Return to Paradise
Why did Sheriff stay? Let us discuss the reasons for his staying and con them against the reasons he wouldn’t. There are many reasons for Sheriff to go back home to New York. Firstly, he may perceive that he has no ethical or moral place in Panang. Secondly, Beth had not found him trustworthy enough to indulge all the information about McBride to Sheriff. Third, Tony gave him a perfect opportunity to leave, and they were very close to going away. The reasons for Sheriff to stay are perhaps stronger than the reasons to leave. The first reason he should stay is because he made a commitment to Beth that he would stay. The second reason is, taking an example from Tony, he would look like a jerk; this is much more influential with the story than it seems. His third reason is that if he were to come back home, the media would flood him for allowing his friend to die.
Sheriff’s character gives the impression of being, at least morally, confused about where he stands in the world. Evidence of his admiration for moral and ethical figures throughout the movie is shown when he tells McBride that his caring for the orang-utans is ‘cool’. He also admires the virtue this boy exhibits, through caring for the environment and upholding his morals throughout the time that he is in contact with him, point in case his arguing at knife-point about the powdering of a rhino horn. Despite his admiration of ethical and moral behaviour, he still seems to find it a hassle and a personal sacrifice to behave this way all the time. Because he loses so much, and (at the time of bartering and imprisonment) gains so little with the Panang Deal, he has an excellent alibi to not go. “I just don’t have it in me”, a line repeated twice during the movie when he is asked to do morally upstanding work, seems like a mantra to him. The reason he would stay is that he made a commitment to Beth. He finally told Beth that he would be staying and he should have at least enough morality to stay consistent with and uphold what he said he would do.
Beth had lied from the get-go about being McBride’s lawyer. She didn’t tell Tony and Sheriff that she was his sister, and although at first it’s not evident, this implies that she would say anything to get them to go to Panang and see McBride and how he was doing in his cell. Beth had also offered to reimburse Sheriff with money to give him incentive to come back to Panang, and apparently to Sheriff, she offers sex. Unfortunately, these incentives only offend him, making Beth’s job much harder. To the viewer, this behaviour can be seen two ways; he could be truly insulted and refuse to go back himself, or! He could be looking for any way to find that would make Beth leave him alone. Most people feel guilty for insulting someone and they leave them alone afterwards to avoid awkward confrontation. Unfortunately for him, Beth is as persistent as she says she is, and then some. She comes back to try to get him to get back even more, and he has no more options left. Tony would have taken his attitude a step further; he was unhappy about leaving to Panang, and took any excuse to get out of it. Finally he acted, with a lack of a better word, like a jerk and he left. Sheriff should have taken this queue and stayed, if only to leave a good impression with the Malaysian justice system. All in all, he had nothing to go back to anyway. His father did say that he was wasting his life there in New York.
Tony gave him a perfect opportunity to leave; he had acted like a jerk but got out of being in Panang prison quite easily. Beth herself said that she hadn’t expected them to stay. It was evident in the movie that Tony was so adamant in leaving that he tried to find any excuse to go; he tries to prove that the imprisoned boy is insane, that he’s unhealthy, etc. Sheriff could have easily out-argued Beth with Tony by taking his side, but since he felt a loyalty to her, he didn’t. This was when she revealed that she was McBride’s sister. There doesn’t seem to be any reason this should change the circumstances they are under, but obviously it does and Tony takes this opportunity to flee the country. He tries to take Sheriff with him, but is not successful, and Sheriff stays to serve out his sentence. If he had gone back anyway, he would have been flooded by the media and known as the man who allowed his friend to die without taking the opportunity to show that he was at least somewhat of an ethical man. The media, luckily, won’t flood Tony, because the spotlight was thrown off him with the hanging of McBride despite Sheriff’s presence, and the outrage at the Americans by Malaysian government.
In conclusion, there are many reasons for Sheriff to have gone back home and allowed McBride to atone for the wrongdoings of Sheriff and Tony together with his own. But the reasons for staying outweigh the reasons for leaving both emotionally and ethically, and therefore Sheriff is ethically in a bind. Tony allowed himself to let go of any morals he had simply because it suited him at the time, but Sheriff stayed and kept his promise to Beth. Even though McBride was hung anyway and he lost six years of his life, there is a sure chance that Sheriff would, if nothing else, feel good about what he did and how he grew as a person.
Oh, and he got the girl.
