[If ever a year both needed and yet resisted a heavy dose of satire, it would be 2024. So for this year’s April Fool’s series I’ll share a humorous handful of SatireStudying posts—please add your thoughts on these and any other satirical texts you’d highlight for a knee-slapping yet pointed crowd-sourced weekend post!]
On what’s
problematic, and what’s important, about a hugely controversial comedy.
In the last post
in my 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) subsequent to drafting that post, 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 2015 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
satire tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do
you think? Other satirical works you’d share?
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