that there was no need for Disney to skirt so close to the edge as it did with its unoriginal moral conundrum of a beautiful girl who falls in love with a bad, bad man.

The series will resume some time during Easter Week.

Open Letters to the Insurance Salesman

I know not what it is about moving and changes in one’s state in life, but they always seem to trigger additional calls from salesmen hoping to provide me with things that I already have—usually, with some form of insurance.  By whatever curious breach of privacy (I suspect some doctor’s office is the innocent culprit in this case) I have become the target of a particularly persistent and obnoxious specimen, who by the current count has called my twice and texted me three times (good heavens man, do you not know this costs some people money?) within the past thirty-six hours or so.

Given the particularly sleazy nature of his tactics, I have been resisting the temptation all morning to reply.  Here, for the record, are his missives to date:

First text: [My first name], You’ve caught me off hours.  My hours are M-F 9AM-7PM EST.  Is there a good time during those hours I can schedule a call for you?  [Received 6:06 a.m.]

Reader, I have no clue who this person is, and emphatically did NOT get in touch with him prior to receiving the above text.  Oh, also—6:06 a.m.?  Dude: that IS off hours.  I was asleep (or trying to be).  It’s a good thing that I turn the phone off, or you probably would have gotten an earful.

Second text: Good morning [my first name], I just tried calling you to follow up about your inquiry for your free health ins quote.  Can you call me now to get your results?  [Received 9:41 a.m.]

For the record, I was still asleep at this point.  (What?  The night before last was a rough one.)  Also, I had and have submitted no such inquiry.  Moving right along …

Third text: [My first name], you didn’t answer when I called earlier, is there a better time to call you?  [Received 11:19 a.m.]

The unmitigated gall.  It’s probably a terrible idea to respond.  But the real reason I’m not replying is that there are so many irresistible ways to do so that I can’t decide which one would be best.

The grammarian: As of last Friday, I have determined to no longer associate or do business with those who use incorrect capitalization, lazy abbreviations, and comma splices in their text messages.  Only the Queen’s best English for me!  Better luck with your next victim.

The Miss Manners: Dear sir: As we have not been introduced, do you not think it would be better to address me as Mrs. [surname]?  Sincerely yours, a Well-Wisher.

The lawyer’s daughter:  Since your first communication, I have been in contact with my attorney.  He informs me that you are in violation of statutory law, Florida code §1027(b)(4)(C), and 30 U.S.C. §401(c)(1)(D)(xiii) (2012).  I recommend consulting your own legal advice, as we are preparing to file harassment charges in state and federal court.  Try 1-(800)-773-0888, or visit legalzoom.com.

The biblical one-liner: What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world, but to lose his soul?

The frank and heartfelt scolding: This is possibly one of the most disgusting attempts to get me to buy something that I don’t need that I have encountered in my life.  Who do you think I am, some poor befuddled Floridian grandmother with early onset Alzheimer’s?  Is that the sort of person you prey on, in order to make your living?  Because they might actually think they HAD called you, and become confused, and call you back?  Bloodsucking jerkface.  http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/shakespeare-insults/

The phishing-back-at-yah response: Dear Hubert, I do apologize for missing your call!  Could we perhaps try again at a quarter past three?  My phone refuses to ring except when the atmospheric conditions and the prevailing winds permit (cf. The World of Pooh).  Also, NASA’s recent realignment of the zodiac has presented some difficulties in communication since my formerly BFF device was cursed during my visit to New Orleans, and I discovered that we were created under incompatible signs.  It is turning against me.  Have you tried the insurance market in New Orleans?  I’m sure it is booming in the wake of the recent hurricanes.  You will need to use the following code to get through to me: After the tone, refer to Thomas Starkey’s Dialogue between Pole and Lupset (1989 edition only!!!), page 42, first word of the first line, using a 5x5 grid alphabet substitution method.  Read your message slowly and distinctly one letter at a time.  Only then will Siri preserve your important message.  I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible!!!!  Dosvidanya, and gospodarstvo do movve.

Happy Windsday, mon frères.

Update, Thursday:

Fourth text: Good morning, Sophia, I couldn't get a hold of you yesterday?  Can you call now so I can explain your health insurance quote options?  [Received 9:05 a.m.]