Mrs. Doubtfire, 1993

March 6, 2022 | T.J. DOHERTY

Daniel Hillard, as played by Robin Williams, is a freelance voice actor living in San Francisco. Although a good father to his three kids, Lydia (played by Lisa Jakub), Chris (played Mathew Lawrence), and Natalie (played by Mara Wilson), his wife Miranda (played by Sally Field) doesn’t have faith in him. Daniel quits his job over a morally questionable script that required him to voice act a cartoon bird that enjoys smoking, essentially advertising cigarettes to minors. He then proceeds to through an over-the-top birthday party for one of his kids. Miranda, unable to deal with Daniel's actions which she thinks are irresponsible, files for a divorce.

At the custody hearing, Miranda is awarded full custody, and Daniel is only offered the possibility of shared custody if he gets a steady job and a suitable residence within three months of the hearing. While putting his life in order Daniel learns that Miranda is in need of a nanny/housekeeper. Daniel realizes he has experience as a voice actor and he calls Miranda and pretends to be Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire, a British accented nanny with a killer resume. Miranda asks to meet for an in-person interview. Daniel gets help from his brother Frank, a makeup artist, and his partner Jack. Together they create the persona that is Mrs. Doubtfire.

After a successful in-person interview Miranda hires Mrs. Doubtfire. While Daniel works his other job as a shipping clerk at a TV station, CEO Jonathon Lundy sees Daniel playing with toy dinosaurs on the set. Impressed with his imagination and creativity, Lundy invites Daniel to discuss the prospects of a TV show over dinner. The business dinner happens to fall on the same night and at the same restaurant as the birthday dinner for Miranda’s boyfriend, Stu Dunmeyer planned for her. Unable to change either event, Daniel is forced to quickly change between the Mrs. Doubtfire costume and his regular clothes in order to go back and forth between Miranda's birthday party and the business meeting with Jonathon Lundy.

During the dinner, Daniel overhears Miranda's boyfriend, who he doesn’t like, is allergic to cayenne pepper. Daniel sneaks into the kitchen and seasons Stu’s jambalaya with cayenne pepper and Stu has an allergic reaction. Still in the Mrs. Doubtfire costume, Daniel regrets his actions and performs the Heimlich Maneuver on Stu, saving him. However, in doing so the prosthetic mask that made Daniel into Mrs. Doubtfire falls off revealing him to his ex-wife Miranda, his kids, and Stu.

Fast forward to the next custody hearing, Daniel argues that he did meet the judge’s requirements, by getting a steady job. The judge rules that Daniel's actions were unorthodox and nothing more than the guise of an actor, further limiting Daniels’s custody to only supervised Saturday visits. Without Mrs. Doubtfire in their lives Miranda and the children grow sad and despondent, admitting that Mrs. Doubtfire changed their lives for the better.

Miranda visits Daniel on the set of his new TV show and admits that things were better when he was involved. Miranda arranges for joint custody. Miranda watches an episode of Daniel's new show, Euphegenia’s House, where the subject of divorce is discussed, and Daniel’s character states that no matter what the family situation is, love will always prevail. Roll Credits.

Consequentialism is the ethical theory that determines the moral quality of an action and how the morality is derived from that action’s consequences. In Mrs. Doubtfire, Daniel is plagued with numerous difficult choices that lead him to perform many actions, some possibly morally good and others morally bad. At the very beginning of the film, Daniel is voice acting for a cartoon similar to Tom and Jerry, the famous cat and mouse pair, the difference between that cartoon and this one was the use of cigarettes. As a father of three Daniel didn’t feel that advertising cigarettes to children was appropriate so he quits. Through the action of quitting his job, Daniel faced the consequences of being unemployed, however, the decision to not advertise cigarettes to children could be considered morally good. Both decisions had consequences, but consequentialism helps us to weigh those decisions and determine the morality of the choices.

The next instance and probably biggest of Daniel facing consequentialism, is deciding to falsify his identity as Mrs. Doubtfire to be closer to his children after the courts ruled against custody. Although Daniel’s intentions were good, a father just wanting to be with his kids, his actions of lying and deceit weren’t morally good. The consequences of Mrs. Doubtfire throughout the movie lead to the children being happier, housework and chore-related stress diminished, as well as Miranda’s well-being improved. Overall things were positive, however, when the deception was unmasked, Daniel faced the consequences of the same actions in a negative light. This resulted in having the courts rule to even further limit his time with his children.

The final instance of Daniel’s actions and consequentialism is toward the end of the film when he decides to poison Miranda’s boyfriend Stu with cayenne pepper. This action alone was morally bad, only doing it to get back at the man in a heinous way. The consequence was Stu choking and Daniel saving him, only to be exposed as Mrs. Doubtfire to the family, which was a consequence that Daniel never really wanted. All and all I would argue that Daniel is a morally good person, some of his actions didn’t necessarily align with morally good but they were for the right reasons.

March 6, 2022 | SARA BIZARRO

Act and Rule Utilitarianism

This film can be used to illustrate the difference between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism, and it may be used to show how these can at times be incompatible. According to act utilitarianism, we should judge if every particular action causes the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In the case of this family, the father thinks his assuming the identity of Mrs. Doubtfire will cause the greatest happiness, both for him and for the children and their mother, therefore he goes ahead with the deception. This indeed seems to work, since in the end, the entire family agrees that they were better off with his presence. However, deceiving his family and not following the court order may be understood as not the most moral or the best thing to do in utilitarian terms. Rule utilitarianism says we should act following the rules that will lead to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In this case, creating a different persona to escape the court order in a divorce case is not the type of thing you would want to recommend since it most cases it would not result in the greatest happiness of the greatest number. But what are we really saying here? Are we saying we should follow the rule if it leads to unhappiness and not follow it when it leads to happiness? In that case, we are falling back into act utilitarianism, we should be looking into the results case by case. The problem though is that even though we can have good reasons from past experience to say that a type of behavior will lead to unhappiness, it still may be difficult to know if a certain specific behavior will be an exception to the rule. A utilitarian can then in general follow utilitarian rules, but in specific cases can analyze if a diversion from the behavior is warranted. Even though philosophers have argued this is a fault in utilitarian thinking, I think John Stuart Mill may have accepted it as a keystone of the system, because it allows us to experiment with alternative behavior occasionally and to test out rules that may be outdated or no longer producing the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

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