How to Assassinate a World Leader on Film or: Why North Korea and Sony Are Both Wrong

by Gabriel Valdez

First thing’s first. I don’t like North Korea. They treat their citizens the only way a military dictatorship seems to know how. It’s a nation ruled by bullies and propped up so long only because China prefers a buffer between American land forces in South Korea and themselves.

What do I think about the complete cancellation of Sony’s new film about assassinating North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, The Interview? After hackers, reportedly employed by the North Korean government, revealed Sony studio chiefs’ private correspondence and pirated several of their upcoming films, the studio was still set to release The Interview in theaters this weekend. It wasn’t until the threat of physical violence that theater chains began pulling The Interview and, finally, Sony decided to simply shelve the film.

Let’s get some perspective. First off, the thought that North Korea has any capability to extend physical threats into the American public is laughable. Secondly, even if they did have any real covert extension, they wouldn’t waste exposing it just to stop a movie. Thirdly, China is too heavily invested in the United States to want to spark a war (even by proxy), and they don’t want to have to prop up North Korea’s infrastructure even more were we to respond to a terrorist attack on our soil by bombing them.

North Korean agents are not roaming our streets in droves – that’s ridiculous. China has better things to do than engage in brinksmanship over a Seth Rogen movie. While North Korea doesn’t always listen, the regime depends on China for survival and China will have made it known to North Korea what actions are tolerable and what actions will see consequences. Don’t get me wrong – China will be overjoyed to see the effect some well-funded, but pretty basic, hacking can have on U.S. businesses. They love having the ability to use North Korea in this way. If China did this (and they’ve pushed the boundaries), it would be an international incident. A fight between North Korea and Sony? That’s on the entertainment page.

Theater chains did not pull The Interview because of the threat of physical violence. They pulled it because they did not want to be hacked next. If Sony couldn’t withstand it, what chance does Regal Cinemas or Cinemark have, let alone the smaller and regional chains? It just sounds better to buy into the narrative and say, “We’re protecting our customers,” than it does to admit, “Yeah, we have some e-mails and finances we don’t want to see the light.”

Now, declaring this as a resounding defeat against terrorism is…stupid. I was looking for a more nuanced word, but “stupid” works just fine. Like I said, I don’t like or support North Korea, but Sony up and made a movie about killing another country’s leader. No matter how much I may dislike that leader and think he’s an evil mark upon this earth, that’s dangerous territory – ethically and otherwise. What are some other recent comedies that depict assassinations of real-world people who were alive at the time?

How about the famous South Park episode where Cartman kills Osama bin Laden? Well, that’s not a world leader, that’s a terrorist. Those definitions certainly bump into each other when talking about the leader of North Korea, so how about Team America: World Police going to war against Kim Jong-il (father of and predecessor to Kim Jong-un)?

These are fuzzy definitions we’re getting into, but I interpret those two examples as lampoons. Keep in mind that in Team America: World Police, our heroes have to fight their way through the likes of Sean Penn and Matt “Matt Damon” Damon. Team America wasn’t about assassinating another country’s leader, it was about an interpretation of Hollywood’s occasionally self-serving morals…and puppets. The fact that all the characters were marionettes definitely helped. Neither the movie nor its advertising campaign was: “Kill this guy.” They were each larger than that, communicating instead, “This is a movie about how ridiculous we can be and, oh yeah, Kim Jong-il’s in it singing about being lonely while he feeds U.N. inspectors to sharks.” (North Korea certainly didn’t like that movie, but they didn’t launch this large a campaign against it.)

The Interview seems to be about: “Kill this guy.” Its advertising campaign boils down to: “Kill this guy.” It involved neither animation nor marionettes, which have the capability to deflect criticism itself into the realm of the silly and not worthwhile. It starred James Franco and Seth Rogen, two very recognizable personalities.

Furthermore, that South Park episode, “Osama bin Laden has Farty Pants,” was made about a figure with whom we were already at war. The episode was itself a part of that war. Not only did U.S. troops reportedly love it, but that episode also sought to deconstruct the mythical power of bin Laden in our own minds. By lampooning him, we took him less seriously. The most powerful tool you can wield against a Bogeyman is to stop being scared of him. South Park made him into a punchline the same way pre-World War 2 comedies made Hitler into one. It made us confident we could beat him rather than be scared of him.

Team America: World Police isn’t that much more complicated. We were not at war with North Korea, although North Korea is still technically at war with us. Kim Jong-il was in it, but he wasn’t the purpose of the film. Team America recognized that he wasn’t a Bogeyman because we already didn’t take him or North Korea seriously. The Bogeymen in Team America were our own political extremes – conservative Imperialism, Hollywood-styled liberalism, and an ineffectual U.N.

