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 captain, together with one
of the stewardesses, had been drinking alcohol and sniffing cocaine not only the
night before the flight, but also within a few hours of take-off—on the theory
that the cocaine would counter the drunkenness and thus render his brain fit to
fly. Whip Whitaker is an active alcoholic and drug addict, and yet he had somehow
managed to reach the rank of captain. His extraordinary flying techniques tell
us that he is a very experienced pilot, and society, like the ancient Greeks,
values excellence even as being a virtue in itself. In a flight simulator after
the crash, no other pilot could safely land the plane, and yet Whitaker has
done just that, in an open field—even having managed to keep the plane in the
air through a populated area. So the ethics of him being drunk and high may
seem to be moot, given his skill in being able to make up for any negative impacts.
Even if there are no such impacts, there is concern that he was drinking vodka
even during the flight. It is not just a matter of breaking rules. That he
could have put the passengers’ lives in jeopardy may be enough to find him ethically
culpable.
I contend that the captain did
indeed contribute to the mechanical failure of the vertical stabilizer in the plane’s
tail section, and thus to the crash itself. Although not causally related, that
he slips on the first step of outdoor stairs, admittedly in the rain, on his
way to the plane’s main door tells us that he is not as smooth as he pretends
to be. More significantly, to get out of the admittedly severe turbulence while
climbing to 9000 feet, he accelerates the plane faster than it should go in turbulence,
and then just before “punching through” to smooth air, he accelerates even
more, causing passengers to involuntarily lean forward in their seats. The ingested
cocaine may be behind his excitement while the plane is climbing while still in
the very rough air. Everyone else is in fear, but he is saying, “Ride em cowboy!”
He is definitely high in more than one sense of the word. Pushing the plane
beyond its mechanical limits may very likely be why the vital screw in the
vertical stabilizer broke when the plane was stable at cruising altitude. So the
fact that he was high (and drunk) may be very relevant indeed to why even just
six people died (and others, including the copilot, were seriously injured).
The series of flying maneuvers
that the caption puts into effect during the free-fall is extraordinary; even
the co-pilot is not able to grasp why they could work, but they do. The result
is an inverted, or upside-down plane flying at a low altitude horizontally
until the captain has the copilot reverse to maneuvers to roll the plane around
so it can land in a field. This reverse roll is excellent, and the captain even
gets the pitch of the plane right. The film can be understood as intentionally
presenting the viewers with an ethical problem wherein the captain’s violation
of his duty to fly sober and his related choice to fly the ascending plane faster
than its limit in turbulence, which, after all, was only severe for a moment
and otherwise merely rough may have stressed the vertical stabilizer in the
tail to the point of breaking are to be weighed against his masterful flying out
of a dive and the consequence of only six people onboard dying. It is
admittedly very difficult even for an ethicist to weigh such different factors,
especially because good consequences are being put in relation to violating an important
ethical duty for pilots. It is not as though religious belief can obviate coming
to a verdict in terms of ethics. For centuries at least, the assumption that a person
must be religious to be moral held up, though with the rise of secularity and
humanism in the twentieth century in the West, ethics has to be taken seriously
in itself.
The attitude of the film towards
religion is equivocal. On the one hand, when a wing slices a church steeple in
half, both the captain and the copilot seem to take the event as a sign having
more meaning than would merely ruining part of a structure. That the reactions of
both pilots are shown in slow motion suggests that a statement is being made
about religion is intended by the filmmakers. In risking the lives of all 102
souls on board by drinking and snorting cocaine not only the night before, but
also a few hours before take-off, Captain Whitaker is, as it were, offending
the deity. The serious undertone of this is in contrast to the way in which organized
religion is viewed through the film’s eyes. After the crash, the copilot, whose
legs are crushed so he will never walk (or be able to fly) again, is at first
furious with Whitaker, whose drinking the copilot had smelled before takeoff. Strangely,
the copilot apparently forgives the captain and even asks him to pray in the
hospital room along with the copilot’s wife. The religiosity seems too fake to
be genuine; in fact, the copilot is probably using religion to repress his anger
at the captain. Also after the crash, we are informed that the small group of Christians
who had been outside their church whose steeple was smashed by the plane have
been meeting outside every Sunday since that eventful day with the implication
being that the field or the parishioners at the field has some kind of ongoing
religious significance; the church itself is fine even though it is missing a
steeple.
At the end of the film,
Captain Whitaker is testifying before aviation regulators on the crash. Even
though he is praised for his flying talent and his statement that he had not
been drinking or inhaling cocaine was believed even by the chairwoman, he cannot
bring himself morally to state that one of the stewardesses who died in the
crash must have been coming to work intoxicated. Unknown to the pilot, that
stewardess lost her life because she had unbuckled herself from her chair during
the inverted part of the flight to save a boy who had fallen to the ceiling of
the cabin. She, rather than the copilot or the church-goers who keep returning
to the field to worship, represent genuine Christianity of the heart by evincing
selfless compassion as if it were a basic human instinct. Whitaker has
compassion for her memory and reputation and is thus finally willing to stand
on moral principle even though he knows that the consequences will include
years in prison.
Consequences, especially those that are beneficial to oneself, do not rule ethics; there are normative principles worth putting before positive consequences. The worth of such principles does not come from merely their function as a constraint on good consequences, for that would be a reduction to functionality. Even the captain’s excellent flying out of a vertical dive (after having flied badly in exceeding the plane’s speed limit for turbulence) does not outweigh even for him the worth of the ethical principle of telling the truth, especially in owning up to one’s own malfeasance and negligence. Film can indeed place an audience in an ethical quandary from which much can be learned as well as experienced about ethical theory. In the present case, deontology (e.g., duty) is not merely a constraint on how much benefit can be ethically sought and enjoyed.