Even though the risk-averse powers-that-be at Sony shelved
its Christmas Day release, does the eventual Yuletide screening of Sony’s The
Interview a “triumph over despotism”?
By: Ringo Bones
Thanks to the urging of US President Barack Obama to Sony
Pictures Entertainment’s risk-averse CEO Michael Lynton to not bow down to the
despotism of North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un and to go ahead as planned the
Yuletide screening of the controversial political satire titled The Interview
that stars Seth Rogen and James Franco, it seems that free speech has triumph
again in America. Despite the boasts of the hacktivist group Guardians of Peace
to unleash a 9/11 style terror attack if Sony chooses to release the film,
everyone curious and brave enough to see what the hubbub is all about manages
to express their right to free expression incident free. It might be a rather
unprecedented uproar over a controversial work of political satire to the young
folks out there, but it seems that the “politics” over satirical films
preventing its screening in the name of censorship has happened before.
As a reaction to the rather brutal crackdown of Germany’s
Jewish community during the late 1930s, iconic comedian Charlie Chaplain – who
had gained enough clout in Hollywood from the brilliant success of his previous
works in the box-office managed to convince top Hollywood producers to help
make his then latest project a reality – a film satirizing a sitting
head-of-state the then German Chancellor Adolf Hitler titled The Great
Dictator. The then Prime Minister of Britain Neville Chamberlain blocked the
screening of the film on British theaters in the hopes of appeasing Hitler and
preventing an all-out war with Germany. But when the Hitler appeasing
Chamberlin was voted out and replaced by Winston Churchill and by then Germany
is already at war with Britain and the then new British PM Churchill allowed
the screening of Charlie Chaplain’s The Great Dictator on British movie theaters
as an act of defiance against Adolf Hitler. Given how controversial Chaplain’s
The Great Dictator is to “German sensibilities”, it wasn’t until 1998 that The
Great Dictator was screened in German cinemas.
Fast forward to 2014, the “political controversy” generated
by Sony’s The Interview may be partly due to the film’s subject matter - i.e.
the assassination of a sitting head-of-state of a deeply repressive and racist
regime who deeply believes that their race of people are the sole inheritors of
the planet – at least that’s what their megalomaniacal “Dear Leader” has
constantly reassured them. Even though the North Korean Bureau 121
cyber-warfare team had managed to recruit hackers who are sympathetic to their
rather repressive politics and “belief-system”, one wonders if the recent
cyber-attacks at Sony Entertainment was due in part to their past sins
committed in the past and the recent release of the rather unflattering racist
e-mains are just the tip of the iceberg of “Sony’s sins”.
