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The Interview

I saw the movie over the Christmas holiday.  While it is not the type of movie I normally watch, it is the type that my son often enjoys.  He purchased it – to show support for the movie—and we watched it at home.

The movie is similar to the other Seth Rogen/James Franco movie I had seen—“This Is the End” (to which my son had previously taken me). The movies are zany and juvenile, but do have their funny moments.

One might wonder why The Interview occasioned such opposition from North Korea. Spoilers follow: I read somewhere that Kim Jong Un opposed it because it could have damaged his ability to rule.  And one can understand why.  Not only does it portray Kim as a despot starving his own people to serve his ambitions (and with some significant personality quirks), it also suggests that there are people in the leadership of the country who would like to overthrow him.  Since Kim requires the support of these people to rule, anything that would cause them to question their support for Kim’s regime would be dangerous to him.

Of course, one might wonder whether the attacks on the movie had the opposite effect—creating more attention for the movie than it might otherwise have had. That might be true in the West, but the key question for Kim is how the movie is viewed by the North Korean elite. That he attacked it and prevented it from being shown might be viewed as a sign of his power, even if the movie actually received more attention in the West.