A Life Worth Saving
Unsolicited Thoughts on A Quiet Place Pt.2 and the Innate Value of Human Life
As more and more movies are made to make money in overseas markets, leading to Hollywood icons selling out to the communist party line (exhibit A: John Cena apologizing, in mandarin, for calling Taiwan a country) it is quite refreshing to see a movie made with purpose.
After the success of A Quiet Place (2018), John Krasinski, who directed and starred in the film noted in interviews that he never intended to do a sequel, but captivated by an idea to extend the story, he felt a duty to make Part 2.
Much can, and I hope will, be written about this movie as others digest the film and offer their perspectives. Themes on the necessity of community, value of strong parents, and courage in the midst of adversity, all figure into what makes this film a MUST SEE.
However, I want to take a different path. A Quiet Place Part 2 continues another thread from the first film worthy of further exploration: the understanding that every life has intrinsic value.
Present from the first film is the Abbott family’s young baby. This child is born into possibly the most hostile environment for a child imaginable, a world where one fit of crying at any time could spell destruction for the entire family. Yet, there is never a discussion to whether the baby is too much of a risk. Instead, the family bands together and finds resourceful ways to mitigate the risk knowing full-well one outburst could be deadly.
Another character, introduced in the new film, emphasizes the level of desperation when he says, “some people aren’t worth saving”. (Context omitted to prevent spoilers) Highlighting a deadly nihilism fostered by scarcity and despair. This character acts as the foil to the family’s spirit of hope.
These two differing approaches, with one trudging forward despite the added danger of bringing along an infant and the other hunkered down, depressed, living in a zero-sum game, set the stage for a major contrast in the movie.
However, this divide is not only present in the fictional world of A Quiet Place.
An insidious lie has seeped into our culture since the late 19th century with the growth of the eugenics movement claiming that for societies to remain stable, they must pursue policies that aim at what they call Zero Population Growth. According to a publication by Population Connection, one of the purveyors of this policy, “Zero population growth refers to a population that is unchanging — it is neither growing, nor declining; the growth rate is zero.” Pretty simply put, they want the number of babies born to be roughly equal to the number of deaths in a society in a given year.
Now, why is population control such a flawed concept and what does it have to do with A Quiet Place?
First off, we have seen what application of this principle has led to in practice. In China, the one-child (now two-child) policy has wreaked havoc on families across the country and foreshadowed the genocide happening to the Uighurs of Xinjiang today. The documentary, One Child Nation, does a terrific job spotlighting the horrors that were internally justified by arbitrary goals on birth rates leading to family separation and widespread, coercive actions by the state to use fear to control its citizens. The United States has laws on the books that remove funding from organizations that are involved in these efforts at the discretion of the President. To date, President Biden has yet to use these provisions despite evidence of genocide in Xinjiang.
Next, once governments have taken the reins to encourage fewer births, data shows that these nations begin to discriminate in which children should be born. Nowhere is this more apparent in the West than in the Nordic countries such as Denmark. This issue received more attention when an Atlantic article ran with this headline: “THE LAST CHILDREN OF DOWN SYNDROME, Prenatal testing is changing who gets born and who doesn’t. This is just the beginning.” Since earlier studies finding Denmark had cut down syndrome births in half using prenatal testing, more recent articles cite figures that only 18 children with down syndrome were born in 2019.’
Finally, this concept has taken root in our institutions, entrenching opposition to policies that seek to promote healthy family formation. Such entities as the Office of Population Affairs at the US Department of Health and Human Services and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) both actively stifle efforts at home and abroad to promote families and instead promote ill-founded notions of “family planning” that essentially mean promoting abortion. Initiatives to redirect resources from these population programs to life-affirming care for women and children were opposed by groups like the United Nations Foundation because of a belief in this problematic concept of population control.
Now, in this broader cultural context, it is clearer how A Quiet Place takes a different approach. Refusing to cede that a child’s value is dictated by the circumstances of its birth, the film runs countercultural to a very strong, insidious school of thought. The Abbott family sticks together even when society is in tatters. Throughout the film, Krasinski restores humanity to a world ravaged by monsters with a constant theme: life is worth saving.
Life is not a cost-benefit analysis; families are fundamental; strong parenting is key; the success sequence is real. These should not be controversial statements. In a well-ordered society, they aren’t.
I will stop my ramblings now and end with one ask: go see the movie, it’s well-worth your time and if you can, go see it in theaters. The better response to a movie with a real message, the better the chance, however slight, Hollywood might take notice.
