Originally published at Breaking Modern:
The as yet unidentified hackers who broke into Sony Entertainment’s incompetently protected servers have provoked a lawsuit filed by former employees angered by the company’s lack of security, a cluster of gossipy news stories about the quality of the next James Bond film and Angelina Jolie’s professional relationships, and a media ethics debate over whether publishing emails, salary information, movie scripts and other leaked material is effectively aiding and abetting the cyber thieves.
Now a New York movie theater has canceled a showing of Sony’s newest movie in response to a terrorist threat issued by the hackers.
What nobody’s talking about seems like the biggest story of all: the possible motivation of the self-styled “Guardians of Peace.”
Suspicion immediately fell upon North Korea due to the hackers’ complaints about an upcoming film, “The Interview,” which stars James Franco and Seth Rogan. “How bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to,” one communiqué declared, referring to the movie’s plot, about assassinating North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.
For what it’s worth, the government of North Korea has officially denied involvement. Seth Rogan believes them. “There’s no way it’s them’ because it seems too savvy of Hollywood politics.”
Regardless of the identity of the hackers, one question worth exploring is: has Hollywood crossed the line?
Political assassination plots are nothing new for American films. Based on the Frederick Forsyth spy novel, the 1973 thriller “The Day of the Jackal” showcased the scheming of a man who tried to kill French president Charles de Gaulle during the 1960s. But the movie came out after de Gaulle had already died of old age.
The Quentin Tarantino revenge fantasy “Inglorious Basterds” depicts something that plainly didn’t happen, the arson and machine-gun killing of Adolf Hitler in a French movie theater. And anyway, that was Hitler, only the worst guy ever.
“The gory killing of a sitting foreign leader is new territory for a big studio movie,” Jeanine Basinger, professor of film studies at Wesleyan University, told the New York Times.
It’s kind of fascinating that the American press hasn’t been able to put itself in the shoes of North Koreans, enough of whom obviously support their leader to the extent that he continues to enjoy the tacit consent of the governed.
Imagine, if you can, how Americans would respond – even conservative Republicans – if, say, Iran, Russia, or some other political rival of the United States were to produce a motion picture depicting the violent assassination of President Obama. Many Americans would view such a film, even if it was marketed as a comedy as “The Interview” is, as something just short of an act of war.
Here in the United States, threatening the life of the president is a serious felony punishable by up to five years in federal prison. Why wouldn’t we expect other countries to take the threat against their leaders seriously too?
Americans don’t get that the citizens of other countries are just as patriotic as we are. Just like us, people in other nations don’t like it when we disrespect their leaders.
Not long ago, everyone, including the United States government, understood that treating heads of state disrespectfully exposed everyone’s leaders to the same treatment. Under international law and tradition heads of state have been considered immune from prosecution. Even when the US deposed an unfriendly leader in a coup d’état, such as when Jean-Claude Duvalier fled Haiti in 1986, they facilitated his comfortable exile in places like the French Riviera.
It was the United States that broke this understanding between nations.
It began in 1989, with George Herbert Walker Bush’s overthrow of Panamanian President Manuel Noriega. The first Bush administration treated Noriega like a common criminal, trumping up dubious drug possession charges (a “110-pound” stash of cocaine found in his compound turned out to be tamales wrapped in banana leaves), kidnapping him to face charges in the United States on barely discernible legal grounds, and then sentencing him to two decades in a federal prison.
More recently, Bush the second boxed in former US client dictator Saddam Hussein, refusing to fly him out of Iraq, signed off on a ridiculous show trial conducted by his political enemies and then delivered him from U.S. custody to be unceremoniously hanged to death – while cell phone video cameras rolled – in 2006. Saddam went out looking classy – “Down with the invaders!” he shouted repeatedly before his death — the U.S., not so much.
Then there was the 2011 killing of Colonel Moammar Qaddafi. Again, the United States didn’t leave the Libyan dictator a way out. Instead, NATO fighter jets and an American drone bombed his convoy, causing him to fall into the hands of opposition forces, who killed him.
Given this recent history, it isn’t surprising that Americans don’t see the big deal about a silly comedy movie fantasizing about killing a man they see as a silly neo-Stalinist dictator. But isn’t this just another case of American exceptionalism?
We see the world one way.
No one else agrees with us.
8 Comments.
Exactly Ted – Where did the American exceptionalism go? – It rarely, if ever, existed. Isolated by continent and by wealth, the US enjoyed many decades where it never experienced the competition of many nations occupying a continent and by the fact that it stood high above most of the rest of the world after WWII. These simple facts elude most Americans, and the fact that they climbed this ladder on the backs of others is also conveniently forgotten. The things that many have fought so hard for in our country – like a legal system that respects property ownership, anti-discrimination, legal redress, and more are all being ripped away from us now by the powers of money and influence. The sad thing is that most of the people who are falling on hard times are just trying to grab hold onto the past and keep it, or just trying to get by, and the younger generations simply can’t see it slipping away. It’s par for course now for so many now. I’m not another “castrated” complainer here, Ted, I’m a guy who was very active, a veteran of the Vietnam crap, and I’m now disabled off in a foreign country I still love the USA – or maybe I love the idea of what we seemed to be at one time, but i am incredibly sad and angry to see what we have become – everyone seems to be so focused on their own little issues, and can’t seem to see the forest for the trees. Best Wishes to everyone here for a good New Year and hope for the future. :^)
I used “castrated” as a term of endearment and solidarity.
“It’s kind of fascinating that the American press hasn’t been able to put itself in the shoes of North Koreans, enough of whom obviously support their leader to the extent that he continues to enjoy the tacit consent of the governed.”
Given the frightening personality cult of the Kim dictatorship in North Korea, I don’t think this comparison works, though I take your overall point on the offensiveness of killing a foreign leader in a “comedy” (in quotes because the reviews say just as much).
Plus, I highly doubt the movie provides any historical context on how North Korea formed, the ghastly treatment of the Koreans by the Japanese during WWII or that little war we had there in the 1950s, which is enough to keep U.S. soldiers there.
“Memory is a stranger, history is for fools…”
I don’t think it “began” with the overthrow of Noreiga in 1989. The U.S. has been deposing leaders for decades before that. A case could be made that it started all the way back in1776. It also happened in 1898 in Hawaii. And any number of times in South America in the 1900s.
And before I forget. Doesn’t it seem much more likely that the CIA caused the Sony hack?
It’s America’s rebranded concept of exceptionalism. Everybody except us is a terrorist.
DanD
After WWII, EVERY OTHER NATION ON EARTH EXCEPT AMERICA WAS (economically) THIRD WORLD. While we did most proactively help the European (“Western”) subcontinent pull out of that slump the soonest, America was stlll the only surviving “nuclear” economy. The rest of the world was our oyster.
And then? America’s despots decided we needed to become an empire. With the keynesian dollar in full bloom, they surely knew that we could simply buy that empire with a printed fiat. Well, shit happens, and America is going down the economic toilet.
Tell me Ted, do you think that Washington has its own “Samson” option playing out?
DanD