There’s been other movies affected by the fear these threats have caused that you probably wouldn’t label as racist, so I don’t see how this movie being “probably” racist has anything to do with this.

I’m curious of your other examples and what you mean by it, though.

Would you feel the same if the plot of the movie was the assassination of Benjamin Netinyahu? (Probably spelled incorrectly)

(Also- for clarity- my #1 issue is with people who think substituting Team America is a good idea)

Or, how about Barack Obama?

Wasn’t ever planning on seeing the movie btw. so its not like im missing it or anything.

If this sounds mocking, I don’t mean it to be. It’s interesting to me because I assume that you and I and Omar and Rogen and Franco (and Parker & Stone) and many of your friends share about 98% of the same beliefs: unoppressive, secular state is good; fair treatment of women and minorities is good; human sexuality in its many forms is fine as long as it’s consensual; etc. So, I wonder: if a 98-percenter can still be human garbage, what does someone like Rick Santorum or Stalin get? Is there something worse than human garbage?

As for Mr. Hong’s Atlantic article, I think it suffers from Hong having too little information to base his assertions on. Here’s what appears to happen in the movie:
Franco is invited to North Korea. Before going, he is told that he must rid the world of a bad dictator. Franco grows to like the dictator because the guy clearly knows how to party. Franco is confronted by some of North Korea’s atrocities and realizes that this is partly Jong-un’s fault. Jong-un is eventually killed, either accidentally or on purpose (unclear from clip).

I like the idea of the movie overall because it may be the only exposure that many people have to the fact that, not only is there a world outside of the USA, there are places where people suffer greatly due to oppressive governments. It may have an extra barb because of Jong-il’s well known cinephilia. Just as Team America must have. (Incidentally, there is an argument to be made that the racism in Team America was actually ridiculing the way in which many ignorant people in the USA view people outside of the USA. Regardless, I don’t regard the movie as the best work of Parker/Stone due to its implicit advocacy of isolationism. I think those two are extremely socially liberal libertarians and I think the libertarian part is unfortunate because the outcome is that, as far as I’ve seen, they’ve been bad at ridiculing shortcomings of laissez-faire economics such as the characteristic economic inequality.)

It’s interesting to me to learn that Chaplin and Lubitsch both expressed regret about making movies in which they make fun of Nazis. The logic appears to be, “To ridicule a despot and to not acknowledge the suffering of the subjugated is wrong.” I agree with this, but I don’t think it’s outrageously bad to fail to do so. I also don’t think that people who disagree with me are human garbage. However, it appears that Franco and Rogen actually do shine some light on the suffering of North Koreans. (Still, difficult to say without watching the entire movie.)

I’d be interested in reading something from a non-cishet, non-white if you have something besides Hong’s article (not sure if he’s cishet). I read it and he makes good points, but he appears to simply be wrong about content in the movie. If a non-cishet, non-white person wants to criticize it, I’ll read that criticism, but I can’t take it serious unless the person watched the movie at least once from start to finish. Also, I think if we are too quick to grant non-white, non-cishet people blanket immunity from criticism due to past mistreatment, we risk not criticizing bad ideas they may espouse.

The “human garbage”/”human ideal” scale is still interesting to me, incidentally. I can’t think of anybody offhand that I’d put in the former category. Perhaps I’m too soft.

Sorry for the obvious tl;dr quality here. I thought it best to choose clarity over brevity.

Here is Park himself:
“I was super-excited to do [The Interview], but I still felt a little nervous about it and I felt like my parents would be a good way for me to test if this was OK,” said Park, who was born and raised in Los Angeles. “They’re immigrants, and they understand what’s going on over there a little better than me.
[…] “I’m just so thrilled to be a part of this movie,” he said. “I want to do as much as I can to help.”
Before taking on the role, Park — whose mother is retired from a job at UCLA and whose father works at a souvenir shop on Hollywood Boulevard — discussed the movie with people he knew in the local Korean community. Los Angeles’ population of ethnic Koreans is the largest in the United States, numbering roughly 60,000 as of 2008. Park — who grew up in West L.A. and whose grasp of the Korean language, he said, is “pretty bad” — wanted to gauge what the reaction within that community might be.

“I talked to friends who are deep in the Korean American community here, friends who are leaders of different subsections of the community,” he said. “I asked them what they thought and felt, and they all seemed to think it was a great movie idea. That helped.”
[…] “We talked a lot about making sure this guy was real,” he said. “I never wanted to play a caricature. But I did think, ‘Am I humanizing him too much?’ Because he doesn’t deserve to be humanized too much.”

Another example presented to me by Marilyn: There was an article recently by an Indian woman saying she did not mind if white people wore bindis because she felt its murky history didn’t justify keeping it as only for the Indian people. However, many many many other Indian women constantly say that wearing the bindi isn’t cool and is cultural appropriation. Do we white people still have permission? Nope.

And for one final analogy: If you and I go to a restaurant and you order the fish and I do not, I cannot tell someone else what the fish was like based on anything but your review of the fish. And I certainly can’t tell you that your review of the fish is inherently flawed

Clifton 
Park portrays a real, specific person; Acuña was, unless I’m mistaken (I never really watched Jackass), trying to live up to the title of his TV show. Park consulted many members of his local Korean community to make sure they were OK with the movie; Acuña did (I assume) embarrassing things in order to live up to the title of his TV show with no apparent regard for what anybody thought, let alone his local little people community.

I don’t know any little people myself. I googled “large majority of little people object to negative representation by Wee Man in Jackass” and other similar search strings and came up empty-handed. What are you basing this assertion on?

So far, Marilyn presented an article by one Asian person (“Hong,” according to the web, can be Korean or Chinese — I couldn’t determine whether or not he’s Korean) with an opinion that represents only one person: himself. Using your suggestion, I amplified the voice of a Korean person (who presumably has read the whole script of the movie) who claims to be speaking to the opinions of not only himself, but at least four other people within his local community of LA-based Korean-Americans. So, this means we currently have a sample size of 6 (maybe more): 1 person (who may not be Korean) opposed to The Interview and 5 (low estimate) probable Koreans who are favorable toward it. Therefore, 100% of probable Koreans consulted by Park are favorable toward The Interview. So, shouldn’t we support releasing it? For them?

The question I would have regarding bindis is what would the portions of Indians be who are indifferent versus those who are in favor versus those who are opposed? Let’s say that the breakdown is 70% indifferent, 10% pro, and 20% against. Is it then ill-advised for non-Indians to wear bindis? Again, I googled this and could only find two articles where the writers were opposed to this cultural assimilation.
Or, must we always simply err on the side of caution and refrain from cultural appropriation even if only one person expresses outrage?

As far as your restaurant example, this does sound like a good idea. We could drink some craft bears and wallow in our cishet whiteness. You and Marilyn could explain all of the ways that I’m a bigot and I’m sure I’d learn a lot. I wouldn’t order the fish, though, because, hey, haven’t we done enough to the fish already?

Clifton  Unfortunately, I only have one Desi friend, but I did ask her about the bindis thing. Here’s the conversation we had, with very minor edits:

In general I think it’s offensive to appropriate bits and pieces of a culture you’re not a part of unless you are invited to do so by a member of that culture. For example I find cheongsams beautiful but wouldn’t wear one outside of the context of a Chinese friend’s wedding if she asked me to wear one.

I think the main issue is that a brown person who wore a bindi is often seen as a fob, or not assimilating enough, but if a white person does it it’s cool and trendy. It is taking the good without having to bear the burden of any of the bad parts about that culture. At the same time I’m not going to go all ugh white privilege on you because life isn’t tumblr.