“The Interview” = Idiocy Squared
By David Preston
How bad was The Interview? It was so bad that 10 seconds into the film I was already rooting for the North Koreans. And I never stopped rooting for them until the bitter end. It’s not that I like those commie bastards, mind you. It’s simply that the Americans were such bad actors – such bad human beings really – that I wanted every last one of them to die. And if that meant cheering the commies on, then so be it.
Call me Pyongyang Jane.
I particularly wanted Sith . . . er, I mean SETH . . . Rogan and James Franco to suffer.* Does that make me anti-American? No. It simply makes me anti-Rogan and Franco. And pro-good taste.
Doing parody is tough; I’ll give you that. (It’s tougher yet when the target of the parody is already ridiculous, as is the case with North Korea. It’s like staging a cage match between a clown and a mime. Each one, by itself, can be funny. But when you put them together, the tend to cancel each other out.)
Still, it is not impossible to score genuine points off the likes of Precious Cabbage Patch President. It just takes a little extra thought is all. You have to be subtle. Slapstick and crude jokes are out here. Unfortunately, crude is all Rogan and Franco seem to know. And they don’t even know that very well.
The uninspired pop-culture references . . .
The cheap-o ethnic and sex jokes . . .
The hack characters and forced plot . . .
That shit just doesn’t cut it with anyone over 12. Or anyone who appreciates the subtlety of political satire. Or just anyone who knows anything about North Korea. Still, there were lots of young people yukking it up in the theater I was at. They all knew about Katy Perry’s insipid music, but I wonder if any of them could’ve found North Korea on a map. Or Asia, for that matter.
I dunno. Maybe I’m just getting cynical in my middle age. But even at 16 I don’t think I would have found this dreck funny. Cuz frankly, it’s not. And yes, I did get all the jokes. And yes, I do have a healthy sense of humor. (Good thing, too, because otherwise I would’ve had to shoot up an elementary school in my despair over this film.)
Rumors are being bruited to the effect that Sony might have made up the whole “North Korea Hacked Us” story in an attempt to salvage this abortion of a movie. Until yesterday, I would’ve dismissed such stories as so much paranoid fantasy. But then I recollected that this is North Korea we’re talking about here.
And Hollywood . . .
*I also want George Clooney and Sean Penn – and everyone who was a public apologist for this film, and everyone at Sony who was connected in any way with it’s production – to suffer for their imperialist crimes against humanity, but that’s a story for another post.
STTPML COMMENTARY:
We know, as Indigenous persons and as veterans of the U.S. military, something about the typical algorithms and tradecraft of Imperial regime change and destabilization (social systems engineering) campaigns: 1) isolation, demonization, preparation (U.S. public) for future covert and overt military and other forms of pressure and acts of war; 2) organize potential alliances and pretexts for sanctions, embargoes and other actions intended to cause diversions of scarce resources from development into defense as well as cause martial law and state repression ; 3) covert operations and provocations intended to trigger overt responses by target regime then used as “evidence” of aggression not defense by the targeted regime calling for more sanctions; 4) public campaigns at home sand abroad to justify and develop mass support for military action that is planned and certain awaiting only the right pretexts and contexts;
This film naming the leader by name of a recognized nation-state arguing for the justness of his assassination is unprecedented. What if they had pitched a movie of say a small group of survivors of child abuse by the Catholic Church’s serial cover-ups that they believe continue, deciding to kill the present Pope? Even a film advocating the assassination of Fidel would never wash with all the history of CIA-Mob attempts at his life. Bullies only go after the easy target they think no one would dare defend and is unable to defend himself. And when bullies are shown to be impotent, when the gaps between their mouth and real capabilities are exposed, they run, whine and look for another victim that appears this time, a sure easy win…
Those running to the theater to do your “patriotic duty” can you locate Korea on a map? Do know why there is a “North” and “South” Korea? Do know about the real nature and crimes of the various fascist regimes set up in the south by the U.S.? Why does any nation-state or system have the right to declare itself “exceptional” and thus “excepted” from, the same international law it demands that others obey? Why should any nation-state or be able to possess and deploy the very same WMDs and weapons that it denies other nation-states to posses and deploy–under the same banners of deterrence and national security? Given the lethality of WMDs and potential global effects, why should any nation-state be allowed to possess them and/or why does not the possession of WMDs by one not give license and precedent (customary international law) for any others?
Despite Box Office Patriotism, Experts Question North Korea Hacker Claims
“In the post-Watergate/post-Snowden world the U.S. government can no longer simply say ‘trust us.'”
Security experts are claiming that, despite official rhetoric, North Korea was likely not behind the Sony hack that spurred patriotic zeal and widespread rallying around the Christmas Day release of the comedy film The Interview.
The Sony Pictures film, which on Thursday opened in 331 theaters and was made available for online viewing, boasted sold out crowds, $1 million in sales, and was the number one downloaded movie on all the digital platforms on which it was released: Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft’s Xbox Video, as well as on a Sony website.
Moviegoers cited “patriotism” and defense of the First Amendment as reasons for watching the film, which was reportedly the motive behind the recent security breach. The film is a satire about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
However, security researchers are questioning whether North Korea was really behind the hack and, alternately, are saying it looks like a possible “inside job.”
Citing numerous experts, New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth details why these claims against North Korea are so dubious, despite accusations by both President Obama and the FBI. Perlroth reports:
For one, skeptics note that the few malware samples they have studied indicate the hackers routed their attack through computers all over the world. One of those computers, in Bolivia, had been used by the same group to hack targets in South Korea. But that computer, as well as others in Poland, Italy, Thailand, Singapore, Cyprus and the United States, were all freely available to anyone to use, which opens the list of suspects to anyone with an Internet connection and basic hacking skills.
For another, Sony’s attackers constructed their malware on computers configured with Korean language settings, but skeptics note that those settings could have been reset to deflect blame. They also note the attackers used commercial software wiping tools that could have been purchased by anyone.
They also point out that whoever attacked Sony had a keen understanding of its computer systems — the names of company servers and passwords were all hard-coded into the malware — suggesting the hackers were inside Sony before they launched their attack. Or it could even have been an inside job.
Because of the flimsy evidence presented, skeptics of the North Korea’s claim are attacking President Obama for vowing a “proportional response” against the rogue nation.
“[I]n the post-Watergate/post-Snowden world the U.S. government can no longer simply say ‘trust us,'” writes conservative columnist and former national security official Paul Rosenzweig at the Lawfare blog.
Rosenzweig argues that if the government is “going to speak to the issue at all it has to release information that persuades.”
He continues: “Otherwise it should stand silent and act (or not) as it sees fit without trying to justify it’s actions. That silence will come at a significant cost, of course — in even greater skepticism. But if the judgement is to disclose, then it must be more fulsome, with all the attendant costs of that as well.”