[JulianHassan]

I should be more specific from my last post on Sony Pictures’ The Interview and say that not everyone who murders a dictator is a hero. It can be a louse or a rival thug. What Sony is making fun of in this film though is not Kim Jong-Un, but Americans in service of a special mission to protect the country, like the Navy Seal who killed Osama Bin Laden.

Is that why Obama became suddenly animated and inspired in defending the movie? (Like the glee Rand noted in McGovern, when attacking Richard Nixon). I’ll leave that to a psychologist. 

ARI published the following piece by Steve Simpson:

https://ari.aynrand.org/blog/2014/12/23/in-the-sony-affair-who-is-the-real-coward

For the political context and how to objectively communicate that to a general audience, it’s spot on. However, since this is a private list frequented by Objectivists, I feel like some of you could objectively understand that I believe Sony is a maudlin deadbeat qua artistic producer.

Another particularly ugly Sony movie was Julie & Julia by Nora Ephron, distinctly modern in that it ended with the opportunistic blogger Julie insulting Julia Child’s character beyond the grave. (Before her death, Ms. Childs refused to meet the brat, so Julie concludes with a nod from Sony that her hero was not perfect).

I’m sure we share a collective sigh, whether or not we want “The Interview” playing on Capitol Hill. For aesthetic reasons, I don’t, but for political and perhaps cultural reasons, I understand why ARI intellectual Steve Simpson said he would like to see it defiantly played. And why some here might share that view.

But this whole mess stinks to high heaven of a (partially) retched culture, if the intended aesthetic victim who we are meant to laugh at, symbolically speaking, is Robert O’Neill. Combine that with a sitting president invoking free speech for artistic expression, not to protect individual freedom, but to add anti-life honor to insulting our heroes and to attack a private business.

Then, Sony both is and is not a coward. Steve Simpson is right that Sony is brave, and so am I that it’s not. Sony is both the victim and the killer, when what’s happening is the “moral emasculation of an entire culture.”

(paraphrased from Ayn Rand, in Art in Education)

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