[A few years
ago, I had a lot of fun writing an
April Fools series. Foolishly, I haven’t done so since, but this year have
decided I won’t get fooled again. So this week I’ll be highlighting and
AmericanStudying a series of funny figures and texts. Share your own funny
favorites in comments and I’ll add ‘em to the crowd-sourced weekend post—no foolin’!]
On what’s problematic,
and what’s important, about the controversial comedy.
In the last post
in that 2012 April Fools series, I highlighted five
great, enduring works of American satire. Having had the chance to see the satirical film The Interview (2014) earlier this year, I have to admit that I don’t see it ever
landing on such a list. Directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, based on a
story by Rogen, Goldberg, and Dan Sterling, and starring Rogen and James Franco
as the producer and star of a celebrity interview show who are recruited by the
CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the screwball comedy throws
a ton of jokes and over-the-top sequences against the wall, many of them
vulgar, graphically violent, or some combination of both. There are certainly
funny moments, both of the silly and the pointed variety; but for the most part
the film feels like it’s working way too hard for much too little payoff. And
much of the problem lies in that attempt to combine the silly and screwball
with the satirical—satire, it seems to me, requires
us to use our brain; and too much of the time, The Interview is trying to hit us far lower than that.
The film became
far better known for its controversy than its comedy, of course, and on that
level too I would argue that it’s problematic. I don’t have any problem with a
work of fiction satirizing (and even, SPOILER and graphic violence alert, brutally killing) a
world leader like Kim, and certainly I don’t support the North Korean
government’s attempts to suppress the film’s release. But as I wrote in this
January piece for my Talking Points Memo column, I don’t believe we
Americans have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to critiquing such
blind, uncritical worship of our beloved leaders. Since many of the responses
to my piece suggested I was equating the two nations overall, let me be clear:
America is not North Korea, in any sense. But I would stand by my point that
far too many Americans expressed, in response to Natalie Maines’ far less
incendiary depiction of George W. Bush, a level of outrage and anger commensurate
to the North Korean response to a film portraying their leader in far, far
worse light (as well as, y’know, brutally killing him). Which is to say, if we
want to make the case that North Korea should be able to handle satire and criticism
more calmly, we’re going to have to turn that mirror on ourselves and our own
histories as well.
I don’t think it
entirely succeeded in doing so, but it is important to note that The Interview does, in fact, attempt to
true that satirical and critical lens on America as well as North Korea. It
does so partly through the easy targets of the media and our culture of
celebrity, both embodied by James Franco’s thoroughly annoying and stupid character
(although he is eventually supposed to be a hero, so I’m not sure how much the
zingers ultimately connect). But it does so more subtly through the film’s true
heroine, Sook, the
North Korean officer who hopes to overthrow Kim and establish a democratic
government in his place. When Sook reveals her true intentions, Franco and
Rogen exclaim that Kim must be assassinated; she replies, “How many times is
America going to make the same mistake?,” and Franco responds, “As many times
as it takes, sister!” Again, such moments of thoughtful satire of American foreign
policy and perspectives are both few and far between and often overshadowed by
the silliness and vulgarities and so on; but they’re there, and perhaps they
even registered with the millions of viewers who sought out the film after the
controversy. For a silly, mediocre screwball comedy, that’d be a surprising and
meaningful effect.
Next fools
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Funny favorites you’d share?
No comments:
Post a Comment