If anyone still needs convincing that
pop culture matters, that even the frivolous fluff can impact politics and
world affairs, here is dramatic evidence: an otherwise unremarkable Hollywood comedy
that hasn’t even been released yet has led to the crippling cyber-hacking of a
major corporation, threats of 9/11-style terrorism against movie theaters and other
targets including the White House, self-censorship by the entertainment
industry, and increased tension between the U.S. and North Korea’s already
unstable and belligerent Kim Jong Un, each of whom blames the other while a
suspiciously quiet China watches from the sidelines. And the fiasco isn’t over
yet.
For those who haven’t been
following the story, it began in recent weeks when a hacker group calling itself
Guardians of Peace cyber-attacked Hollywood’s Sony studios and released
thousands of the production company’s private emails and other confidential
information like employee Social Security numbers. It’s been devastating in a
number of ways, including internal turmoil arising out of embarrassing emails
that may end in the sacking of film chairman Amy Pascal – not to mention an
estimated $100 million blow to Sony.
The instigation for the hacking
seems to be an upcoming Sony comedy called The
Interview, starring James Franco and Seth Rogan as talk show hosts who are
coerced by the CIA into assassinating tyrant Kim Jong Un during a trip to North
Korea to interview him. Kim was not
amused by the concept; neither
were many progressives who felt that a comedy about killing a head of state was
in poor taste and that Sony brought the subsequent hacking upon itself (of
course, these are the same people who thought that a 2006 feature film about the assassination of
George W. Bush was just
dandy). Class action lawsuits from
Sony employees who were affected by the cyber attack are gearing up, claiming that “Sony knew it was reasonably foreseeable that producing a
script about North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un would cause a backlash.”
After an investigation, the FBI officially
declared
that North Korea was behind the hacking (while not necessarily originating from
inside its borders), which Obama called an act not of war, but of vandalism; he
promised a “proportional response.” The totalitarian state took great umbrage
at the accusation; it not only denied the attack, it generously offered to help
the U.S. ferret out the real culprit, much like O.J. Simpson offered to help
find his wife’s killer. The North Korean news media even accused
the U.S. of “gangster-like behavior” and claimed to have evidence that our
government itself was deeply involved in the production of The Interview. “Toughest counteraction will be taken against the
White House, the Pentagon and the whole US mainland, the cesspool of terrorism,”
threatened a statement from North Korea.
The Guardians of Peace followed up the cyber-attack by issuing a
threat of possible terrorist activity
against any theaters that dared screen The
Interview. “The world will be full of fear,” read their English-challenged message:
We will clearly show it to you at the very
time and places “The Interview” be shown, including the premiere, how bitter
fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to. Soon all the world will
see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made…
Remember the 11th of September 2001. We
recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your
house is nearby, you’d better leave.) Whatever comes in the coming days is
called by the greed of Sony Pictures Entertainment. All the world will denounce
the SONY.
The Department of Homeland Security said that there was “no credible
intelligence to indicate an active plot against movie theaters within the
United States.” But stars Seth Rogan and James Franco cancelled all media appearances in the wake of the controversy. Most theater
chains opted not to show the film, and then Sony decided
against releasing The Interview at
all in any form — including VOD or DVD.
(This wasn’t the only film shut down by the recent North Korean
displeasure. Shooting of actor Steve Carell’s thriller Pyongyang, about a Westerner in North Korea who is accused of
espionage, has been cancelled as well.)
President Obama threw Sony under the bus, claiming that they should have
called him first rather than set a bad precedent by backing down to North
Korea. (This is the same President whose administration blamed the murder of
Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi on an unknown YouTube trailer for an
utterly incompetent movie about the life of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Hillary
Clinton told the father of one of the Benghazi victims, “We will make sure that the
person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”) Sony responded by
claiming that it did contact the
White House first.
Regardless, human rights activists are
planning to airlift DVDs of The
Interview into Kim country via hydrogen balloons. Fighters for a Free North
Korea, run by a former government propagandist who escaped to South Korea,
has for years used balloons to get transistor radios, DVDs and other items into
North Korea in order to open up the outside world to the news-deprived masses. Thor Halvorssen’s Human Rights
Foundation in New York has been helping to finance the balloon drops, and will
add DVD copies of The Interview as soon as possible.
Halvorssen says that Hollywood is
largely unaware that its movies and TV shows are being used so effectively in
this manner. The past dozen or so drops, for example, have included copies of Braveheart, Battlestar
Galactica and Desperate Housewives. “Viewing any one of
these is a subversive act that could get you executed,” Halvorssen says, “and
North Koreans know this, given the public nature of the punishments meted out
to those who dare watch entertainment from abroad.” [I have
written elsewhere about these risks that the freedom-starved North Koreans
undertake just to watch a contraband film] “The Interview is
tremendously threatening to the Kims,” Halvorssen continues. “They cannot abide
by anything that portrays them as anything other than a god. This movie
destroys the narrative” – much like the satirical 2004 film Team
America: World Police famously lampooned Kim Jong Un’s monstrous father.
While our tabloid news media seem obsessed with the more inconsequential
and gossipy aspects of this affair – like the emails in which Sony executives disparage
Angelina Jolie’s talent and make racial jokes at Obama’s expense – there are
serious ramifications of the cyber-hacking mystery. The entertainment industry
as a whole, for example, failed to show a quick and united resistance to the
threats of a foreign tyrant. But more significantly, the Guardians of Peace
exposed America’s vulnerability to the warfare of the future – cyberwar.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 12/23/14)
