The Interview

While I did not see the movie The Interview, I did follow the news while all this was going on.  I didn’t really care about seeing it one way or the other but I was surprised when I learned that Sony was going to pull the movie. Not only would it have been a huge waste of time, energy, and not to mention, millions of dollars, but it would have sent the message that we as a people were afraid and weren't ready to stand up for our freedom of speech. 

When a multi million-dollar company decides to create a movie about assassinating the current living leader of North Korea, I think it’s safe to assume there is going to be some backlash. Many have said if the situation was reversed and someone decided to make a movie about killing our president, Americans would be outraged. While that is a valid point, this movie is just that, a movie. It’s a piece of fiction and is an American product of creative art, not history. I think it was not an ethically sound choice for Sony to pull the release for several reasons. To begin, the movie was clearly a satire comedy and while the plot material is somewhat touchy, it’s a farce, a joke. It doesn’t actually threaten anyone and we as Americans have the right of free speech, which is defined as “the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas”. What is the point of having a first amendment if people don’t stick to their choices and beliefs? One moviegoer says, “Other governments can’t censor what movies we watch here. We need to always be sure we’re protecting the First Amendment” (http://www.wsj.com/articles/small-theaters-make-free-speech-pitch-for-the-interview-1419531898). If we don’t release the movie, what’s next?

By pulling the release of the film, Sony was essentially giving in to the terrorists. It’s one thing to be fearful of the consequences and not make the movie, but it’s entirely another thing to make the movie and not be prepared to stand your ground. I think we can look at this through the eyes of Mill’s utility principle which as we know states that the outcome is what is important to deciding whether or not something is ethical. Clearly the outcome in this case was not positive, as the decision to pull the movie was met with backlash from everyone from fans to the actors to the president himself. As Obama said, “I would have told them do not get into a pattern in which you're intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks”  (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/12/19/sony-the-interview-hackers-gop/20635449/). We as Americans should not let people control what we do and don’t do through the threat of violence.

I think Aaron Sorkin’s article from the New York Times was enlightening as he discusses some major problems within Hollywood today. It’s pretty telling when he details how the media finally “got serious”, not because the hackers had released social security numbers, bank accounts, and phone numbers, but because of petty salary arguments within the film industry. I knew about the hackers releasing personal information about Sony employees but I was unaware that American journalists were the ones releasing the salaries.

Is this news? Is this what’s important to people when there is so much death, destruction, and war going on around the world? Now I love celebrity gossip as much as the next person, but I don't think it was right for journalists to release this kind of information. I think it’s important that people know that huge companies like Sony are capable of being hacked, but it’s not necessary to know specific information about the hack.

 In regards to how much money Jennifer Lawrence made for the movie American Hustle, I can quote Sorkin by saying “I don’t care”. While I do believe that women should be compensated equally in the workforce, why is it something that needs to be distributed? I don’t think it was an ethical decision on behalf of the journalists to release this information. Had they used Bok’s model and asked themselves how will others respond to this information going public, perhaps they would have come to a more informed decision. I think we can also look at this in terms of Gilligan’s Ethics of Care, which says that people do things for a larger good, to minimize pain and harm for everyone involved. Clearly, in this situation, the journalists did not reduce the negative reactions of the larger public but only exacerbated them.

I think it’s impractical for Sorkin to believe there should be solidarity among the film industry. While that would be nice, it seems that everyone in Hollywood is only looking out for number one. You could almost look at it in terms of Kant’s categorical imperative, which essentially says ‘do unto others’, a mantra that was evidently not used here.