Team America may be a silly movie about how ridiculous marionettes can be made to look, but it was also the most effective millennial artistic takedown of the U.N. until P.J. Harvey recorded “The Words That Maketh Murder.”

Having not seen it, no one can say for sure if The Interview had a deeper reason for being, but advertising made it seem empty. The joke communicated wasn’t “The Bogeyman is only in our heads,” and it wasn’t “let’s glue stuff on marionettes until they look like mutant caricatures.” The joke advertised was: “Kill this guy.”

That’s a fundamentally different and excessively remedial approach to making a film about a real-life figure. There’s a reason that even the most serious-minded films and TV shows about world politics use fictional figures (Syriana, Tyrant), fictional countries (from Duck Soup to West Wing), recount recent history (Zero Dark Thirty), or house their fictional narratives alongside fact-based chronologies (Green Zone). These films are careful and, while we view comedies as inherently irreverent, that irreverence means you need to be even more careful.

Irreverence is not an excuse. It does not mean you don’t do the work required to understand your situation. It means you work even harder to understand it that much better, so that you can most effectively undermine it. If you’re not willing to do that work, then make your movie about assassinating a fictional character in a fictional country that looks and feels a lot like North Korea. Maybe even stick a joke about how James Franco keeps calling it North Korea and Seth Rogen has to keep correcting him.

More than anything else, I look at The Interview and ask if it helped or harmed relations with North Korea. The Trey Parker and Matt Stone examples I bring up (South Park, Team America), for all their conscious viciousness and disrespect, did enough to mediate the potential damage they could have caused with other cultures. The Interview, so far, did not. That’s a film that could cost lives, maybe not American ones but possibly South Korean ones and almost assuredly North Korean ones. For all the bitching about releasing the Congressional report on torture this last week and how it might cost lives, those same voices are now arguing that The Interview scraping its release is a tragedy? If one costs lives, the other does, too.

I’m not saying Sony doesn’t have the right to make and release The Interview. I’ll defend to my dying breath that they absolutely do. What I am saying is that The Interview, at least as advertised, was deeply irresponsible.

The lines between what’s OK and what’s not when it comes to making art involving an existing dictator and his assassination are so fuzzy that I don’t think anyone can clearly demarcate what’s right and what’s wrong. But the fixes for The Interview would have been so remarkably easy, mediating the potential damage it could risk so inconsequential an act, that I don’t find myself feeling sorry for Sony at all. I feel sorry for Lizzy Caplan and Diana Bang and Timothy Simons and other actors who were probably excited to see the results of their last gig. I feel sorry for the other Sony films that were pirated and released online because of a production with which they had nothing to do. But just because North Korea’s a raging, megalomaniacal dictatorship doesn’t mean that Sony is the Angel of frickin’ Christmas. They can both be assholes in this situation.

If The Interview had been advertised as a film about James Franco and Seth Rogen acting silly and, oh yeah, Kim Jong-un’s in it, you would have seen a smoother lead-up to release. North Korea would have objected after the fact, but they wouldn’t have launched an entire campaign against it.

This brings up two questions:

1. What the hell did Sony expect?
2. Why the hell weren’t they prepared for it?

Many called this reaction from North Korea months ago. Anyone even halfway paying attention had to suspect North Korea – who have a history of hacking U.S. businesses far more sensitive in their nature than Sony – would retaliate. It’s not a country that bothers itself with anything better to do.

Why the hell wasn’t Sony in the least prepared for this reaction? Why hadn’t they prepped for it and coordinated with the U.S. government? Our government doesn’t miss a chance to go toe-to-toe with foreign hackers. It’s like war games for them because it is, essentially, live-fire practice for a key component of the next major war.

If I were Sony, I’d be firing some key people (Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin chief among them), not just because North Korea revealed e-mails where they were clearly being racist, and e-mails in which they were conspiring to pay female stars less than their male counterparts. It wouldn’t even be because The Interview is going to be at least an $80 million loss on their books (assuming half-and-half for budget and advertising, which is a very conservative estimate). It wouldn’t even be out of the embarrassment of all these things combined. I would be firing people because all of this was so very easily preventable.

And when something is this easily preventable, it’s only out of sheer laziness or ego that it happens anyway.

