You don’t need to suffer through all two hours of the Sony-produced film The Interview to understand why the people and government of North Korea would detest such a piece of vulgar propaganda.
Let’s begin with the storyline
When two American journalists, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, are granted access to conduct an exclusive television interview with Kim Jong Un, the U.S. government enlists them to carry out an assassination of the Korean leader.
Two insufferable hours of toilet humor later, the “goofy” pair of American assassins achieve this goal by enacting a gruesome execution of Kim Jung Un, whose face is shown distorted by panic as a giant missile strikes his helicopter and sets his head on fire.
On June, 2014, the Democratic People’s Republic Korea (DPRK) released a statement denouncing The Interview and Sony entertainment, correctly identifying the film as deliberate act of psychological warfare by a belligerent and desperate U.S. imperialism.
A month or so before the film was scheduled for release, a group of internet hackers called the Guardians of Peace leaked a trove of internal emails from Sony and called on Sony not to release the anti-DPRK propaganda film.
The U.S. government and bourgeois media instantly pinned the Sony hacks on North Korea without a shred of evidence to support this accusation.
The DPRK denied involvement with the cyberhacks and invited the U.S. to conduct a joint investigation, which the U.S. turned down.
Sony finally released the film online to much fanfare from the U.S. government, including Obama himself who lauded it as a victory for freedom of speech.
Leaked Sony documents reveal U.S. government role in producing "The Interview"
Some have speculated that the entire Sony fiasco was a calculated publicity stunt to promote the film.
What we know for certain, however, is that this film was created with oversight and approval by the U.S. government.
The U.S. for years has been dead-set on fomenting chaos in Korea and eliminating the anti-imperialist DPRK government.
Today, as the global balance of power is shifting rapidly and threatening the permanence of U.S. hegemony, Barack Obama implemented a so-called “pivot to Asia” strategy, escalating tensions with rising China as well as intensifying threats toward the government of North Korea.
It is in from this context that this film emerged.
Indeed, the leaked Sony emails revealed that The Interview was screened for at least two US government officials who gave it “Two Thumbs Up!” before it was unleashed onto the world.
RAND Corporation senior defense analyst Bruce Bennet wrote of the film, “I believe that a story that talks about the removal of the Kim family regime and the creation of a new government by the North Korean people (well, at least the elites) will start some real thinking in South Korea and, I believe, in the North once the DVD leaks.”
“I have to admit that the only resolution I can see to the North Korean nuclear and other threats is for the North Korean regime to eventually go away,” Bennett continued. “In fact, when I have briefed my book on ‘preparing for the possibility of a North Korean collapse’ [Sept 2013], I have been clear that the assassination of Kim Jong-un is the most likely path to a collapse of the North Korean government.”
Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton wrote back to Bennett and told him that a US government official backed his assessment.
“Bruce – Spoke to someone very senior in State (confidentially),” he said. “He agreed with everything you have been saying. Everything. I will fill you in when we speak.”
There you have it: blatant U.S. imperialist propaganda expressly designed to advance an agenda of U.S.-sponsored regime change in Korea.
U.S. assassination of leaders is no joke
When the United States pumps out a comic depiction of assassinating another country’s leader, the peoples of the world are not laughing.
Just ask the people of Libya about Gadaffi. Ask Congo about Lumumba. Ask Iraq about Saddam Hussein. Ask Chile about Salvador Allende.
Or ask Fidel Castro who has narrowly avoided over 600 CIA assassination attempts since 1959.
Black revolutionary leaders Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Carl Hampton and many others fell victim to U.S. orchestrated assassinations at the height of the Black Revolution of the Sixties.
"The Interview’s" insidious, insulting characterization of Kim Jong Un is consistent with a the U.S. media’s relentless vilification of the North Korean government, painted in the most cartoonish colors as a nuke-obsessed lunatic state hell-bent on sparking a nuclear Armageddon.
The reality, is that U.S. imperialism carved up Korea into north and south and in the 1950s waged a brutal genocidal war against the Korean people that slaughtered millions of Koreans and dropped even more tons of napalm than was later used by the U.S. in Viet Nam.
This terroristic film is meant to whip up the patriotic furor and bloodthirsty lynch mob cackles of the general North American white population, not unlike the Trey Parker/Matt Stone film “Team America” which ridiculed the previous Korean leader, Kim Jong Il.
It is this type of “good old fashioned fun” that was once enjoyed by the festive white crowds who would surround lynched Africans tortured and burned alive in the early 1900s.
Hollywood cinema: a tool of imperialism and white power
"The Interview" continues a long tradition of Hollywood cinema as one of the most aggressive weapons in the ideological and cultural arsenal of U.S. imperialism and white power.
Little has changed since the 1915 premiere of D.W. Griffith’s "Birth of a Nation", a racist paean to the confederacy, once praised by former U.S. president Woodrow Wilson as "history written with lightning,” and still heralded by white people today as one of the pillars of modern cinema.
The vaults of Hollywood abound with vile, degrading portrayals of Africans and other non-white peoples that once lit up the silver screens of this country.
One need only revisit a sampling of Shirley Temple's early gems – white nationalism adorned in curls and bows – to comprehend the function of Hollywood cinema as a tool of dehumanization and colonial slavery.
It was this sordid legacy to which the hip-hop group Public Enemy eloquently paid tribute with their 1990 single, “Burn Hollywood Burn.”
Imperialism in crisis resorts to vile insults and terror
This latest crass display of U.S. white nationalism and terrorism, directed at North Korea, is evidence of the deepening crisis faced by imperialism, whose foundation is rapidly coming undone as a consequence of the rising resistance and struggles of oppressed peoples everywhere, fighting for independence and self determination.
It is fitting that the film itself would depict a flailing, desperate U.S., resorting to inane measures such as deploying two bumbling idiots to assassinate a world leader. It is reflective of the desperation of the system itself.
There is, however, one crucial difference: In the movies, the imperialists can control the narrative.
In the real world, they cannot. The narrative is changing.
The oppressed, mocked, ridiculed, dehumanized, colonized peoples of the world are wresting control of this narrative out of the hands of the slavemaster.
The world’s oppressed and colonized reclaiming their rightful place as the subjects of history, shapers of our their own destinies.
It will be these victories over imperialism that will set the world right side up.
As the North Korean government stated on December 21st: “Fighters for justice including ‘guardians of peace’ who turned out in the sacred drive for cooperation in the fight against the U.S. to defend human justice and conscience and to dismember the U.S. imperialists, the root cause of all sorts of evils and kingpin of injustice, are sharpening bayonets not only in the U.S. mainland but in all other parts of the world.”
Victory to all oppressed peoples fighting imperialism!
Victory to Korea!
Death to imperialism and down with reactionary imperialist culture!
Uhuru!
