Flight

With utility and consequences valued so much in Western society at least as of 2012, when the film, Flight, was released, the story-world of the film may seem odd in that doing what’s right comes out on top, even at the expense of knowingly losing benefits and incurring costs personally. In other words, deciding on the basis of conscience even at the expense of good consequences for oneself is possible even in a culture in which “saving one’s skin” rather than doing what is right is the norm. By immersing viewers in a story-world, a narrative with well-developed characters can highlight a societal blind-spot, and thus potentially result in a better society in which people make the effort to re-value their ethical values to the extent that their dominant values support consequentialism above standing on principle even though bad consequences for oneself can be anticipated. In the film, 96 out of 102 of the people on board survive the plane crash even though the metal bird had been in an uncontrolled vertical fall from 30,000 feet. How could the captain not be seen as a hero? If all that matters are results, 96 out of 102 is not bad at all, and being able to get out of a dive even as the tail stabilizer keeps pointing the plane downward is extraordinary.

The full essay is at "Flight."

Mickey 17

Ethical, theological, and political issues are salient in the film, Mickey 17 (2025), which is about Mickey Barnes, a character who is repeatedly cloned on a space-ship and on a distant planet. The one-way trip alone takes over four years, during which time Mickey is tasked with dangerous tasks because when he dies, another clone is simply made. A mistake is made when the 18^th clone of Mickey is made even though the 17^th is still alive; they are “multiples,” which is a crime for a theological reason. I contend that reason is erroneous, as is the political, ethical, and theological regime that undergirds clones being expendable. 

The full essay is at "Mickey 17".