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The mother situation
An Australian short film about euthanasia is a comic hit.
Amour, a film about assisted suicide, won an Academy Award as the Best Foreign Film in 2012. It was beautifully acted, quite melodramatic, and a poignant advertisement for euthanasia. Other directors, however, have taken a more down-to-earth view of how euthanasia might operate. This Australian black comedy, The Mother Situation (click to see film*) won first prize in Tropfest, the world's largest short film festival, a couple of weeks ago.
"House prices are at a constant level of chatter in Sydney and so is suicide," said the director, Matt Day. “I heard someone talk about this out one night saying: 'Well he's going to be fine when his parents die because he's got the house at Balmain and the place on Pearl Beach'. And all that stuff just kind of congealed and came together and made me laugh… so I thought 'I’ll write it and I'll make it'."
Nonetheless, Day insists the film is not opposed to aid in dying. "One of the actors did say to me 'I love this, it's hilarious but let me ask you, is this anti-euthanasia' and I said: 'no it's not'".
* "The Mother Situation" has not been posted to YouTube yet.
The English philosopher Roger Scruton yesterday published an article on the New York Times contending that humans are different from animals. "Almost all people believe that it is a crime to kill an innocent human, but not to kill an innocent tapeworm," he writes. Humans are special.
The comments ran about 100:1 against Scruton and human exceptionalism: "my dog is much smarter and kinder than most people I know ... People who look for differences between humans and non-humans remind me of the racists who look for differences between blacks and whites ... The only thing special about human beings is our stunning arrogance and self-importance ... Grow up. Get over it ... Anyone who has lived with a dog knows that the other animals are just like us" and so on.
It's quite a good article. I recommend it. And by coincidence we deal with the same topic below, using the occasion of a Vegan campaign to convince people that they are nothing special.
Michael Cook
Editor
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The mother situation
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