3/20/24

 Wednesday, March 20, 2024

In bed at 9 after dozing on and off on the BL, then on to the LZB with shoulder pain, the pain worsened around midnight, back to bed but no good, up at 12:35.  Let Lilly out.  35°, high of 36°, low of 25° toward dawn.  The wind is NW at 16 mph, 9-18/28.  Sunrise at  6:53, sunset at 7:04, 12+10.

Pain, etc.  It was another disjointed night.  I'm concerned that the combination of Diclofenac, lots of Tylenol, and physical therapy doesn't appear to be doing much in terms of improving the pain situation, deterioration overnight, effect on sleep, and even cognitive functioning.  The pain and loss of functionality is mentally distracting, making me feel a bit 'brain dead.'  

I'm grateful to Chie Hayakawa for writing and directing Plan 75.    

Plan 75 is a film by director Chie Hayakawa starring actress Chieko Baisho playing Michi, a 78-year-old housekeeping maid in a hotel.  A premise of the film is that Japan has passed a law creating a 'right' for any citizen more than 74 years old to choose to 'die with dignity,' i.e., to be euthanized.  Under the law, it is no longer necessary to be in irremediable pain or at the end stage of a terminal illness, all that is necessary is that you be 75 or older.  The reason for the law was that in Japan's aging society, the elderly have come to be recognized as a drain on the economy, depriving younger citizens of resources that could be put to more productive use than keeping alive old 'takers' at the expense of younger 'makers.'  The film is chillingly realistic.  First, it depicts the way such a law would operate, i.e., by enticing the poorest, loneliest elders to opt for suicide.  The program, in its liberal and libertarian kindness and respect for individual autonomy, is purely voluntary.  No one needs to sign up; once signed up, a participant can opt out anytime.  Of course, those who enroll are those with the least resources, economic, social, and otherwise, to enjoy life, i.e., those like Michi, the unemployed, unemployable, familyless housemaid.  Secondly, the film depicts ageism in a modern, industrial, technocratic, bureaucratic society.  Michi loses her job at the hotel because she is noticeably old and slow-moving.  The guests prefer to see younger, more vigorous help making their beds and cleaning their rooms.  Just as her age accounted for her losing her job and income, it prevented her from getting another job, except as a traffic signaller, akin to a school crossing guard.  Thirdly, the film depicts some of the loneliness of old age, especially for those who live alone, without support from family and close friends, and why for such people, choosing to die might be preferable to futures of loneliness and increasing declines in mobility, functionality, and social connections.  The death of contemporary friends and family members plays into this.  Fourthly, the film shows that it is always possible to get people to work in even the grisly business of servicing mass suicides, illustrated best by Maria, a young expat Philopina who needs money to pay for her 5-year-old daughter's heart surgery.  Most significantly, the film shows how easily "the right to die" can get transformed to "the duty to die."  How selfish of me to stay alive eating up resources that could be put to use bettering the lives of others.  Better that I should die so that they can live better.  In modern life, this duty-to-die problem comes up with the elderly requiring long-term care the cost of which is eating up the estate that would otherwise go to heirs. 

The opening sequence of the film depicts a mass murder in an elderly residence of some sort, inspired by a 2016 mass murder in a Japanese city in which the murderer stabbed to death 19 residents of a home for disabled people because they were wastefully and selfishly using national resources that he thought should be devoted to productive members of society, or in Paul Ryan's Ayn Randish world, "makers rather than takers."

The director of the film, Chie Hayakawa, is a woman.  I feel that this film could not have been made by a man.  It is too sensitive, too subtle, especially in its portrayal of Michi, whose facial expression rarely changes throughout the almost 2-hour-long movie, and whose dialogues are scant, but who nevertheless is revealed as living, feeling, thinking, sensitive, and independent human being.

The film is a futuristic science-fiction piece but it is also a devastating assessment of the value of life, the value of human beings in modern society.  More accurately I should say it depicts the lack of value of the lives of the marginalized: the elderly, the poor, the disabled, the "takers."

A painting I started years ago and never finished; it seems apt.

One year ago, I wrote in this journal:  "I am old and just about worn out, my parts mostly failing.  I have cut down on the time I spend watching the news on television because it is so - what is the word? - depressing doesn't quite cut it, desponding is closer to it, the verb form of Bunyon's Slough of Despond.  Can I cut down on reading the newspapers?  Become more of a recluse than I am now?  Do the ladies in the cloister know something that I don't?  Are they fools, or am I?  I fear for my children & grandchildren, all children, all grandchildren.  I despond."  Are things better now?  I'm semi-hobbled by shoulder pain and arthritis pain, a bit addled by sleep disruption, and the "VA Note" on my last ER visit had me at "mild cognitive decline."  The nation is as divided as ever, Trump seems likely to regain power over the federal government, and Biden has us complicit in a genocide.  Charlie Downer, the guy you don't want to talk with at a party.