Review

Culture

Re-enchanting

14 March 2023

7 min read

Re-enchanted: swimming with Charlie Mackesy

Fascinated by the astonishing success of the whimsical The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse, Belle Tindall probes at the deep wisdom of Charlie Mackesy’s enchanting, not to mention Oscar-winning, modern fable.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

An illustration showing a horse standing, sniffing a mole held by a boy while a seated fox looks on.

Macksey's modern fable.

BBC.

Four million of us dedicated half an hour of our Christmas Eve to watching Charlie Mackesy’s Academy Award-winning animated short film, The Boy the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, making it the most watched programme on that day. (Not to mention the five million of us who have streamed it since, making it the most watched film in its category at this year's Oscars).

More than two million of us have his illustrated book of the same name sitting somewhere in our homes, placing it firmly on both the New York Times and the Sunday Times best-sellers list.

Over one-and-a-half million of us have decided to make Charlie’s work a daily staple of our lives by following him on Instagram.

'Lives have been profoundly touched by the effect that Mackesy is having upon the world.'

And then, of course, there’s the impact of these lofty statistics, the depth of success that is running parallel to the breadth, the Mackesy Effect that can’t be quantified. I defy anyone to scroll through the online comments on his social media pages, browse the reviews of his book, or explore the Twitter hashtag pertaining to the short film, and not be struck by the stories of seemingly endless people whose lives have been profoundly touched by the effect that Mackesy is having upon the world.

My morning peek into the Twitter-verse shows that today alone, the animated film is being watched in schools as an exercise in mental and emotional well-being, copies of the book are being distributed to sufferers of PTSD and gifted to residents of care homes, while the distinctive drawings are adorning the walls of therapy rooms and hospital wards.

Fascination at such an impact can be reduced to a singular word: why?

This isn’t a question dubiously asked from a safe distance, surveying the astonishing success and scratching my head with scepticism. I am by no means unconvinced by the genius of it all. Quite the contrary, my copy of the book is one of the most well-thumbed books I own. I pull it off my shelf and open it up more regularly than I care to admit, each time utterly bewildered as to why it feels as though it was written just for that precise moment.

And so, to ask the question once more: what is it about this simple fable, in all of its various forms, that is continuing to captivate us? I have a theory. One that was somewhat hidden in plain sight all along.

There’s a phrase that has been whirring around my mind as I’ve been probing at Mackesy’s enchanting work: it is a fable in which children can paddle and elephants can swim. This phrase has been frequently used to describe a particular biblical book, the Gospel of John.

John’s Gospel has a reputation for being somewhat of a literary and theological enigma. Therefore, whether it be in pure delight or utter defeat, John’s Gospel has been described in this way – as a text in which children can paddle and elephants swim.

Far more than a whimsical-sounding review, this rather endearing visual very succinctly sums up the paradox that is the literary nature of the fourth Gospel. It can be read and understood at a surface level, each scene working together to create a tapestry of moments, curated to tell the tale of a life that caught the attention of everyone around it. And of course, a death and resurrection, painstakingly recorded to ensure that the impact of such a momentous life moves beyond the confines of first-hand witnesses. This is how the fourth Gospel has been paddled in for two millennia.

'This work is a text in which children can paddle and elephants can swim.'

But then there’s the ever-present invitation to swim with the elephants. In reality, this invitation is to sit and dissect every micro-detail, to delve into the intention undergirding every word choice, to pour over the precise placement of every narrative. It is an invitation to find meaning hidden within meaning hidden within yet more meaning, it is an invitation to surrender to the sheer genius of what John has produced and work out how to rightly respond to it.

And with this in mind, I return to the work of Charlie Mackesy. This is not to suggest that through The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Mackesy has created, or attempted to create, some kind of Biblical text. Surely, he, more than anyone, would positively balk at the idea. What I’m suggesting is that this work is a text in which children can paddle and elephants can swim.