1. Tony didn’t stay because he had no good reason to stay and every reason to go. Of course, this would be true under any circumstances; Tony is simply that kind of person. He is able to suspend his morals to suit his needs and wants. Tony has a family to go back to, one that he had wanted to begin quite soon. Three years in a Panang prison, no matter if he got his own cell or not, don’t seem like a sweet enough deal for him. Tony was looking for any excuse to leave Panang and go back to New York with his fiancée. He was trying to prove McBride was insane, or paranoid, or that the conditions inside the prison were too much for him to bear. Finally, he caught the fact that Beth hadn’t been entirely honest with them and clung to it like a boon. He also tried to convince Sheriff to go with him so that he didn’t seem like the only jerk, and that they could come back and take the blame together. This means he felt guilty about his decision and knew the storm that might attack him once he got home. But who could blame him for going back? Even with the guilt of letting one friend die or another get imprisoned, he still goes back because what’s waiting for him at the prison? Nothing, and his life would have to be postponed for three to six years. Not only that, his job and children would be postponed. But at least he had no children yet. If he were required to go after he had children, no one could make him since his child would miss him and wouldn’t develop the same way as if he had a father figure there.
2. Beth had a moral obligation to tell the truth to the people she was asking to be moral. It was hypocritical on one level of her to expect two independent men to be morally upright and adhere to ethical behaviour when a basic moral - telling the truth - had already been broken by her. Her behaviour should not have mattered though, as there shouldn’t be any question in either man’s mind at that point. They were already in Panang, Malaysia. They were already back to where they were those few years ago and they were about to go to court to see what their sentences were and how things would go for the future. At that point, there should be no doubt in either man’s mind as to whether they would stay or not. If they had any time to think, it was the week in New York, where they battled with Beth to go there or not. The fact that Beth lied has nothing to do with her being able to say anything just to get them to stay. It only meant that she cared for her brother so much as to remain anonymous and tried to get the two men to come to Malaysia. Even if her intention was to ‘say anything to get them to Panang’, that shouldn’t mean anything to the two men, since they already decided to stay and live out their sentences. Beth, although she did something wrong, had no obligation to tell them that she was his sister, because that is more so personal information than business information. The entire process was nothing more than business, and should not have been implied in any other way.
3. The press’ moral obligations are to remain unbiased, truthful and to keep their opinions away from the public. Today’s news has gotten much like scare-tactics. I recently turned on the television and flipped to Fox to see House (I love House!), and the Fox News was being advertised. They said things like, “Find out how your floors could be dangerous tonight at eleven! Are your children safe? The shocking truths that toy companies don’t want you to know! Where is your household pet? Petnappers strike the Anne Arbour area. Will roof tiles cause cancer in your thumbs? See tonight at eleven!” If it were appropriate to express myself in onomatopoeia in this question, I would. The media of news has gotten to the point where it’s more like an action-packed thriller you would see in the movie theatre instead of on your television. In fact, perhaps they should start making movies about the most shocking, horrifying, strange and suspicious material seen on the news in 2000 and forward, and they would have a box-office hit. The media has a moral obligation to remain unbiased. If the reporter in the movie had made a simple report on the event without making any kind of connotation that stated that Malaysia was backwater or strange, then it wouldn’t be picked up by the Malaysian justice system as offensive and perhaps Louis would be alive in the end. There is a moral obligation to be unbiased. As for M.J.’s apparent fixation with telling the story first, that’s only a business obligation. There is no ethical or moral root in that idea whatsoever.
4. In particular to the case that was presented in the film, there are some laws that must be ignored because they are unjust, but in the movie there didn’t seem to be any unjust laws. The law that the crime of trafficking must be punished by death is harsh, but it’s not unjust because there is an end to it. There is less crime because of it, as explained by the Malaysian judge. Their children and youth are safe, as also mentioned, and they don’t have as much drug misuse as Americans. Personally I’m not sure if this is true.
“Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in Malaysia are severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and heavy fines. Malaysia strictly enforces its drug laws. Malaysian legislation provides for a mandatory death penalty for convicted drug traffickers. Individuals arrested in possession of 15 grams (1/2 ounce) of heroin or 200 grams (seven ounces) of marijuana are presumed by law to be trafficking in drugs.”
