Posted in: Movies | Tagged: entertainment, film, hackers, sony, the interview

How The Interview Became A Cultural Vortex Of Crazy – Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh

Published Mon, 29 Dec 2014 18:30:44 -0600

Adi Tantimedh writes,

It's been a heady few weeks for Sony Studios and their movie The Interview.

First the studio got hacked in late November. Thoroughly, stole-everything-but-the-crown-jewels hacked where their entire computer system was frozen and important confidential files and email correspondences stolen, then leaked on the internet for all to see. During the first week, the alleged hackers were interviewed byThe Verge and declared they did it to protest against unequal practises at the studio.

Then in early December, North Korea condemned the imminent release of The Interview for its portrayal of their leader Kim Song Un as a grotesque buffoon. This led the alleged hackers, possibly another group piggybacking on the original group, to claim they hacked Sony as an act of vandalism against the movie. The media immediately leapt to the belief that North Korean agents were behind the hack all along and this was an act of cyberwar. The FBI declared that North Korea were responsible without presenting any compelling evidence at all, and an increasing number of security experts have since spoken to the likes of CNN and the New York Times stating that there is no real evidence linking the hack to North Korea at all. Some of them even said that Russian hackers were likelier suspects.

The hackers – or probably yet another group claiming to be the hackers – made vague threats against the cinemas planning to show the film, prompting the major chains to pull out of the movie. While these threats were likely a hoax, Sony agreed not to show the film, prompting hand-wringing editorials online and in print about giving in to terrorism. And when President Obama criticised Sony for withdrawing the film from theatres, the studio was embarrassed enough to work with independent cinemas to open the movie as scheduled after all. Freedom of Speech won out, right? A movie that the studio was originally worried would be a bomb is suddenly the most hyped thing on the planet, prompting people who didn't previous hear or care about it to suddenly want to see it, even on the principle of Free Speech.

The thing most striking about the hysteria is how much the American public have leapt onto the "blame North Korea" wagon just because the FBI said so without any real evidence. Most people aren't going to bother reading up on the articles that put up a fair argument that it's unlikely to be North Korea but several different groups of hackers jumping on the backs of the original hackers to send threats that the studio and cinema chains took seriously. It feels like people WANTED to believe it was North Korea, as if the age-old xenophobic paranoid Cold War fantasy of having a foreign commie enemy was comforting somehow. It's certainly a lot simpler and more black-and-white than the amorphousness of al-Qaida's multi-tentacled villainy or the too-complex destructiveness of the major banks. What a relief to have a cartoonishly-evil rogue state to fixate upon and hate!

And with all that noise, the original report that the hack might have been an insider job by disgruntled Sony employees assisting hackers in the know seems to have fallen by the wayside. Yes, many people in Hollywood believe that's more likely, especially in the way the leaked emails were carefully chosen and calculated to embarrass the heads of Sony. That suggests the leakers had to understand how Hollywood works and thinks in order to make them look this specifically bad. It's highly doubtful that the North Korea leadership has spent years reading Nikki Finke, Deadline Hollywood, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter to in order to know how to mount this campaign.

I thought it was pretty funny that many people who were hyped to finally see this movie because of all the fuss ended up disappointed or appalled by just how rubbish it is. The reviews have not been kind. It's the last film or cultural product you would expect to be at the centre of such a vortex of paranoia and hysteria. That's made the movie a must-see for many people. Even people in China and Korea have started pirating it just to see what the fuss was about, considering there are no plans to release the movie in Asia after Sony's marketing departments there declared the movie was racist and unlikely to do any business in their respective territories. The most evil and diabolical PR agency can only dream of this result, and a lot of them will probably be examining this situation for years in hopes of replicating it. The movie itself is a sloppy, mostly unfunny, lazily racist and homophobic slapstick comedy. The Asian characters are mostly one-dimensional props for the heroes to goof off in front of, the female Asian character who's in charge of propaganda for all of North Korea is a comical stereotype of the sexually ravenous dragon lady and the heroes are filled with homosexual panic throughout the movie. The Kim Jong Un of the movie is a psychopathic buffoon on a good day. It's more the type of movie to see if you're extremely high or extremely drunk, and you're not likely to remember much of it afterwards.

Now that the movie is finally out, maybe all the fuss will die away and we can wait for the next show biz scandal to hit, but I'm hearing and reading high-minded speculation from pundits who say the movie is a serious piece of political provocation and activism, and being widely available on torrent and pirate sites, will likely find its way into North Korea and perhaps damage the real Kim Jong Un's reputation and even lead to a revolution.

My only response to that is "Ummm…."

Leaking my brain at lookitmoves@gmail.com

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Look! It Moves! © Adisakdi Tantimedh

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