“Defends The Helpless, Upholds The Weak”

I love the movie “Dragonheart.”  Starring Sean Connery, Dennis Quaid, and Julie Christie, the story is a fairy tale, the classic telling of Good v. Evil.  Set in England of long ago, the movie tells of one lone surviving dragon, who, though fierce in appearance, is a good and old soul, and gives a piece of his heart to save a dying boy.  The boy, a prince soon to be king, is being tutored and schooled by his knight-mentor, Dennis Quaid, and soon proves unworthy of the noble act, though it takes his blindly adoring mentor longer to see that than it does us.

Sean Connery provides the voice of the dragon, and no one could do it better.  As I said, it is classic good-fights-bad, and you can surely guess who wins.

The knight mentoring the young prince has a knight’s heart, full of noble aspirations for his young charge, and a moral compass that does not waver.  He quotes the Old Code to the future king more than once, but sadly there is no fertile spot in the young man’s heart for such words to take root.

The dragon, however, also lives by the Old Code.  And the dragon’s heart, honorable and moral, proves ultimately fatal to the dishonorable and immoral boy king.

“A knight is sworn to valor, his heart knows only virtue; his blade defends the helpless, his might upholds the weak; his words speak only truth; his wrath undoes the wicked.”

The Old Code sums up the character traits of a righteous man or woman, very similar to the laws found in the Bible.

Hollywood loves to make movies about noble ideals and good triumphing over evil.  Regrettably, the people who make the movies–writers, directors, producers, actors–as a group do not aspire to live by these same ideals.  [PLEASE NOTE:  I am NOT speaking here of the particular individuals who made the movie "Dragonheart."]  Known not for their moral courage nor their “knight’s old code,” they are more often known by the low standards they set for themselves and others.  There certainly are exceptions to this, probably more than we know of.

The outcry and outrage over director Roman Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland and pending extradition to the United States to finally serve his sentence for a despicable crime he committed over thirty years ago is the most recent and most egregious example of the entertainment community’s lack of any moral courage.  If one were inclined toward generosity, one might say that they are displaying their open-mindedness.  I’m not so inclined, and I think they’re revealing their depravity.

“Defend the helpless..” Does Whoopi “it-wasn’t rape-rape” Goldberg see Polanski as the helpless one in the heinous act he perpetrated upon a drugged and inebriated thirteen year-old girl?

“Uphold the weak..” Is it Debra “three-decades-old-case” Wingers’s position that Polanski was weaker than his thirteen year-old incapacitated child victim?  What is possibly the saddest fact is that most likely there are more people in the Hollywood community that do not support Polanski than do, but they are hesitant, even fearful, to speak up.  Those who loudly protest and speak out against the “unfair” treatment that Polanski has received are not afraid that their careers might be affected; they feel perfectly safe putting their own low bar for morals on display.

I read this morning that support for Polanski does seem to be waning, and a backlash is brewing. I hope so.

Writers, actors, and directors love to portray noble deeds and moral courage for the big screen, and for us to pay to see, but don’t apply those standards to their own lives, as is certainly their right, and I recognize that.

But it doesn’t stop me from wishing for better from them, and for them.  What so many people don’t realize is how much happier is a life with principles.

I wish for them a dragon’s heart, a heart filled with light, song, and joy, a “heart that knows only virtue.”

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Tagged as: Bible, Dragonheart movie, Hollywood, Hollywood backlash for supporters of Polanski, morals, righteousness, Roman Polanski, the Old Code