The pages of the book, the scenes of the short-film, the images on the Instagram account - they can be consumed at a glance, they can be paddled in. The simplicity of them offers an antidote to our crowded lives, the whimsical nature of each character appeals to our desire for escapism, and the relatable nature of Charlie Mackesy himself (a self-proclaimed ‘grubby artist’) allows us to feel that his content is a safe place. And then there are the words that accompany each drawing he offers us; in the animated film, actors such as Idris Elba and Tom Hollander have been enlisted to bring the voices of the four beloved characters to life. In the book, Charlie’s own handwriting is tasked with doing all the talking. These messages, presented as brief conversations between the characters, are notably short in length and simplistic in nature, but let’s not allow that to fool us into assuming that they lack substance. On the contrary, there is sufficient depth to be swam in, and the invitation to do so is present on every page.

'What can be found by those who are wading away from the shores?'

And herein lies the theory: the invitation to paddle in the waters of this whimsical world may be what is attracting the world to Charlie’s work, but the opportunity to swim in its very applicable depths is what is keeping us captivated. Therefore, a question remains: what can be found by those who are wading away from the shores? I have a suggestion: re-enchantment of the most theological kind.

We’re living in an age of ‘disenchantment’ in the West, a societal state that was predicted by Max Weber in the early 20th Century, and profoundly resonates with our reality today. Weber used the term ‘disenchantment’ to denote a time when society will have discarded our reliance upon, and appreciation of, the mysterious, the spiritual, and the transcendent.

But are we satisfied with disenchantment?

Our apparent captivation with content such as Mackesy’s, which is intent on re-enchanting us, would imply not.

The longer you sit with Mackesy’s work (or swim in it, to keep a hold of the Johannine metaphor), the more apparent it becomes that neither the boy, the mole, the fox, nor the horse are actually the central characters. Rather, the things that hold the entire body of work together are the exact things that disenchantment refutes: the mysterious, the spiritual, the transcendent. Things that, to quote the book itself, ‘sit beyond all things’. Perhaps our appreciation of such things has not been disregarded, but profoundly underestimated. It could be suggested that our reliance upon such things is more intrinsic than we ourselves acknowledge, and every now and again, something as unlikely as a talking mole makes a profound mark on culture and subsequently proves it.

Charlie Mackesy has ultimately provided us with an invitation into re-enchantment.

'He wanted to reach out to a loved one in distress, but words kept falling short.'

The thing to note about re-enchantment is that it is, by its very nature, a return to something familiar; a previous perspective or an ancient wisdom perhaps. The vehicle is intriguingly new, but the cargo feels ancient. Or to be more specific, the cargo feels biblical.

Mackesy’s relationship with his Christian faith is paradoxically complex and enviably simple. He’s spoken many a time about the way he both perceives and receives the divine love that is at the core of the Christian faith. He has also given us a glimpse into how it tends to fuel his work. In an interview with CBN, Charlie tells the story behind one of his more explicitly biblical pieces of art entitled 'The Prodigal Daughter' . He spoke about how he wanted to reach out to a loved one in distress, but words kept falling short, so he painted her a picture. He said ‘I was just trying to show her through imagery where, you know, to be held is something she always wanted. So, I said, “This is what God is like”’.

Whether or not he has the same intention when it comes to his more commercial work, as you flick through each page of his best-selling book, that is exactly what you sense the characters within the book, and the man behind it, to be saying: this is what God is like.

Whether it be the horse, who is ‘the biggest thing they have encountered’ and takes it upon himself to carry the other characters physically and emotionally through the wilderness. Or the constant re-iteration that love is the means and the end to all things. Or even the narrative detail of each character becoming known, deeply, and honestly known, on levels that they had yet to experience. You could write ten books of theology or philosophy in an attempt to expound each theme.

And I, for one, hope it’s a place where children continue to paddle, and elephants continue to swim for a long time to come.

Article

Assisted dying

Care

Culture

Death & life

13 November 2024

8 min read

The deceptive appeal of assisted dying changes medical practice

In Canada the moral ethos of medicine has shifted dramatically.

Ewan Goligher

Ewan is a physician practising in Toronto, Canada.

a doctor consults a tablet against the backdrop of a Canadian flag.

Once again, the UK parliament is set to debate the question of legalizing euthanasia (a traditional term for physician-assisted death). Political conditions appear to be conducive to the legalization of this technological approach to managing death. The case for assisted death appears deceptively simple—it’s about compassion, respect, empowerment, freedom from suffering. Who can oppose such positive goals? Yet, writing from Canada, I can only warn of the ways in which the embrace of physician-assisted death will fundamentally change the practice of medicine. Reflecting on the last 10 years of our experience, two themes stick out to me—pressure, and self-deception.

