11) THE INTERVIEW: CHEAP CULTURAL STEREOTYPES
By Chevy Phillips (updated from a commentary posted on the Rebel Youth blog, Dec. 21, 2014)
In late December, President Obama admonished Sony for cancelling the release of the Seth Rogen comedy, The Interview, as an "affront to free speech". Sony, for its part, claimed it had no choice since terrorist threats had been made against movie-goers. By January, The Interview had been released in theatres and online.
The government in Pyongyang has denied being behind the cyber-attack, which dumped emails, movie scripts, and other sundry confidential material on‑line and left Sony reeling. It has also denied with equal vehemence making terrorist threats against movie theatres.
Who is responsible?
Despite the FBI's certainty that North Korea was behind this whole affair, it's tough to prove either way. One may also question the likelihood of North Korea preparing to kill US civilians en masse for going to see the movie, since even one such attack would undoubtedly result in an unimaginably severe counter‑attack from the US. Would North Korea really put its very existence at stake over a film, however offensive? Besides, US media is constantly ridiculing the leadership of North Korea, and the North has no track record of either threatening or carrying out attacks against US civilians as a result.
We'll probably never know who the "Guardians of Peace" (GOP) actually are. Some discussion has even suggested it was a revenge attack by former Sony employees. In a recent development, as reported in Business Insider on Dec. 20, the GOP uploaded a video to Youtube (1) mocking the FBI and seeming to suggest the Feds were way off in attributing blame to North Korea. (2)
On Dec. 19, the BBC's Radio 4 news program PM featured a an IT security expert claiming there was "more evidence of Iraq having WMD than there was of North Korea being behind the Sony hack." (3)
Chinese media has also made a point of commenting. Global Times pointed out that, "The vicious mocking of Kim is only a result of senseless cultural arrogance", while also observing that the Chinese themselves were also not so long ago the targets of such mockery and opprobrium. (4)
The situation on the Korean peninsula has been tense for decades, including annual joint military exercises conducted by US forces and their southern Korean allies. The North feels these are little more than "invasion exercises," and fears nuclear annihilation should such an invasion be mounted. Nuclear threats against the North go back to the 1950s and General MacArthur's ravings about creating a "wasteland" in the north, right up to the modern day as seen in the memoirs of former CIA chief and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
The Korean War (1950‑53) was an extraordinarily destructive one, with up to three million Korean casualties, and included threats by the US‑led forces of chemical and nuclear attacks. (5)
Noted North Korea expert Bruce Cummings points out: "Napalm was invented at the end of the second world war. It became a major issue during the Vietnam war, brought to prominence by horrific photos of injured civilians. Yet far more napalm was dropped on Korea and with much more devastating effect, since the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) had many more populous cities and urban industrial installations than North Vietnam.
"In a major strike on the industrial city of Hungnam on 31 July 1950, 500 tons of ordnance was delivered through clouds by radar; the flames rose 200‑300 feet into the air. The air force dropped 625 tons of bombs over North Korea on 12 August... By late August B‑29 formations were dropping 800 tons a day on the North. Much of it was pure napalm. From June to late October 1950, B‑29s unloaded 866,914 gallons of napalm. (6)
And this from the notorious USAF general, Curtis LeMay: "We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too.... Over a period of three years or so, we killed off ‑ what ‑ twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure?" (7)
The extraordinary loss of life and destructiveness of the US‑led campaign against the North has not been forgotten in Pyongyang. The North Koreans are often accused of being paranoid, but perhaps that's not surprising.
Let's imagine that the situation was reversed. Let's imagine a country like Iran, or perhaps the North Koreans themselves, had produced a blockbuster movie, complete with well‑known actors, about the assassination of President Obama. How would the US react? Would they accuse the offending movie (and state) of threatening peace and stability, and promoting terrorism? Such a reaction is not particularly hard to conceive.
We should therefore not be too surprised that North Korea has reacted badly to the prospect of The Interview. But we should also not assume that nation's government to automatically be behind the cyber‑attack on Sony. The latter does not necessarily follow from the former, and just about anyone (nation state or otherwise) with an interest in causing harm to Sony could now be using the North Korean's understandable anger as cover for their own machinations.
In light of all of this, perhaps it's not such a bad thing a movie depicting the assassination of a real life, currently-in-office, national leader in an extremely sensitive and possibly explosive region was pulled. However humorous it was intended to be, we can assume (probably safely) that the last thing the citizens of either the north or south of Korea want is aggravation of a long‑standing, bitter conflict that has cost so many lives. Feelings are likely to be the same in the nations surrounding Korea, particular China and Japan.
The principle of free speech has been invoked in the critical reaction to Sony's cancellation of the release, but this is misplaced. When the long‑standing possibility of war breaking out (again) on the Korean peninsula is concerned, keeping the peace and potentially saving millions of lives is far more important than a few laughs and cheap shots at cultural stereotypes. The world is not a poorer place as a result of one low‑brow comedy being consigned to "straight‑to‑DVD" release.
Endnotes
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiRacdl02w4
2. www.businessinsider.com/the‑sony‑hackers‑just‑pranked‑the‑fbi‑2014‑12
3. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04v5xys
4. www.globaltimes.cn/content/897742.shtml
5. See Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, "First victims of biological warfare," Le Monde diplomatique, English language edition, July 1999.
6. www.japanfocus.org/‑Bruce‑Cumings/2055
7. US Strategic Air Power 1948‑1962: Excerpts from an interview with Generals Curtis LeMay, Leon W. Johnson, David A. Burchinal, and Jack J. Catton. International Security #12, 1988.
(The above article is from the January 1-31, 2015 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)