Our Final Draft
Joshua Schulz on the Revisionist Narrative of Christian Hope
In the 2012 film Flight, Denzel Washington plays a pilot named Whip Whitaker, who, while experiencing the catastrophic mechanical failure of a commercial aircraft carrying over one hundred souls, does what looks to be courageous: he calmly guides his crew and the mangled plane to a crash landing that saves all but a few passengers. When the wing flaps controlling the jet's altitude get stuck in a position that drives the plane towards the ground, Whitaker inverts the aircraft so he can control its descent until he can put it down in a field. It is an amazing feat of technical prowess.
After the crash, many call Whip a hero. As the film continues, however, we learn that the meaning and value of his actions inthe aircraft are not so straightforward. The movie clearly and painfully portrays Whip as a late-stage alcoholic, a compulsive liar, and an absentee father. We see him deliberately using his friends, family, and lovers as props for his addiction until he has alienated everyone but his coke dealer. His character is incontinent bordering on vicious.
The opening scenes of Flight are thus a metaphor of Whitaker's life. Caught in a downward spiral brought on by alcoholism, he appears to the world to be soaring when in fact he has desperately inverted his priorities so as to maintain a similitude of life just a little longer, sacrificing relationship after relationship to keep himself in booze. The dramatic tension of the film arises from our hope that he will, at the last moment, save everyone caught onboard his failing life rather than trap them all in the wreckage.
Courage or Despair?
Given what we learn about Whip's character, we must ask whether his actions in the cockpit were truly heroic. I would argue that, far from being so, they were simply the actions of a despairing man with nothing to lose. Just as a glutton might, out of embarrassment, eat temperately at a public function, so too a vicious man might, in a given situation, act like a courageous one.
Several considerations support this interpretation of Whip's actions. Though he feels proud of the technical prowess he displayed during the flight, he cannot feel the noble pleasure one experiences upon acting rightly, because he knows his actions were occasioned by alcohol and cocaine rather than courage. Indeed, all the pilots who subsequently try to re-create his stunt in flight simulators are unsuccessful, suggesting that while the outcome of Whip's action may have been good, the act itself was foolhardy—aviation's equivalent of charging a tank with a bayonet. Its result was only incidentally (or perhaps providentially) happy rather than tragic.
Furthermore, in light of his subsequent self-destructive behavior, we could also argue that Whip emerges from the crisis frustrated by the fact that he is still alive. A courageous man will feel pain when he faces a life-threatening situation and relief when he escapes from it. Whip, by contrast, is clearly unmoved at the prospect of death, either in the plane or as a result of his binge drinking. He is fearful of going to jail for flying inebriated—that would cut off his access to alcohol—and only appears relieved when he retreats from the world into an alcoholic coma.
Whip Whitaker thus shows us that individual acts are not self-interpreting: different persons may engage in the same behavior but with differing degrees of moral value. Nor can the meaning of an act be determined merely by looking at the emotions and intentions of the agent at the time, important as those considerations are. We must also attend to the narrative arc of his moral life—in this case, to Whip's substance abuse, dishonesty, cruelty, sloth, and despair—which frames his actions and fits them into the larger story of his person.
Bilbo's Ploy
As a point of contrast to Whitaker, let us consider Bilbo Baggins's apparent betrayal of the dwarves in chapter 17 of J. R. R. Tolkein's The Hobbit. This occurs after the death of Smaug the dragon at the hand of Bard the bowman, and revolves around the Arkenstone, a beautiful gem Bilbo has found in the dragon's lair and secretly pocketed despite its being greatly coveted by his friend, the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield, who has something of a rightful claim to it. (How rightful we will not consider here.)
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