It’s not easy task to make North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un look like an unfairly maligned underdog, but leave it to the bumbling greed of Hollywood to succeed at mission impossible.
“The Interview” may be a joke of a film, but the Sony hacking incident and escalating war of words between anti-Kim detractors and the pro-Kim hackers is deadly serious.
Despite the predictable, petulant cries of “caving in,” Sony Japan finally found the gumption to say “no” to its decadent, derelict Hollywood division.
Is it worth beating the drums of war for an exercise in bad taste?
When Sony Pictures last week cancelled the Christmas launch of their film “The Interview” there were howls of anger and anguish around America. Many saw this as a craven collapse in the face of pressure from North Korea and an assault on American values. So it was no surprise that President Obama on Friday stated his view that Sony Pictures had made a mistake. Following the FBI's conclusion that North Korea was behind the hacks on Sony Pictures' networks it was no surprise either that he announced a “proportionate” response by the USA.
But the situation is now dangerous. This quarrel is no longer just between Sony Pictures and North Korea, but between the government of the United States of America – at the highest level – and North Korea.… Seguir leyendo »
Sony’s decision to pull “The Interview” — an enormous act of self-censorship under threat of violence — somehow comes as no great surprise to me. It is the culmination of an insidious trend of self-censorship in the face of intimidation that has plagued Western culture for more than a decade.
Nine years ago, as culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, I commissioned cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to start a debate about how we talk about Islam. In commissioning the cartoons, my newspaper was reacting to a pattern of self-censorship among publishers, writers, museums, theaters and performers. Institutions like the Tate museum in London and the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden, had called off shows or removed artwork from exhibits.… Seguir leyendo »
How about a world where we have murderers but no murders? The police still chase down criminals who commit murder, we have trials, juries who judge, and justice is handed out . . . but no one dies.
With many forms of cybercrime and hacking, we can just decide, as a society, to take away much of the damage before it happens. Imagine if the hackers had stolen intimate pictures from Jennifer Lawrence, and we all just agreed that, "She didn't want us to see these pictures, so we're not going to look."
No one should underestimate the historic importance of the North Korean cyberwar against America and the collapse of American defenses in the Sony Pictures attack.
This was not some amusing pop culture event in which a few "hackers" played games with celebrities.
This was not an entertaining series of embarrassing leaks that allowed us to learn how viciously and nastily some senior Hollywood bosses write about famous movie stars in internal emails.
This was a deliberate assault on sovereign American soil against an American company, costing it millions of dollars in direct damages and hundreds of millions in reputational damages while blocking most of its employees from using their internal systems to get routine work done.… Seguir leyendo »
A quote often attributed to Leon Trotsky reads, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." Although Washington would like very much to ignore North Korea, Pyongyang has just brought Trotsky's axiom into the 21st century with a seminal cyberattack that will have an immediate economic and cultural impact.
On Wednesday, the U.S. government reportedly concluded that North Korea was "centrally involved" in the hacking of Sony Pictures. The attack is believed to have involved stealing and publicizing emails between high-level Sony executives and talent, as well as at least two government officials. When combined with a threat of violence against would-be viewers of a comedy mocking the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Pyongyang's hackers effected the cancellation of the movie's release.… Seguir leyendo »
Movies may not be better than ever, as a Hollywood marketing slogan in yesteryear boasted they were, but the critics take movies seriously in North Korea. The chief movie critic in Pyongyang can kill a movie with a single review. He might even kill anybody who goes to see it.
Sony Pictures’ big Christmas flick, “The Interview,” which has been pulled from release and consigned to mothballs in an unannounced location where it is expected to be safe for now, is a comedy about the assassination of Kim Jong-un, the humorless ruler of North Korea. His head explodes in the final scene, with “head chunks” flying about in gleeful clouds of gore.… Seguir leyendo »
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