I still remember quite distinctly the day that it dawned on me that the moral ethos of medicine in Canada was shifting dramatically. Traditionally, respect for the sacredness of the patient’s life and a corresponding absolute prohibition on deliberately causing the death of a patient were widely seen as essential hallmarks of a virtuous physician. Suddenly, in a 180 degree ethical turn, a willingness to intentionally cause the death of a patient was now seen as the hallmark of patient-centered doctor. A willingness to cause the patient’s death was a sign of compassion and even purported self-sacrifice in that one would put the patient’s desires and values ahead of their own. Those of us who continued to insist on the wrongness of deliberately causing death would now be seen as moral outliers, barriers to the well-being and dignity of our patients. We were tolerated to some extent, and mainly out of a sense of collegiality. But we were also a source of slight embarrassment. Nobody really wanted to debate the question with us; the question was settled without debate.

Yet there was no denying the way that pressure was brought to bear, in ways subtle and overt, to participate in the new assisted death regime. We humans are unavoidably moral creatures, and when we come to believe that something is good, we see ourselves and others as having an obligation to support it. We have a hard time accepting those who refuse to join us. Such was the case with assisted death. With the loudest and most strident voices in the Canadian medical profession embracing assisted death as a high and unquestioned moral good, refusal to participate in assisted death could not be fully tolerated.

We deceive ourselves if we think that doctors have fully accepted that euthanasia is ethical when only very few are actually willing to administer it.

Regulators in Ontario and Nova Scotia (two Canadian provinces) stipulated that physicians who were unwilling to perform the death procedure must make an effective referral to a willing “provider”. Although the Supreme Court decision made it clear in their decision to strike down the criminal prohibition against physician-assisted death that no particular physician was under any obligation to provide the procedure, the regulators chose to enforce participation by way of this effective referral requirement. After all, this was the only way to normalize this new practice. Doctors don't ordinarily refuse to refer their patients for medically necessary procedures; if assisted death was understood to be a medically necessary good, then an unwillingness to make such referral could not be tolerated.

And this form of pressure brings us to the pattern of deception. First, it is deceptive to suggest that an effective referral to a willing provider confers no moral culpability on the referring physician for the death of the patient. Those of us who objected to referring the patient were told that like Pilate, we could wash our hands of the patient’s death by passing them along to someone else who had the courage to do the deed. Yet the same regulators clearly prohibited referral for female genital mutilation. They therefore seemed to understand the moral responsibility attached to an effective referral. Such glaring inconsistencies about the moral significance of a referral suggests that when they claimed that a referral avoided culpability for death by euthanasia, they were deceiving themselves and us.

The very need for a referral system signifies another self-deception. Doctors normally make referrals only when an assessment or procedure lies outside their technical expertise. In the case of assisted death, every physician has the requisite technical expertise to cause death. There is nothing at all complicated or difficult or specialized about assessing euthanasia eligibility criteria or the sequential administration of toxic doses of midazolam, propofol, rocuronium, and lidocaine. The fact that the vast majority of physicians are unwilling to perform this procedure entails that moral objection to participation in assisted death remains widespread in the medical profession. The referral mechanism is for physicians who are “uncomfortable” in performing the procedure; they can send the patient to someone else more comfortable. But to be comfortable in this case is to be “morally comfortable”, not “technically comfortable”. We deceive ourselves if we think that doctors have fully accepted that euthanasia is ethical when only very few are actually willing to administer it.

We deceived ourselves into thinking that assisted death is a medical therapy for a medical problem, when in fact it is an existential therapy for a spiritual problem.

There is also self-deception with respect to the cause of death. In Canada, when a patient dies by doctor-assisted death, the person completing the death certificate is required to record the cause of death as the reason that the patient requested euthanasia, not the act of euthanasia per se. This must lead to all sorts of moments of absurdity for physicians completing death certificates—do patients really die from advanced osteoarthritis? (one of the many reasons patients have sought and obtained euthanasia). I suspect that this practice is intended to shield those who perform euthanasia from any long-term legal liability should the law be reversed. But if medicine, medical progress, and medical safety are predicated on an honest acknowledgment about causes of death, then this form of self-deception should not be countenanced. We need to be honest with ourselves about why our patients die.

