This boycott is not about some silly movie, The Interview, which ends with the exploding head of North Korea’s tin-pot dictator, Kim Jung-un.
It’s about Sony making a mockery of America’s vaunted and enviable freedoms – of speech and expression – by pulling it under dubious threats from anonymous hackers.- It’s about major theater chains, like Regal, AMC, and Cinemark, doing the same by deciding not to run it even if Sony had the balls to release it.
- It’s about other major studios, like Universal, Warner Bros, and 21st Century Fox, doing the same by refusing to sign a petition (being circulated by no less a star than George Clooney) in support 0f Sony’s right to release it. This, of course, betrays the foreboding fact that these studios would cave in under similar threats too.
- It’s about these studios being so willing to make a mockery of our freedoms that Paramount even denied permission for appropriately defiant movie theaters to re-release its 2004 comedy Team America, which parodies Jung-un’s father in similar fashion. They would have you believe they’re willing to do so because they are concerned about hackers blowing you up in the theater – “9/11-style. As if implementing more security measures is as foreign to them as implementing more democratic freedoms is to Kim Jung-un. Whereas, in truth, they’re doing so in a venal, cowardly, irresponsible and, ultimately, self-defeating effort to “protect shareholder interests” and spare themselves the embarrassment more leaked e-mails would inflict. Indeed, if they did not fear hackers leaking more e-mails by top executives dissing A-list actors and reveling in racist banter, which is clearly bad for business, far from caving in, Sony and theater chains would probably be welcoming these threats as good box office promotion….
For these reasons, to say nothing of their untenable implications, I hereby call for a national boycott – not just of Sony’s movies, but of all movies … period!
Do not set foot in a theater this holiday season. And stay away — not only until Sony reverses its decision and releases this movie, but also until other studios issue a public pledge never to cave in to such threats ever again.
Let us show these spineless studios and equally spineless theater chains that they have far more to fear from indignant movie fans than from anonymous hackers (especially if their paymasters are in fact the humorless thugs who run North Korea – as the FBI now contends).
Related commentaries:
Crying shame: Sony…
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