I must confess that I appreciated hackers exposing the racist banter Sony Chairman Amy Pascal and über producer Scott Rudin engaged in – as “Sony: Leaked E-mails Expose Big-Shot Hollywood Liberals as Closet Racists,” December 12, 2014, will attest.
But I never thought those hackers were willing or able to do anything more than cause Sony endless embarrassment (by releasing more private e-mails) and financial woes (by pirating or spoiling unreleased films).
Imagine my shock, therefore, when Sony pulled The Interview from distribution, citing manifestly incredible threats to blow up theaters if it did not:
With theater chains defecting en masse, Sony Pictures Entertainment has pulled the planned Christmas Day release of The Interview.
In announcing the decision to cancel the holiday debut, Sony hit back at the hackers who threatened movie theaters and moviegoers and who have terrorized the studio and its employees for weeks.
‘Those who attacked us stole our intellectual property, private emails and sensitive and proprietary material, and sought to destroy our spirit and our morale – all apparently to thwart the release of a movie they did not like,’ the statement reads.
(Variety, December 17, 2014)
To be clear, The Interview is nothing more than a slapstick comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco as two wannabe reporters the CIA enlists to assassinate the president of North Korea, Kim Jung-un. But, if North Korea is making these threats, it would not be the first case of a different culture taking Western humor deadly serious….
Mind you, I would understand a studio head, like Pascal, pulling a movie because hackers were blackmailing her (privately) with threats to release material even more compromising than racist e-mails (like a video of her pooch nuzzling her cooch, for example). Even so, though, you’d have to be a gullible fool to think that, by caving in to their demands, these hackers will spare you any further embarrassing leaks. Moreover, it strikes me as utterly preposterous to do so simply because anonymous hackers were hurling the kinds of Chicken-Little threats that have made North Korea a laughing stock on the world stage.
Not to mention that the congenitally irreverent creators of South Park got away with portraying Jung-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, in an even more unflattering light in the 2004 marionette comedy, Team America: World Police. This, incidentally, is why I find these threats so incredible….
Frankly, it’s far more likely that a disgruntled Edward Snowden-like insider is behind this hack and, for obvious reasons, is just routing blame to North Korea. And, it speaks volumes about the kind of propaganda North Korea thrives on that it is accepting this blame as if it were a national Christmas present.
Whatever the case, this reaction by Sony and theater chains is as incomprehensible as it is unsustainable.
After all, what happens if/when hackers issue similar threats against another Sony picture, or against that of a different studio? Beyond this, what happens if/when hackers threaten to blow up several NFL stadiums during Sunday games (simultaneously al-Qaeda style)?
It’s plainly untenable to think that others would act in the cowardly, irresponsible, shortsighted, and, ultimately, self-defeating way Sony Pictures and theater chains have in this case.
Related commentaries:
Sony e-mails…
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Wednesday, at 9:44 p.m.