Write an outline as the first step of the Ethical Analysis Essay that is due near the end of the term. The Ethical Analysis Essay requires that you analyze a film’s ethical dimensions that include its characters and the story.
First, select a film from the list of available works. If you cannot access these films, you may select a different film, but you will require prior approval from your instructor.
Films for Ethical Analysis Essay
John Q (2002) – Story centers on a man whose nine-year-old son desperately needs a life-saving transplant. When he discovers that his medical insurance will not cover surgery costs and alternative government aid is unavailable, John Q. Archibald takes a hospital emergency room hostage in a final attempt to save his child.
The Jacket (2005) – A Gulf war veteran is wrongly sent to a mental institution for insane criminals, where he becomes the object of a doctor’s experiments, and his life is completely affected by them. The film centers on a wounded Gulf war veteran who returns to his native Vermont suffering from bouts of amnesia.
The Last King of Scotland (2006) – While in Uganda on a medical mission, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan becomes the personal physician and close confidante of dictator Idi Amin. Although at first Dr. Garrigan feels flattered by his new position of power, he soon realizes that Amin’s rule is soaked in blood, and complicit in the atrocities. Garrigan faces the fight of his life as he tries to escape Amin’s grasp.
My Sister’s Keeper (2009) – Told from multiple perspectives, My Sister’s Keeper follows the story of 13-year-old Anna Fitzgerald as she sues her parents, Brian, and Sara, for medical emancipation. Anna was conceived as an allogeneic donor for her sister, Kate, who has acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL).
Extraordinary Measures (2010) – John Crowley is a man on the corporate fast-track, with a beautiful wife and three children. Just as his career is taking off, he learns that his two youngest kids have a fatal disease. John leaves his job and devotes himself to saving their lives. He joins forces with Dr. Robert Stonehill, a brilliant but eccentric scientist. Together they battle the medical and corporate establishment, racing against time for a cure.
Contagion (2011) – When Beth Emhoff returns to Minnesota from a Hong Kong business trip, she attributes the malaise she feels to jet lag. However, two days later, Beth is dead, and doctors tell her shocked husband that they have no idea what killed her. Soon, many others start to exhibit the same symptoms, and a global pandemic explodes. Doctors try to contain the lethal microbe, but society begins to collapse as a blogger (Jude Law) fans the flames of paranoia.
Awakenings (1990) – The story of a doctor’s extraordinary work in the Sixties with a group of catatonic patients he finds languishing in a Bronx hospital. Speculating that their rigidity may be akin to an extreme form of Parkinsonism, he seeks permission from his skeptical superiors to treat them with L-dopa, a drug that was used to treat Parkinson’s disease at the time.
Coma (1978) – A young doctor in a hospital discovers that many patients are being induced into comas from simple routine surgeries. She soon finds a deep conspiracy developing that leads her to believe that nothing is as it seems. The comas are deliberate acts to permanently incapacitate patients who are later transferred to a facility called The Jefferson Institute where illegal activities are being conducted with comatose subjects.
Extreme Measures (1996) – A young British doctor confronts a famous colleague about the true methods of his work. The doctor wishes to determine why the body of a man who died in his emergency room disappears.
Gattaca (1997) – Vincent Freeman has always fantasized about traveling into outer space but is grounded by his status as a genetically inferior “in-valid.” He decides to fight his fate by purchasing Jerome Morrow’s genes, a laboratory-engineered “valid.” He assumes Jerome’s DNA identity and joins the Gattaca space program, where he falls in love with Irene. An investigation into the death of a Gattaca officer complicates Vincent’s plans.
Next, view the film and then write an outline. This outline should be written using the following subheadings (Introduction and Ethical Analysis). Write 2-5 sentences for each criterion (Introduction and Ethical Analysis). The outline be a minimum of 250 words in length.
Introduction (Film Synopsis & Ethical Theory)
• Brief film synopsis that includes the medical ethical dilemma present in the film.
• Ethical theory you have chosen to apply to the film. Select one (or more):
• Virtue Ethics
• Utilitarian Ethics
• Moral Sense Theory (Conscience)
• Social Contract Theory
• The Ethics of Care
• Kantian Ethics
• Moral Relativism
Ethical Analysis
1. Moral values present in the film (as they relate to the ethical theory you have chosen)
2. Moral conflict or instances of moral values in conflict
3. Moral of the story or what can be learned from applying the ethical theory to the story