Close to Home: ‘Interview’ and the elephant in the room

There seems to be nearly unanimous agreement about several things concerning North Korea and the movie “The Interview:”

-North Korea and its unstable leader, Kim Jong Un, represent a dangerous threat to their neighbors, and indeed to all the rest of us.

-The cyberattack on Sony was illegal. The FBI initially concluded the attack was instigated by North Korea, apparently in retaliation for Sony’s planned release of the film depicting a plot to assassinate Kim. (However, some experts have now concluded that the evidence of North Korea’s involvement is flimsy, and the conclusion flawed.)

-It is unacceptable to permit anyone outside the U.S to dictate what a citizen or business in the U.S. may do and, in any case, Sony has an indisputable right to make and distribute any movie it wishes as a matter of freedom of speech.

-Sony was mistaken to yield to the threats of retaliation by withholding the movie’s release, a decision it later reversed.

But, alarmingly, throughout this discussion I have not read or heard anything about the morality of the decision to make “The Interview” in the first place.

There is no question about the legality - and the right, if you will - of Sony to make and distribute the movie. However, in my mind, there is a real question about the morality of creating a movie about assassinating a specific world figure, no matter how repulsive he or she may be. And I find it troubling that nobody has said a word about this important issue.

Frame the issue as a question: Would it be morally right for a filmmaker in North Korea - or even the U.S. - to make a movie about planning to assassinate President Barack Obama? How about an Italian - or American - movie about a planned assassination of Pope Francis by disaffected cardinals in the Vatican?

I’m not taking about a movie depicting a generic plot to kill a president or pope. Movies and books have been replete with themes of murdering a president or other public figures, though always, in my experience, the leader has been a fictional character or deceased. I enjoyed the film “Rogue Male,” in which the hero, played by Peter O’Toole, tries to kill Adolf Hitler, and, of course, “Day of the Jackal,” the book and then movie about an assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle. But when these movies came out, Hitler and de Gaulle were already deceased (and both assassination attempts had failed).

“The Interview,” satirical humor or not, portrays the real Kim Jong Un by using an actor who looks and acts like him.

Would it really be appropriate to create a movie, satirical humor or not, with plot of assassinating a tall, thin, African-American president named Obama? I think not. Would it be funny? I think absolutely not. Would it be legal? Absolutely yes. Would it be morally right? Again I think absolutely not.

It seems strange to me that in all the conversation about cyber security, overseas interference in U.S. affairs, legal rights, the wisdom of yielding to threats of retaliation and freedom of speech, nobody has talked about whether this movie is morally acceptable by our standards.

This subject seems to be the unremarked elephant in the room.

And we haven’t even talked about what effect such a movie theme would have on all the crazies and wanna-bes out there.

Jack Collins is a retired president and COO of the Clorox Co. He lives near Geyserville.