- Travel Malaysia
“In Malaysia the response to illicit drug use has been largely punitive with the current goal of the Malaysian government being to achieve a drug-free society by 2015. This paper outlines the results of a desk-based situation assessment conducted over a 3-week period in 2004. Additional events, examined in 2005, were also included to describe more recent policy developments and examine how these came about. Despite punitive drug policy there has been a substantial rise in the number of drug users in the country. Over two-thirds of HIV/AIDS cases are among injecting drug users (IDUs) and there has been an exponential rise in the number of cases reported. Further, data suggest high-risk drug use practices are widespread. Harm reduction initiatives have only recently been introduced in Malaysia. The successful piloting of substitution therapies, in particular methadone and buprenorphine is cause for genuine hope for the rapid development of such interventions. In 2005 the government announced it will allow methadone maintenance programmes to operate beyond the pilot phase and needle and syringe exchange programmes will be established to serve the needs of IDUs.”
- Malaysia and harm reduction: The challenges and responses. International Journal of Drug Policy, Volume 18, Issue 2, Pages 136-140 G. Reid, A. Kamarulzaman, S. Sran
There are no resources to comparing Malaysia’s drug use with America’s, but apparently they are much more optimistic about their ‘drug free’ ideas than Americans.
In the general sense, when there is an unjust law, people have a moral obligation to either secretly or publicly oppose these laws. But in countries in which it is illegal to publicly protest or oppose the leader, it would be much harder to disobey a law, even if it were unjust. Take Nazi Germany for example. It was a law for every Jew to be taken away to a concentration camp and any Gentile who helped a Jew escape this was persecuted. Where is the justice in this kind of ethnocentrism and outright massacre? But I would be hard pressed to see any kind of reaction if a group (which is despised at least a tenth of how the Jews were at the time) in America were oppressed in even a tenth of the way the minorities were in Nazi Germany. Take the Native Americans. They are sent to little ‘reserves’ of their own land and made to live there if they want any of the rights that should be given to them by default for everything the Europeans did. There should be an outcry against that! The Native Americans whose land even now is being downsized because of development and the ones who are relocated over and over again because the government still wants their land - those are the ones who should be crying out and burning effigies and so on. Unjust laws and practices such as wire-tapping and detainment for no reason, those should also be protested actively. But they’re not. For some reason, we accept these. Yes, they’ve been happening for a long time, but that only adds insult to injury. These kinds of things shouldn’t ever happen, and it’s a basic human right to question laws which are unjust and immoral, or simply for the gain of a few instead of many. Laws are there to protect us, not to benefit a few privileged people, or to allow corporations to govern. But this is only in North America. Where else are the laws unjust? Who’s fighting them? People like Stephen Biko have to be heard around the world, not to just a few people at the time, but to generations afterwards.
Sheriff’s character gives the impression of being, at least morally, confused about where he stands in the world. Evidence of his admiration for moral and ethical figures throughout the movie is shown when he tells McBride that his caring for the orang-utans is ‘cool’. He also admires the virtue this boy exhibits, through caring for the environment and upholding his morals throughout the time that he is in contact with him, point in case his arguing at knife-point about the powdering of a rhino horn. Despite his admiration of ethical and moral behaviour, he still seems to find it a hassle and a personal sacrifice to behave this way all the time. Because he loses so much, and (at the time of bartering and imprisonment) gains so little with the Panang Deal, he has an excellent alibi to not go. “I just don’t have it in me”, a line repeated twice during the movie when he is asked to do morally upstanding work, seems like a mantra to him. The reason he would stay is that he made a commitment to Beth. He finally told Beth that he would be staying and he should have at least enough morality to stay consistent with and uphold what he said he would do.
Beth had lied from the get-go about being McBride’s lawyer. She didn’t tell Tony and Sheriff that she was his sister, and although at first it’s not evident, this implies that she would say anything to get them to go to Panang and see McBride and how he was doing in his cell. Beth had also offered to reimburse Sheriff with money to give him incentive to come back to Panang, and apparently to Sheriff, she offers sex. Unfortunately, these incentives only offend him, making Beth’s job much harder. To the viewer, this behaviour can be seen two ways; he could be truly insulted and refuse to go back himself, or! He could be looking for any way to find that would make Beth leave him alone. Most people feel guilty for insulting someone and they leave them alone afterwards to avoid awkward confrontation. Unfortunately for him, Beth is as persistent as she says she is, and then some. She comes back to try to get him to get back even more, and he has no more options left. Tony would have taken his attitude a step further; he was unhappy about leaving to Panang, and took any excuse to get out of it. Finally he acted, with a lack of a better word, like a jerk and he left. Sheriff should have taken this queue and stayed, if only to leave a good impression with the Malaysian justice system. All in all, he had nothing to go back to anyway. His father did say that he was wasting his life there in New York.
