Emilia Clarke, best known for playing Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones and demanding equal opportunity nudity on the hit HBO series, has been caught up in a far more sinister controversy.
MORE: GAME OF THRONE SPOILERS AND PREDICTIONS
Clarke stars in a new weepie film Me Before You, based on the 2012 bestselling novel by Jojo Moyes, as a caregiver who falls in love with her quadriplegic patient Will, played by Sam Claflin.
Unable to come to terms with his accident that left him paralyzed and ruined his career as a wealthy banker, at the end of the film (MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT) Will takes his life in a Swiss clinic via assisted suicide.
Disabled activists are strongly objecting to the film’s message, which they say promotes the notion that if you are disabled, life is not worth living.
The film’s controversial assisted suicide plotline bears similarities to the show that put Clarke on the map. ‘Throners’ will need no reminding that at the end of the first season of Game Of Thrones, Clarke’s character, Daenerys, smothered her husband Khal Drogo to death with a pillow when he was left in a vegetative state after he was poisoned by an evil priestess.
British actress Cherylee Houston slammed Me Before You as “little more than a disability snuff movie giving audiences the message that if you’re a disabled person, you’re better off dead.”
@jojomoyes and how many actual caretakers & disabled did you speak to before writing your story? Will is a POOR example of disabled #Ableism
— Turbo™ (@TheRealTurbo) May 28, 2016
Ben Mattlin, a quadriplegic author, wrote in the Chicago Tribune that Me Before You “romanticizes and glamorizes an early exit for those who already feel marginalized, who feel they are living on borrowed time.”
How dare team begin @mebeforeyou tell #disabled we are quick to judge? To say we need to “walk in his shoes” shows insensitivity & ignorance
— Mik Scarlet (@MikScarlet) May 30, 2016
Not so, says Clarke. ‘What we are particularly showing is one point of view taken from Jojo Moyes’ book,” she told Metro. “It is hard because when they haven’t seen it, you sort of can’t have a full view of what it is we’re trying to say.”
The criticism does seem wide of the mark—the theme of the film is hardly new, having been previously explored in Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby and Julia Roberts’ flop Dying Young.
The end of the film does not glorify Will’s death given that nobody else in the film supports his decision to terminate his life. And isn’t it a tragic, time-honored tradition that people die at the end of the weepies?
FAMÍLIA ♥ @samclaflin @emiliaclarke @jojomoyes #TheaSharrock #JanetMcTeer pic.twitter.com/d58jIt3D5T
— Sam Claflin Brasil (@SamClaflinBR) May 24, 2016
Me Before You director Thea Sharrock said her film was actually life-affirming: “Within that is one man who has a choice to make, and he makes his own individual choice, and that’s another thing that I think is incredibly important for everyone to remember—that we have all earned the right to have our own choice.”
The film has also been heavily criticized for using able-bodied stars rather than disabled actors. But Sharrock says she did explore that option. “We spoke to a few, but there were limited options, with due respect to those we saw,” she said. “To be honest, it was always going to be a question of finding someone who would meet what the studio was going to require as well as what we needed.”
SJWs keen to join in at the outrage surrounding the premise of Me Before You might like to reflect on the fact that the film, in having a female star, female director, female scriptwriter and female producers, is a good deal more progressive than they might be giving it credit for.
— Mike Ervin (@smartasscrip) May 31, 2016
