It is hard to say whether Kim Jong-un will, to any extent, be placated by nominations for the Golden Raspberry Awards, which feature The Interview — the comedy that has played a central role in stirring up a row between Pyongyang and Washington — in four categories.
Unlike the Oscars, which are ostensibly intended to recognize the best elements in cinematic culture, the so-called Razzies celebrate the worst. And The Interview features in the Worst Picture, Worst Actor (where it scores two nominations, for both Seth Rogen and James Franco) and Worst Screen Combo shortlists.
The reviews have been mixed, with some critics celebrating its crass scatological humor and others wishing it had stayed in the vaults. Which it almost did, after Sony Pictures declared late last month that it would never see the light of day, following the unprecedented hacking of the corporation’s website, alongside threats from North Korea that the movie’s release would provoke unspecified forms of retaliation.
North Korea is a nuclear power of sorts, which may partly explain why cinema chains in the United States developed an allergy to The Interview as the Christmas release date approached, and Sony announced that it had no plans of releasing the film in any form. This announcement inspired a backlash not only within Hollywood but also from the White House, with Barack Obama declaring that Sony Pictures had erred by giving in to intimidation. When the Japanese-owned corporation did a U-turn, Pyongyang concluded that the US president was to blame for the film’s release in cinemas and online, and subsequently denigrated him (not for the first time) in racist terms.
Having been informed by the FBI that the Sony hack was decidedly North Korea’s doing, Obama vowed the US would retaliate, and the Hermit Kingdom’s limited internet has been on the blink ever since, albeit without any admission of responsibility from Washington. The US has also reinforced sanctions against Pyongyang.
The latter, meanwhile, has hailed the cyber-attack on Sony as a “righteous act” but has denied being behind it, calling for a joint investigation. Various independent IT experts are inclined to take North Korea at its word in this context — there is more or less a consensus that the FBI was much too hasty in naming a culprit. Some sources point the finger at Russian hackers, while others suspect disgruntled former Sony employees were behind the act, which led to the publication of embarrassing corporate emails and the premature online release of a bunch of movies other than The Interview. It isn’t difficult to empathize with critics of Sony’s initial decision to cave in to censorship from abroad.
It is equally easy to ridicule the notion advanced by Pyongyang that The Interview, which not only subjects Kim Jong-un to mockery but grotesquely depicts his CIA-sponsored assassination by American interviewers, is part of a subversive plot thought up by the US government.
In at least the latter context, though, hasty conclusions would be unwise. There is evidence, after all, that Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton ran the project by the Rand Corporation, and was informed by defense analyst Bruce Bennett that the movie could indeed be expected to undermine the Kim regime, noting that “the assassination of Kim Jong-un is the most likely path to a collapse of the North Korean government.” Lynton subsequently informed Bennett that he had spoken to “someone very senior” in the State Department, who “agreed with everything you have been saying.” Pyongyang’s paranoia suddenly begins to seem a lot less absurd. There has lately been talk — unofficial, of course — of airdropping DVDs of The Interview across North Korea. However entertaining the film may or may not be, its potential value as propaganda is clearly not just an afterthought.
None of the foregoing is intended to suggest that the Kimdom of North Korea, frequently tagged as a Stalinist entity but in fact more akin to a military-dominated hereditary monarchy sustained by a probably unprecedented level of totalitarianism, is in any way defensible, let alone worth sustaining in its existing form. However, although its rhetoric often suggests otherwise, there have been plenty of indications over the decades that its family leadership may well be susceptible to a charm offensive. Three generations of Kims have longed to be taken seriously at the international level.
If the aim is to reduce and eventually end the suffering of ordinary North Koreans, a phone call from the White House to the palace in Pyongyang would be far more likely to produce desirable results than resort to coarse propaganda that reduces Pyongyang to little more than an easy target for the sort of ridicule Hollywood is much less likely to hurl in the direction of various other symbols of absolutism.
In a speech on New Year’s Day, Kim Jong-un made an overture to South Korea, indicating the desire for “a high-level summit” with Park Geun-hye, “depending on the mood and circumstances,” during the course of 2015. The fact that Park has in the past been subjected to vile abuse by official outlets in Pyongyang only adds to the significance of the gesture, although it’s only natural for the South Korean president to be wary of the North’s intentions.
The idea that hostile actions, such as sanctions and censure, are the best means of shifting North Korea out of the rut it has occupied for more than 60 years has proved to be something less than a spectacular success. And, as Obama noted in the context of Cuba, endlessly repeating failed tactics is not wise policy. Engagement with Pyongyang could prove to be a harder — and certainly considerably less pleasant — task than in the case of Havana. However, it would decidedly offer better scope for progress than wishful thinking about explosive remedies.
