preface
Million Dollar Baby is a feature film directed by Clint Eastwood.
The film was released by Warner Bros. in 2004, and the protagonist Maggie Fitzgerald is played by the famous actress Hilary Swank, and Maggie's box coach Frankie Dern is played by Clint Eastwood himself.
Million Dollar Baby
An equally important character in the film is Eddie Skrapp, who is the narrator of the entire story and Frankie's only friend.
He was played by the famous actor Morgan Freeman, the film won the 2004 Best Picture award at the 77th Academy Awards, for which Clint Eastwood won the Academy Award for Best Director for the second time and was nominated for Best Actor.
Hillary Swank and Morgan Freeman won the Academy Awards for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor respectively, Eastwood's long-time editor Joel Cox was nominated for Best Film Editing, and Paul Haggis was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, the film was definitely the biggest winner of the 77th Academy Awards.
Like other sports movies, Million Dollar Baby portrays America's core value from a different perspective — individualism is the most profound.
Individualism is a central figure in American culture, and it has attracted the attention of many philosophers, thinkers, and even economists. There is quite a bit of criticism that since film is a cultural product that not only reflects daily life, but also conveys ideas and values, it makes sense for people to discuss the cultural values reflected in film.
The thoughts and behaviors of these characters in the movie "Million Dollar Baby" reflect the core values of American individualism to a certain extent, so it is very meaningful to analyze the negative effects of individualism reflected in "Million Dollar Baby", only in this way can we have a deeper understanding of the existing social problems in the United States and have a more comprehensive attitude towards individualism.
Therefore, in the following sections of this article, we will discuss in detail how million-dollar babies reflect tragedy under individualism.
The story of Million Dollar Baby is told by Eddie Scrap, the best and only friend of protagonist Frankie who lost his boxing career and right eye in a fight that Eddie expected 23 years ago.
During the battle, Scrap's box manager takes Scrap on an adventure and goes somewhere to drink, leaving Scrap alone in the arena with Frankie, who was just a lovely person at that time. Watching the garbage badly defeated by their opponents, Frankie and Eddie argue several times to stop arguing, but Eddie does not give up on the game.
As a result, Eddie lost his right eye, and from then on, that incident began to haunt Frankie, and he never talked about that fight since, and since then, Frankie has always put "always protect yourself" above anything else, and the movie begins with a ferocious boxing match in which Frankie trains Big Willy for a long time and fights another boxer.
After winning the match, Big Willie wanted to fight for the championship, but thanks to the protection of Big Willie Frankie, told him to play two or three more games, however, shortly after that, Willie went to Frankie's house one night and he told Frankie that he had found a manager who would take him to the championship and that everything he had learned from Frankie was leaving him.
Maggie, 31, a needy waitress whose dream is to become a professional boxer, shows up at the gym almost every day, and after rejecting her several times, Frankie eventually agrees to train her under Eddie's persuasion, and although Maggie is much older than other fighters, she is doing well in the matches she is expecting.
After many fights, Maggie let people know her Frankie gave her the name "Mo", which means "my dear, my blood", and in the championship match against Blue Bear, who was a prostitute and later became a professional boxer, Maggie was first severely beaten. However, she had a huge comeback in the final rounds.
When Maggie was about to win the championship race, she forgot to protect herself and lowered her hand as she turned to her right hand. Blue Bear seized the opportunity and punched Maggie hard in her inner ear, knocking her down completely. After the race, Maggie became disabled, her spinal cord was completely ruptured, and her body below the head was immobile
At the end of the film, Maggie asks Frankie to do what her father did to their lame dog, take it to the woods and let it die quietly, which Frankie of course refuses. Maggie knew he wouldn't help, so she found her own solution – biting her tongue.
I didn't want to see Maggie suffer again, and one night Frankie went to the hospital, disconnected the ventilator, injected her with enough epinephrine to put her to sleep forever, and after that, Frankie left the hospital and never returned to the gym.
The film also mentions Frankie's never-before-seen daughter, who insists on writing to her, but all those letters he writes are sent back to him undisclosed.
All Frankie did was silently pick up the letters and carefully place them in a shoebox, and the film concludes with Eddie writing a letter to Frankie's daughter telling her the story of Maggie and Frankie.
He wants his daughter to know what kind of man Frankie really is, and that's the whole story of Million Dollar Baby.
Frankie with his daughter
In recent decades, Americans have increasingly valued the individual and tended to put individual choices above the collective needs of families. Parental involvement in the family is decreasing, both emotionally and financially, a social phenomenon that some Americans call the "parental deficit," and the trend is rising, a social phenomenon that accelerates individual emancipation but also weakens the family's ability to experience crises and external pressures.
In addition, it further promotes the separation between family members, people do not want to be bound by any family members, they want to make their own choices about their lives, often taking personal happiness as the eternal goal of the whole family.
