Within the first four days of its Internet release on Dec. 23, “The Interview” (2014) has garnered over 2 million views and an excess of $15 million in revenue. The intense publicity the movie has garnered from media outlets, public figures and human rights organizations has only increased with recent allegations that North Korea engaged in cyber attacks on Sony Pictures and the brief shutdown of North Korea’s internet, the perpetrators of which are still unconfirmed. Even a cursory glance at your Facebook feed will show that people are interested in more than simply the plot. Despite the hype, the movie only demonstrates the all-too-common Western tendency to divert attention away from the very real and serious issues that currently exist in North Korea.
My grandma was originally from the North Korean province of Hamgyung-bukdo, but she fled to the South during the heat of the Korean War in 1950. My grandmother knows, perhaps better than anyone, that the atrocities occurring in North Korea are painfully real and nothing to be joked about. A 2014 United Nations commission found evidence of the North Korean regime committing crimes ranging from murder and torture to the political imprisonment, rape and enslavement of its people. It’s appalling to see a commercial movie production company have the nerve to turn the plight of the people surviving day by day under the Kim family dictatorship into a comedic plot.
The debate over the interrupted release of “The Interview” is problematic because the question of how we react to it is caught between two key issues — censorship and ignorance. On one hand, the question is whether to censor the movie, and by doing so fulfill Kim Jong Un’s wishes to not have the movie viewed. But the alternative to censorship — releasing the film openly as a humorous story involving the bad boy of the Far East, thereby overlooking the serious troubles of North Koreans — is no better.
The issue with creating a movie about an existing dictator, rather than a fictional one, is that it rests on a foundation of derision and judgment. Regardless of how irrational or unsettling a ruler’s actions may seem, other nations should not reduce the regime to a joke. Doing so damages the open communication, negotiation and diplomacy that could prove vital to alleviating the severe actions of the dictator and bettering the lives of the governed.
While Seth Rogen, one of the stars of “The Interview,” may defend the portrayal of the Kim regime through crass satire, the film’s portrayal of North Korea is distorted by a lens that is both distinctly Western and condescending. The image of Kim as an incompetent, tantrum-throwing tyrant sitting in a high-chair reveals the patronizing and trivializing attitude at the core of America’s attitude toward this grave issue.
North Korea is an insular nation, and communication between its people and other nations is undoubtedly difficult and limited. But its people are still human — a fact that “The Interview” fails to recognize. Oh Joon, the South Korean ambassador to the United Nations, expressed a more compassionate sentiment in a recent address. “North Koreans are not ‘anybodies’ to South Koreans,” he said. “There are millions of separated families between two Koreas ... One day in the future when we look back on what we did today, we will be able to say that we did the right thing for the people of North Korea, who have the same human rights just like us.”
North Korea should not be a subject of laughter, especially by those safely removed from its horrors. Regardless of his actions, publicly mocking Kim Jong Un — and by extension, North Korea itself — derails progress toward a better future for North Koreans.