Tony gave him a perfect opportunity to leave; he had acted like a jerk but got out of being in Panang prison quite easily. Beth herself said that she hadn’t expected them to stay. It was evident in the movie that Tony was so adamant in leaving that he tried to find any excuse to go; he tries to prove that the imprisoned boy is insane, that he’s unhealthy, etc. Sheriff could have easily out-argued Beth with Tony by taking his side, but since he felt a loyalty to her, he didn’t. This was when she revealed that she was McBride’s sister. There doesn’t seem to be any reason this should change the circumstances they are under, but obviously it does and Tony takes this opportunity to flee the country. He tries to take Sheriff with him, but is not successful, and Sheriff stays to serve out his sentence. If he had gone back anyway, he would have been flooded by the media and known as the man who allowed his friend to die without taking the opportunity to show that he was at least somewhat of an ethical man. The media, luckily, won’t flood Tony, because the spotlight was thrown off him with the hanging of McBride despite Sheriff’s presence, and the outrage at the Americans by Malaysian government.
In conclusion, there are many reasons for Sheriff to have gone back home and allowed McBride to atone for the wrongdoings of Sheriff and Tony together with his own. But the reasons for staying outweigh the reasons for leaving both emotionally and ethically, and therefore Sheriff is ethically in a bind. Tony allowed himself to let go of any morals he had simply because it suited him at the time, but Sheriff stayed and kept his promise to Beth. Even though McBride was hung anyway and he lost six years of his life, there is a sure chance that Sheriff would, if nothing else, feel good about what he did and how he grew as a person.
Oh, and he got the girl.
1. Tony didn’t stay because he had no good reason to stay and every reason to go. Of course, this would be true under any circumstances; Tony is simply that kind of person. He is able to suspend his morals to suit his needs and wants. Tony has a family to go back to, one that he had wanted to begin quite soon. Three years in a Panang prison, no matter if he got his own cell or not, don’t seem like a sweet enough deal for him. Tony was looking for any excuse to leave Panang and go back to New York with his fiancée. He was trying to prove McBride was insane, or paranoid, or that the conditions inside the prison were too much for him to bear. Finally, he caught the fact that Beth hadn’t been entirely honest with them and clung to it like a boon. He also tried to convince Sheriff to go with him so that he didn’t seem like the only jerk, and that they could come back and take the blame together. This means he felt guilty about his decision and knew the storm that might attack him once he got home. But who could blame him for going back? Even with the guilt of letting one friend die or another get imprisoned, he still goes back because what’s waiting for him at the prison? Nothing, and his life would have to be postponed for three to six years. Not only that, his job and children would be postponed. But at least he had no children yet. If he were required to go after he had children, no one could make him since his child would miss him and wouldn’t develop the same way as if he had a father figure there.
2. Beth had a moral obligation to tell the truth to the people she was asking to be moral. It was hypocritical on one level of her to expect two independent men to be morally upright and adhere to ethical behaviour when a basic moral - telling the truth - had already been broken by her. Her behaviour should not have mattered though, as there shouldn’t be any question in either man’s mind at that point. They were already in Panang, Malaysia. They were already back to where they were those few years ago and they were about to go to court to see what their sentences were and how things would go for the future. At that point, there should be no doubt in either man’s mind as to whether they would stay or not. If they had any time to think, it was the week in New York, where they battled with Beth to go there or not. The fact that Beth lied has nothing to do with her being able to say anything just to get them to stay. It only meant that she cared for her brother so much as to remain anonymous and tried to get the two men to come to Malaysia. Even if her intention was to ‘say anything to get them to Panang’, that shouldn’t mean anything to the two men, since they already decided to stay and live out their sentences. Beth, although she did something wrong, had no obligation to tell them that she was his sister, because that is more so personal information than business information. The entire process was nothing more than business, and should not have been implied in any other way.