The relationship between Frankie and his daughter is a good example of the alienated personal relationship beneath the core values of American individualism, and by showing Frankie's loneliness and confession, the film highlights the great suffering that individualism inflicts on the individual.
Frankie has been boxing for a long time, and from the film, it is not difficult for viewers to find out that Frankie spends almost all day in the gym or arena except for mass, and he even learns Gaelic in his office.
Wherever he goes, he is alone and his family is not mentioned in the film, until one day Maggie asks Frankie about his family.
Frankie hesitated for a moment when it came to his daughter. Frankie looked really embarrassed when asked about it, he said "no" at the beginning, to him whether he has a family seems to be a very tricky question, from this conversation, the audience knows that Frankie has a daughter, but their relationship is not close.
His family problem is his weakness, and when Maggie tells him about it, Frankie's face shows a hint of embarrassment, overhearing Maggie asking Frankie about his family, and Eddie stops and pretends to wipe chairs nearby so he can listen to their conversation.
Eddie's behavior also shows that Frankie rarely mentions his family, not even in front of Eddie, who is his best friend and possibly his only friend.
For the past 23 years, Frankie has come to church for mass almost every day, and at the end of the film, Father Hovass says, "Only so many people who go to church are the kind of people who can't forgive themselves." "That thing inside Frankie was his daughter, Katie, and every time he went to church, his father would ask him if he wrote to his daughter.
Under the influence of American individualism, Frankie's daughter knew that she could rely entirely on herself, therefore, she chose to run away from home, which is a common phenomenon in the United States, which left Frankie without the opportunity to wear makeup, which further deepened the misunderstanding between them.
When aware of the problem, Frankie wrote to his daughter every week, but all the letters he wrote were sent back to him publicly, and when he saw the letters lying on the floor and the mark "Back to the sender", Frankie had a feeling of helplessness, Frankie always repeated his actions a week ago,
Bend down slowly and carefully place them in the shoe box. That small talk about family sent Frankie deep into thought, and sadness appeared on his face.
There are several scenes in the film Million Dollar Baby that involve Frankie's letters to his daughter, and when dealing with these scenes, the director often uses slow motion to express Frankie's old age and the results he is unwilling to accept.
One night, the doctor took Maggie's leg, and when Frankie returned home, he opened the door and stopped: on the floor was an envelope, the same size and shape as the other envelopes in the shoe box. Then the director shot the face of the heartbroken old man up close: his eyes were covered with wrinkles and there were tears in his eyes.
All of these scenes reflect Frankie's sadness and loneliness. Even at the end of the movie, Scrap is writing letters to Frankie's daughter, hoping she will know what kind of man her father really is.
Frankie puts all his mind into boxing, a typical manifestation of respect for individual lifestyles under American individualism; Under the principle of American individualism, people become independent, they do not have to depend on other people, not even their parents, which is well represented by Frankie's daughter, Katie.
As a result, Frankie's daughter left home and never returned, but in the book Rope Burn: A Story from the Corner, Frankie's daughter Katie doesn't even exist at all, so it can be inferred that Katie is not really necessary throughout the movie, because with or without her, Maggie and Frankie's entire story will not change in any way.
However, in the film, the director strives to present the estranged relationship between Frankie and his daughter. The director and screenwriter portrayed his daughter with the sole purpose of undoubtedly increasing the audience's sentimentality for Frankie.
It was Frankie's own choice to put most of his energy into boxing, and under the teaching of individualism, Katie was able to take care of herself, which was a manifestation of self-reliance that individualism attaches great importance to.
By shooting these scenes, the director shows the audience the alienated father-daughter relationship brought about by American individualism in the movie Million Dollar Baby, and the loneliness and pain it brings to Frankie.
Family happiness and interests
Non-traditional family relationships—which transcend personal interests and even the overall well-being of the family—are also reflected between Maggie and her family members, both of whom care only about their own interests.
In this film, the inconsistency between Maggie and her family also catches the attention of the audience. The following section will discuss the distant relationship between Maggie and her family under the core values of American individualism.
Margo Martindale plays Maggie's white trash mom, a nasty, creepy selfish woman who saves enough money to buy a house after Maggie wins a few games.
One day, she had Frankie drive home to show her mother the house she had bought her. When they arrived at the trailer park where her family lived, her sister Madel came out of the house and said, "Oh my God. "Mom, come out. Mary M. Here "poker face.
Then, Maggie's mother, Earrings, appears with a melancholy face, and in Mader and Erlene's hearts, they wonder what kind of trouble Maggie will cause them today.
Their ugly faces contrasted with Maggie's excitement when she saw her family, and then Frankie took them to see the house Maggie had bought for them, and inside the house, Maggie came up with some trouble she must have never thought of, and Madel and Earrings looked at the house without a hint of joy on their faces.
epilogue
Individualism is one of the most important aspects of American culture and therefore through one of the most popular pastimes that affects people the most.
Revealing its negative impact on American society is of great significance