There has also been self-deception about whether physician-assisted death is a form of suicide. Some proponents of assisted death contend that assisted death is not an act of deliberate self-killing, but rather merely a choice over the manner and timing of one's death. It's not clear why one would try to distort language this way and deny that “physician-assisted suicide” is suicide, except perhaps to assuage conscience and minimize stigma. Perhaps we all know that suicide is never really a form of self-respect. To sustain our moral and social affirmation of physician-assisted death, we have to deny what this practice actually represents.

There has been self-deception about the possibility of putting limits around the practice of assisted death. Early on, advocates insisted that euthanasia would be available only to those for whom death was reasonably foreseeable (to use the Canadian legal parlance). But once death comes to be viewed as a therapeutic option, the therapeutic possibilities become nearly limitless. Death was soon viewed as a therapy for severe disability or for health-related consequences of poverty and loneliness (though often poverty and loneliness are the consequence of the health issues). Soon we were talking about death as a therapy for mental illness. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then so is grievous and irremediable suffering. Death inevitably becomes therapeutic option for any form of suffering. Efforts to limit the practice to certain populations (e.g. those with disabilities) are inevitably seen as paternalistic and discriminatory.

There has been self-deception about the reasons justifying legalization of assisted death. Before legalization, advocates decry the uncontrolled physical suffering associated with the dying process and claim that prohibiting assisted death dehumanizes patients and leaves them in agony. Once legalized, it rapidly becomes clear that this therapy is not for physical suffering but rather for existential suffering: the loss of autonomy, the sense of being a burden, the despair of seeing any point in going on with life. The desire for death reflects a crisis of meaning. We deceived ourselves into thinking that assisted death is a medical therapy for a medical problem, when in fact it is an existential therapy for a spiritual problem.

We have also deceived ourselves by claiming to know whether some patients are better off dead, when in fact we have no idea what it's like to be dead. The utilitarian calculus underpinning the logic of assisted death relies on the presumption that we know what it is like before we die in comparison to what it is like after we die. In general, the unstated assumption is that there is nothing after death. This is perhaps why the practice is generally promoted by atheists and opposed by theists. But in my experience, it is very rare for people to address this question explicitly. They prefer to let the question of existence beyond death lie dormant, untouched. To think that physicians qua physicians have any expertise on or authority on the question of what it’s like to be dead, or that such medicine can at all comport with a scientific evidence-based approach to medical decision-making, is a profound self-deception.

Finally, we deceive ourselves when we pretend that ending people’s lives at their voluntary request is all about respecting personal autonomy. People seek death when they can see no other way forward with life—they are subject to the constraints of their circumstances, finances, support networks, and even internal spiritual resources. We are not nearly so autonomous as we wish to think. And in the end, the patient does not choose whether to die; the doctor chooses whether the patient should die. The patient requests, the doctor decides. Recent new stories have made clear the challenges for practitioners of euthanasia to pick and choose who should die among their patients. In Canada, you can have death, but only if your doctor agrees that your life is not worth living. However much these doctors might purport to act from compassion, one cannot help see a connection to Nazi physicians labelling the unwanted as “Lebensunwortes leben”—life unworthy of life. In adopting assisted death, we cannot avoid dehumanizing ourselves. Death with dignity is a deception.

These many acts of self-deception in relation to physician-assisted death should not surprise us, for the practice is intrinsically self-deceptive. It claims to be motivated by the value of the patient; it claims to promote the dignity of the patient; it claims to respect the autonomy of the patient. In fact, it directly contravenes all three of those goods.

It degrades the value of the patient by accepting that it doesn't matter whether or not the patient exists.

It denies the dignity of the patient by treating the patient as a mere means to an end—the sufferer is ended in order to end the suffering.

It destroys the autonomy of the patient because it takes away autonomy. The patient might autonomously express a desire for death, but the act of rendering someone dead does not enhance their autonomy; it obliterates it.

Yet the need for self-deception represents the fatal weakness of this practice. In time, truth will win over falsehood, light over darkness, wisdom over folly. So let us ever cling to the truth, and faithfully continue to speak the truth in love to the dying and the living. Truth overcomes pressure. The truth will set us free.