3. The press’ moral obligations are to remain unbiased, truthful and to keep their opinions away from the public. Today’s news has gotten much like scare-tactics. I recently turned on the television and flipped to Fox to see House (I love House!), and the Fox News was being advertised. They said things like, “Find out how your floors could be dangerous tonight at eleven! Are your children safe? The shocking truths that toy companies don’t want you to know! Where is your household pet? Petnappers strike the Anne Arbour area. Will roof tiles cause cancer in your thumbs? See tonight at eleven!” If it were appropriate to express myself in onomatopoeia in this question, I would. The media of news has gotten to the point where it’s more like an action-packed thriller you would see in the movie theatre instead of on your television. In fact, perhaps they should start making movies about the most shocking, horrifying, strange and suspicious material seen on the news in 2000 and forward, and they would have a box-office hit. The media has a moral obligation to remain unbiased. If the reporter in the movie had made a simple report on the event without making any kind of connotation that stated that Malaysia was backwater or strange, then it wouldn’t be picked up by the Malaysian justice system as offensive and perhaps Louis would be alive in the end. There is a moral obligation to be unbiased. As for M.J.’s apparent fixation with telling the story first, that’s only a business obligation. There is no ethical or moral root in that idea whatsoever.
4. In particular to the case that was presented in the film, there are some laws that must be ignored because they are unjust, but in the movie there didn’t seem to be any unjust laws. The law that the crime of trafficking must be punished by death is harsh, but it’s not unjust because there is an end to it. There is less crime because of it, as explained by the Malaysian judge. Their children and youth are safe, as also mentioned, and they don’t have as much drug misuse as Americans. Personally I’m not sure if this is true.
“Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in Malaysia are severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and heavy fines. Malaysia strictly enforces its drug laws. Malaysian legislation provides for a mandatory death penalty for convicted drug traffickers. Individuals arrested in possession of 15 grams (1/2 ounce) of heroin or 200 grams (seven ounces) of marijuana are presumed by law to be trafficking in drugs.”
- Travel Malaysia
“In Malaysia the response to illicit drug use has been largely punitive with the current goal of the Malaysian government being to achieve a drug-free society by 2015. This paper outlines the results of a desk-based situation assessment conducted over a 3-week period in 2004. Additional events, examined in 2005, were also included to describe more recent policy developments and examine how these came about. Despite punitive drug policy there has been a substantial rise in the number of drug users in the country. Over two-thirds of HIV/AIDS cases are among injecting drug users (IDUs) and there has been an exponential rise in the number of cases reported. Further, data suggest high-risk drug use practices are widespread. Harm reduction initiatives have only recently been introduced in Malaysia. The successful piloting of substitution therapies, in particular methadone and buprenorphine is cause for genuine hope for the rapid development of such interventions. In 2005 the government announced it will allow methadone maintenance programmes to operate beyond the pilot phase and needle and syringe exchange programmes will be established to serve the needs of IDUs.”
- Malaysia and harm reduction: The challenges and responses. International Journal of Drug Policy, Volume 18, Issue 2, Pages 136-140 G. Reid, A. Kamarulzaman, S. Sran
There are no resources to comparing Malaysia’s drug use with America’s, but apparently they are much more optimistic about their ‘drug free’ ideas than Americans.
In the general sense, when there is an unjust law, people have a moral obligation to either secretly or publicly oppose these laws. But in countries in which it is illegal to publicly protest or oppose the leader, it would be much harder to disobey a law, even if it were unjust. Take Nazi Germany for example. It was a law for every Jew to be taken away to a concentration camp and any Gentile who helped a Jew escape this was persecuted. Where is the justice in this kind of ethnocentrism and outright massacre? But I would be hard pressed to see any kind of reaction if a group (which is despised at least a tenth of how the Jews were at the time) in America were oppressed in even a tenth of the way the minorities were in Nazi Germany. Take the Native Americans. They are sent to little ‘reserves’ of their own land and made to live there if they want any of the rights that should be given to them by default for everything the Europeans did. There should be an outcry against that! The Native Americans whose land even now is being downsized because of development and the ones who are relocated over and over again because the government still wants their land - those are the ones who should be crying out and burning effigies and so on. Unjust laws and practices such as wire-tapping and detainment for no reason, those should also be protested actively. But they’re not. For some reason, we accept these. Yes, they’ve been happening for a long time, but that only adds insult to injury. These kinds of things shouldn’t ever happen, and it’s a basic human right to question laws which are unjust and immoral, or simply for the gain of a few instead of many. Laws are there to protect us, not to benefit a few privileged people, or to allow corporations to govern. But this is only in North America. Where else are the laws unjust? Who’s fighting them? People like Stephen Biko have to be heard around the world, not to just a few people at the time, but to generations afterwards.