‘Genre’ is Not a Naughty Word

Yesterday, a friend of mine commented that she disliked my describing Rose Byrne as a “genre darling” in my Neighbors review because it confines her within a narrow field of film and the word ‘genre’ is generally derogatory. I can absolutely see where she’s coming from, but I’d like to explain why I used the description and why ‘genre’ is not a naughty word.

There’s a difference between a judgment and a descriptor. My reviews go to paper, too, so they don’t get to be as free-form as some of my other articles – I’m limited to about 700 words. Sometimes, I have to describe personalities very quickly. Rose Byrne is most often associated with ‘genre’ films; that’s how the most readers will know who I’m talking about in the fewest words. In my judgment, I hardly think Seth Rogen ought to be a “comedy mainstay,” as I described him in the review, but that’s how readers know him because that’s how he’s used. Any time I can effectively describe an actor in two words rather than list off movies, it frees up an incredible amount of space I can use to talk about the film itself. And Neighbors has an issue that demanded the space: one of the least responsible inclusions of rape I’ve ever seen on film.

My goal was to concisely describe Rogen and Byrne and Zac Efron so that an audience would immediately recognize who I was talking about. Maybe I succeeded and maybe I didn’t, but when we call Rose Byrne a ‘genre darling’ or William H. Macy and Tilda Swinton ‘indie darlings’ or John McCain and Barack Obama ‘media darlings,’ it doesn’t define them as being capable of nothing else but those specialties. It defines them as being so particularly excellent at those specialties that they stand head and shoulders above incredibly crowded fields. It is not mutually exclusive to being good at anything else and it is not meant to cage them within a particular genre.

When I say Byrne carries Rogen and the comedy, that’s a judgment. When I say she shouldn’t have played a scene in which she gets a girl drunk so she can peer pressure her into sex and physically force her into sexual contact, that’s a judgment. But saying Byrne has a history in ‘genre’ film is no different than describing Efron as a “former Disney wonderkid.” They aren’t meant to be complete definitions, but rather to get a reader on the same page as quickly as possible.

Insofar as ‘genre’ goes as a derogatory term, I grew up watching and reading almost nothing but genre. I love genre. To me, ‘genre’ is a far more appealing word than ‘drama’ or ‘literary’. Genre can do things neither of those can. Robert Heinlein is genre. Ursula K. Le Guin is genre. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and William Gibson and Margaret Atwood are genre. The Thing and Star Trek and Gravity are genre. In 1992, Star Trek: The Next Generation had consecutive episodes that argued for gay marriage rights and for the humane qualities of euthanasia. Show me one other U.S. TV show that’s willing to risk that much every week even today, let alone 22 years ago under 12 straight years of Reagan/Bush.

‘Genre’ isn’t something to be ashamed of. ‘Genre’ is what everything else secretly wants to be, cause ‘genre’ has enjoyed golden ages ‘drama’ and ‘literary’ could only dream of, and takes social stands ‘drama’ and ‘literary’ take their cues from a decade later, after ‘genre’ takes the initial risk to show that it can work.

Samurai films and monster movies are genre. They’re how Japan chose to confront, on a nationwide scale, the guilt and shame of blindly following leaders into decades of genocide and war. Superhero movies are genre. They’re fast becoming our best venue for culture-wide dissections of privacy and military-industrial concerns in our own government. Martial arts films are genre. They’re what allowed China to stake their claim to cultural relevancy alongside Hollywood: first among their own people and, later, to the West itself. Westerns opened up Spain’s film industry the way horror movies opened up Italy’s. Magical realism brought Latin American writers to the fore. Mexican horror (through the Spanish film industry Westerns created) has become the premier translation for Mexican Catholicism’s uniquely evolved fusion of modern doctrinal religion, old-fashioned spiritual animism, and ancestor worship.

‘Genre’ can help heal countries, can call out governments, can help introduce cultures to each other, can kickstart national film industries, can translate the incredible complexities of entire religions and cultures. ‘Literary’ and ‘drama’ don’t often get to be so outspoken. In my opinion, they far too often play it safe.

So screw ‘genre’ being a derogatory term. I don’t get on board with that. ‘Genre’ is what people want to go see. ‘Genre’ is what takes risks before more accepted forms do. ‘Genre’ changes minds and elicits ideas and time and again has to make smarter, sharper arguments than more ordinary forms. So if I bother to call something ‘genre,’ what I’m really saying is, “This shit’s brave.” And if I bother to call an actor a ‘genre darling,’ what I’m really saying is, “This actor takes risks and, because of that, they do things 99% of their contemporaries can’t.”

Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, Mary Shelley, Ray Bradbury, Georgie O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas and all of Impressionism were ‘genre’ before they became so overpowering and immediate as artists and movements that they became accepted as somehow ‘dramatic’ or ‘literary’ and therefore ‘classic,’ suddenly off-limits to ‘genre.’ But the truth is none of them ever left being genre. ‘Accepted’ just caught the hell up.

‘Genre’ drags everything else forward. Everything. I will never use that word in a derogatory way, but I will absolutely keep using that word, because ‘genre’ is what I was raised on and I can’t think of any piece of art I like more than a science-fiction movie like Moon or a horror movie like Let the Right One In, a Western like Once Upon a Time in the West or a martial arts film like Police Story, a crime movie like Stray Dog or a mystery like North by Northwest. Not calling something ‘genre,’ that’s derogatory. But ‘genre’ is the future. It always was and it always will be, and there’s absolutely nothing ‘literary’ or ‘dramatic’ can ever do about it. They’ll continually play catch up to ‘genre’ for the remainder of human existence. And if that’s not a ‘genre’ ending, I don’t know what is.

“Neighbors” Can’t Get Over Great, Big, Insulting Mistake

Neighbors is rated R for pervasive language, strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, and drug use throughout. Let’s start with the language. When I can watch prime-time detective shows in which heads explode but not a single cuss word is spoken, and they’re rated for families, I’ve come to the conclusion that our rating system might be prioritizing some of the wrong things. Neighbors can get away with its language because of its actors – comedy mainstay Seth Rogen, genre darling Rose Byrne, and former Disney wonderkid Zac Efron.

Efron runs a college fraternity that moves in next to a married couple (Rogen and Byrne) with a baby. Things quickly get out of hand as the two sides engage in a violent prank war that has no practical purpose except for giving us an excuse for a movie. Rogen is no Chevy Chase, however, who made these sorts of competing neighbor plots his bread-and-butter in the 80s.

The dialogue feels largely improvised, so it’s a surprise that the majority of the humor actually comes from Byrne, who’s typically much more at home in sci-fi and horror movies, as well as Efron, whose High School Musical days are long past. The problem with Rogen is that we’ve seen his act before, and it hasn’t evolved in any way since Knocked Up and Pineapple Express. If anything, it’s lost energy.

Now for the sexual content and graphic nudity. There’s a lot of it. Most of the jokes are obsessively sexual. That’s not a bad thing in the right hands, but Neighbors never figures out a reason it’s making these jokes beyond the fact it has Seth Rogen in it and they’re expected. A few of the bits work on the strength of some well-placed cameos, but some sequences – Rogen milking Byrne after he breaks her breast pump, or the two rushing to the hospital because their baby gums a prophylaxis left on their lawn – are so monumentally stupid I felt embarrassed for the actors.

You’ll notice I’m using their real names – the characters had names, but I’m not sure they’re ever mentioned after the 10-minute mark. More than any other movie I’ve seen recently, I kept thinking of them by the actors’ names – given how unlikeable the characters are, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

You see, Rogen and Byrne play tired parents. The first chance they get, they rocket off to the frat house so Rogen can get drunk and do mushrooms. See, he’s tired from working a job he cuts out on every afternoon to smoke pot. Selling his character as a non-functioning substance abuser and a real, caring family man just doesn’t work. But he’s not alone – Byrne tries to break up the frat by making Efron’s girlfriend sleep with his best friend. How does she do this? By getting the girlfriend drunk, even pouring liquor down her throat after the girl protests and tries to stop drinking. Then Byrne pressures her into having sex with the best friend.

I get that we’re not really supposed to take this stuff seriously. Seth Rogen’s using a dance-off to distract the rest of the house party while this is going on, after all, but there are a dozen other ways to achieve that plot point that don’t involve rape. The film never even stops to think this is rape; the girlfriend is just a plot point to break up the frat. If a comedy doesn’t consider pouring liquor down a woman’s throat to have sex with her even as she tells you to stop as forced and violative, that’s a silent endorsement to a lot of viewers on the parts of the writer, director, the popular Rogen, Disney-kid Efron, and wholesome Rose Byrne.

I was very ready to meet Neighbors halfway. Truth is, most of it is a decently successful comedy whose actors pull off some pretty bad jokes much better than they should. Unfortunately, that also means they end up pulling off hard drug use and rape, presenting both as free of consequence and without even recognizing that’s what they’ve done. Like I said at the beginning, though, there’s one thing I don’t have a problem with – the language. That’s a good thing, since I use some choice words to describe Neighbors outside of print.