Posts tagged Pop Culture

In the course of my regular internet surfing, of which I am a veritable Bodhi, I stumbled across an interesting little bit of business on the great snark site, Television Without Pity. It was clearly in response to the upcoming film, The Box, which is a big screen version of a Twilight Zone episode, where a down-on-their-luck couple is given a mysterious box with a button on it, and told that if they push the button, they will receive a million dollars. However, in doing so, someone they don’t know will die.

See, it’s a morality play, about what’s important; money, or a stranger’s life? Remember that, it’ll be important.

The fun little activity thought up by the TWoP people was a series of similar “pick something good, with the understanding that something bad will happen” scenarios. There were some mild questions about things like whether you would bring Pushing Daisies back by cancelling Glee, or if you’d sacrifice future Star Trek sequels for the latest movie to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. You know, real nail biters.

Then there was this little nugget, which I think is one of the only legitimate questions on the list, if you really want to make people think about the moral dilemma that The Box is trying to evoke:

This question caused vicious outrage from the respondents. I mean, people saying the site should be boycotted, people demanding apologies, people saying that clearly the site had become shit…they were all out for blood. People claiming that this was the most vile question that could have been asked, since clearly the value of a human being was more than a simple movie.

But let’s look at this calmly, and logically, shall we? I mean, that’s what we do here.

We all like to pretend that we are absolutely, spotlessly moral individuals. Society has upheld the fact that caring about others is proof of this. But there are some things to think about with this question, that the knee-jerk ranters seem to be missing.

• If someone from Heath Ledger’s family had stumbled across this, then I could understand the outrage. But despite how entitled the public feels about their celebrities, they are not our friends, and we have no claim on them, or what may or may not be a tasteless and crass hypothetical.
• The plot of The Box, and the underlying conundrum, is “would you trade your own happiness for a stranger’s life?”. And make no mistake, that’s the point that makes it a real tough call; it’s not a friend, or family member, or even that nice lady down at the coffee shop who gets you your danish in the morning. This is a stranger, and you don’t know them. You know, like you don’t know Heath Ledger. And if you thought he was awesome in The Dark Knight, which clearly, most of you did, and seeing as no one really gave much of a shit about him before that, it’s again, your happiness versus his life.
• People like to pretend that human life is immeasurable in value. But that’s neither logical nor practical. Of course, a human life has value. And it has to be worth a lot, if we’re going to be able to feel good about ourselves. But put simply, a government has to make safety decisions for the budget based on something. And you aren’t about to pay an infinite amount of taxes, so clearly there has to be a valuation, and it has to be realistic.

  • The EPA values a human life at $6.9 million.
  • Standford has put the estimate considerably lower, at $129,000 per person. (Granted, that was last year. Maybe we got a bump.)
  • The US Department of Transportation goes with $2.2 million per person.

  Based on these standards, and the fact that The Dark Knight made roughly $533 million domestically, economists would argue that his death was a good investment. There are no guarantees that any other movie he made would have brought in that kind of money. Brokeback Mountain, arguably Ledger’s most successful film prior to playing the joker, made less than a fifth of that. So his bankability as a star wasn’t established until The Dark Knight.

Which makes the question of whether you’d prefer the movie or his life a very easy logical question. It’s simply the manufactured morality that gums up the works. Put it in perspective, people!