Sony cancels release of "The Interview"

[Quetzalcoatl]

Frankly, I'm glad it was canceled.  The ads offended me enough.  I'm sorry, but you just don't joke about killing an actual head of state.  It's not funny.  You want to make up a characer who's the leader of North Korea but is not named Kim Jong Un, go ahead.  But you don't get to joke about killing actual people without their permission.  I can't beleive Sony let it through.  Just make up a name -- 90% of America would think it's the real person anyway.

One of the big problems I have with our culture recently. Being offended doesn't make censorship okay. Luckily this was due to threats and not being "offended". Everyone is offended by everything these days, just a bunch of professional victims running around being upset about something until something new pops up to be mad about.

Yeah, our culture confuses me more and more.  I mean, if Sterling had made a movie offending black people how would we have acted?  Would people be complaining about censorship?  We shut him up real quick and forced him to sell his property, and he was simply offending people in the privacy of his home, not broadcasting it for everyone to see.

Being racist / sexist / homophobic / etc. is adversely targeting a group of people for things that are completely out of their control (for the most part) and in most cases, making a bunch of people's lives miserable for arbitrary reasons.  Nobody should have to feel bad or marginalized for who they are if they are a decent person.  It's all just people being terrible to each other.

Making fun of a despot for being a terrible person is just that.  I mean is Charlie Chaplan irresponsible for making Hitler movies during WW2 because Hitler was alive when they came out?  That is ridiculous.

So basically, I have no problem being a jerk to someone for acting in a way that negatively impacts lots of people and I have a big problem indiscriminately attacking people because of a random trait that they carry.  It's hard to get more in depth on things like "well if someone does something bad, is it because they are genetically more likely to be a jerk and you're judging them for something out of their control" without turning this into 2ndRatePhilosophyBlog, but I still think this stands.

[chicagoceltic]

Anyone else think that Sony cancelled the release of the movie not over fears of terrorism but because the group of hackers have some seriously damaging information that they threatened to share with the world if the movie was shown?

[fairweatherfan]

Anyone else think that Sony cancelled the release of the movie not over fears of terrorism but because the group of hackers have some seriously damaging information that they threatened to share with the world if the movie was shown?

Nah - concerns about scaring customers away and massive liability risk (there were several lawsuits regarding the Aurora theater shooting, and that one wasn't telegraphed in advance) drove the theaters away, and once the theaters were gone Sony could either throw together some half-baked alternative release plan or scuttle the release and figure out what to do next.  It's not much more complicated than that I think.