Hemlock Society (film)

Hemlock Society is a Bengali Dark Comedy released on 22 June 2012, directed by director Srijit Mukherji, who is also the director of Autograph & Baishe Srabon. The cast of the movie consists of Parambrata Chatterjee, Koel Mallick and Soumitra Chatterjee. The name is inspired by the erstwhile Hemlock Society, a society which was based in Santa Monica, US. The primary missions of this society included providing information to dying persons and supporting legislation permitting physician-assisted suicide.

Plot

Hemlock Society

The Hemlock Society USA was a national right-to-die organization founded in 1980 in Santa Monica by author and activist Derek Humphry. Its primary missions included providing information to dying persons and supporting legislation permitting physician-assisted dying. In 2003 the national organization renamed itself to End of Life Choices, and a year later merged with another group into a newly formed national organization called Compassion & Choices.

History and chronology

Earlier right-to-die advocacy organizations, such as the Euthanasia Educational Council which formed in 1967 and changed its name to Concern For Dying in 1978, pre-dated The Hemlock Society and its mission.

Hemlock was a founding charter member of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies when the international organization initiated in 1980 in Oxford, England, by Sidney D. Rosoff and Derek Humphry. Hemlock's national membership grew to 40,000 with eighty chapters.

Hemlock backed legislative efforts in California, Washington, Michigan, and Maine without success until the Oregon Death with Dignity Act was passed in 1994.

Society

A society is a group of people involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups.

Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would not otherwise be possible on an individual basis; both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in many cases found to overlap.

A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology.

Society (disambiguation)

Society is a grouping of individuals which are united by a network of social relations, traditions and may have distinctive culture and institutions.

Society may also refer to:

See also

Society (play)

Society was an 1865 comedy drama by Thomas William Robertson regarded as a milestone in Victorian drama because of its realism in sets, costume, acting and dialogue. Unusually for that time, Robertson both wrote and directed the play, and his innovative writing and stage direction inspired George Bernard Shaw and W. S. Gilbert.

Origins

The play originally ran at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, Liverpool, under the management of Mr A. Henderson, opening on 8 May 1865. It was recommended to Effie Wilton, the manager of the Prince of Wales's Theatre in London's West End, by H. J. Byron, where it ran from 11 November 1865 to 4 May 1866 Robertson found fame with his new comedy, which included a scene that fictionalized the Fun gang, who frequented the Arundel Club, the Savage Club, and especially Evans's café, where they had a table in competition with the Punch 'Round table'. The play marked the London debut of Squire Bancroft, who went on to marry Effie Wilton in 1867 and become her co-manager.