Douglas W. Kmiec’s piece (“Bridge over troubled waters,” Op-Ed, June 9) succeeded in leaving me troubled–troubled about his powers of reasoning. Mr. Kmiec attacked the movie “The Bridges of Madison County” for being “another assault . . . upon common decency and the value of fidelity within marriage.” This judgment seems very odd to me, since the movie depicts a woman renouncing the great passion in her life in favor of her commitment to her husband and children.
What seems to bother Mr. Kmiec is not the decision made by this character (he approves of her ultimate choice) but the very attempt to show a genuine conflict between marriage and passion. In condemning the movie for simply showing an adulterous relationship, he confuses the artistic depiction of a situation with the advocacy of the behavior depicted.
Using this reasoning, one would have to condemn lots of classic works of art. For instance, what would Mr. Kmiec make of the family values depicted in Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”? Oh sure, I can hear him say, Tolstoy does in the end have Anna suffer for her “pseudo-love of passion” by throwing herself under the wheels of a train. But to get to that point of retribution one has to wade through hundreds of pages in which the beautiful Anna is shown in an adulterous relationship with the charismatic Count Vronski. In making this adulterous couple so attractive, wasn’t Tolstoy “condoning marital duplicity,” just as the makers of “Bridges” did in hiring such glamorous movie stars as Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood?
I’m not saying “Bridges” approaches the artistic level of “Anna Karenina.” I think both deserve to be judged as works of art, not as manuals on the ethics of marriage, which is how Mr. Kmiec would view them.
Mr. Kmiec, a law professor when not condemning movies, “seldom navigates beyond the non-fiction shelves of the public library.” After reading his column, I think he should stay on his side of the library.
