TY  - CHAP
AB  - Million Dollar Baby displays a contrived, provocative, and dramatic sequence of events that culminates in the death of a paralyzed woman, Maggie (played by Hilary Swank), a boxer by trade, who became a quadriplegic after her opponent “cold-cocked” her during a championship fight. The cheap shot caused her to fall on her wooden stool and break her neck. She calls upon her trainer, Frankie (played by Clint Eastwood), to kill her through an injection of adrenaline. Maggie claims that she has already died in that she can never be a boxer, which represents the only self she knows and loves. Ignoring Frankie's efforts to dissuade her, Maggie evokes a story from their shared past. The story, first told in a diner in which Maggie and Frankie had stopped to eat, described her own father's decision to kill the family dog. She iterates the story from her hospital bed and begs Frankie to do what her dad (to whom Maggie refers as “daddy”) did to the dog. In effect, she asks Frankie to assist her suicide, as she defines herself as useless beyond any reason to live.
VL  - 36
SN  - 978-0-85724-796-4, 978-0-85724-795-7/0163-2396
DO  - 10.1108/S0163-2396(2011)0000036009
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-2396(2011)0000036009
AU  - Katovich Michael A.
ED  - Norman K. Denzin
ED  - Lonnie Athens
ED  - Ted Faust
PY  - 2011
Y1  - 2011/01/01
TI  - Death Becomes Mead: Toward a Radical Interactionist Reading of Million Dollar Baby
T2  - Blue Ribbon Papers: Interactionism: The Emerging Landscape
T3  - Studies in Symbolic Interaction
PB  - Emerald Group Publishing Limited
SP  - 161
EP  - 181
Y2  - 2024/04/19
ER  -