The NK (New Kim) Studio Hack News, continued....

With all due respect to the FBI, The New York Times, and President Obama, there is more to this picture than meets the eye, and more to this story than we've been given. In my previous posts I've defended China and dismissed North Korea. As to the latter, I am forced to retreat from my dismissal of their involvement, but not surrender.

 if it was NK after all, it was a blanket hack and they released everything, since they wouldn't know one person from another (apart from major stars) and certainly would not have grasped the jargon. In which case it was the media who picked and chose which emails to release, and explain who was who. And I very much doubt the Chinese were involved. There are North Koreans in China, and they could have orchestrated this, but the Chinese have no motivation to help NK commit a major international crime like this. Helping a bad nephew because he's your nephew is not motive enough. Somebody, I still think, played into Kim's hands who also held a grudge.

I have a story of my own that sheds some light on all of this, at least from the Chinese perspective. Back in 2005 when I was teaching English there and using films as discussion materials, I chose to show a film I had not seen, but had good reviews: Tim Burton's 'The Big Fish.' (Full disclosure: there is a chapter in my book Inside the New China about this incident). This film, it turned out, much to my horror and chagrin, insulted the Chinese far more than 'The Interview' insulted the North Koreans (although granted it was only a few scenes). In 'The Big Fish' there are several scenes (basically tall tales told by a boastful father to his skeptical son) in which he describes his great heroism in the Korean War, against the evil Chinese Red Army: whose soldiers would have been grandparents or great-grandparents of my students. 

It was acceptable and understood that the U.S. and China fought each other in the Korean War, and as a rule the less said about it the better (I was a huge fan of M.A.S.H., by the way). But the scenes in this film suggested to me that nobody in today's Hollywood has ever bothered to think outside the box they live in, which is a small, egotistical world all their own and the rest of humanity be damned. So the fact that there were war scenes involving an American versus the Chinese was fine, that was history after all, and we were friends (of sorts) now. But what Tim Burton portrayed in his movie--granted through the eyes and voice of his hero--absolutely ridiculed the Chinese as a race, a culture, or as discernible human beings. This was stereotyping at its absolute worst, and it seems likely to me that this is what Seth Rogan may have done or been perceived to be doing with 'The Interview.'

In 'The Big Fish,' what happens is that the American hero parachutes alone into the midst of a huge Chinese brigade, outsmarts all 10,000 of them, make them look stupid in the process, and gets away Scott free leaving them standing there looking dumb and shooting each other (or something to that effect, it's been a while).

There was a silence that fell over my classroom where I was showing that film when those scenes took place, and I wanted to sink through the floor back through the center of the Earth to the USA where I came from (which, apart from once working in Hollywood was all I had in common, it seems, with Tim Burton).

I had to apologize for the stereotyping, and my students were gracious in their acceptance and understanding. It is my hope, however, that some day Mr. Burton will make his own apology to the Chinese. He owes them one. They are anything but inept and stupid, different from us though they may be (and have been in the past). And yes, he can argue that it was a character's POV and not his, but it was the only POV we got to see in his movie.

As to North Korea, to ruin a film studio in response to a perceived insult was over the top, to be sure. And to randomly harm and threaten hundreds of people or more, inexcusable. But Kim may have felt he had grounds for doing it, after all. 

I think there is a lesson for Hollywood here (and the FBI), and it's not the one Obama is delivering. It's not just about not giving in to threats. It's also about respecting our fellow humans, however different and opposed to us they may be. Because who knows--as we have learned from the Japanese and Germans, today's enemy may be tomorrow's friend. And vice versa.