Film stars like George Clooney are rightly outraged because Sony won’t release a satirical film about North Korea. But in Hollywood, artistic freedom counts for nothing; it’s all about making money.
In the end, Hollywood is about money, not artistic freedom. This experience is nothing new to many directors. In order to avoid upsetting potential filmgoers, scenes are often cut from films. Sometimes they are too sexually explicit, sometimes too brutal and sometimes politically problematic. This particular form of consideration is applied all over the world, due to the fact that large Hollywood companies earn most of their money abroad.
And that’s not all: some of these companies are financed in part by foreign co-producers, increasingly from China. The country is then accordingly portrayed in a friendly light, and Chinese products are worked into the film, even if it makes no sense at all to have them there.
Hollywood Buckles to Cyberattack
Since North Korea has nothing to offer economically, it threatened retaliation and hacked Sony because they wanted to release a satirical film about dictator Kim Jong-un. Sony promptly withdrew the film, since this is cheaper than possible compensation payments to filmgoers who would be injured in a potential attack.
Hollywood stars like George Clooney are rightly outraged by Sony’s behavior because the company isn’t defending artistic freedom or freedom of opinion. This concession is an invitation to autocrats and idiots around the world to take similar action against disagreeable films. But Hollywood doesn’t care about that — there’s no business like show business.
As a citizen of the United States I have only a sardonic smile for the plight of Sony and this FREE SPEECH FOR CAPITALISTS crusade. As a Democratic Socialist I am well aware of the limits of FREE SPEECH in the United States. I remember passing out a ” Bill of Rights for Working People ” here in Rhode Island as a presidential elector for the SWP in 1976 and 1980. We did at least make it on the ballot-a triumph for whatever little democracy is still possible under decaying capitalism.
That movie ” The Interview ” is now showing in some Providence theaters. I will not see it. What is so very FUNNY about a political assassination-carried out by a sinister shadow government, the CIA torture-murderers, in a world- gone- mad with irrational violence ?
And President Obama suggests that impoverished North Korea compensate Sony USA for lost profits! I still think that the only cure for this sick , money mad capitalist society is a more viable form of Democratic Socialism.
But in true Orwellian fashion the American ruling class tries to quarantine the very idea of SOCIALISM. They don’t want the common people even to imagine a saner, more just society. Witness the 50 year embargo of poor heroic little Cuba .
But the more oppressed working class Americans cannot be fooled. They are back in the streets again seething with righteous wrath. If you are a poor black kid here-tempted to redistribute social surplus value- you are most likely to be executed on the spot-for some petty crime against sacrosanct private property rights.Forget about a costly jail sentence. Even the electric chair is not cheap.
We say put people before things !
( http://radicalrons.blogspot.com/ )