THE INTERVIEW: DID HOLLYWOOD MISS THE POINT?

When in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, someone thought it would be a great idea to ask the revolutionary Malcolm X what he thought; the answer was sharp and hit America across the face. X likened the president’s assassination to chickens coming home to roost; an analogy of America’s past (and then present) crimes happening to one of its beloved. For the record, Malcolm X wasn’t gleeful that Kennedy was shot, but as a member of an oppressed minority was pointing out the irony of the actions been carried out daily on his people, now affecting one of the majority.

             

Now I realize this might be the wrong analogy in which to describe what is happening in Hollywood with the cancellation and un-cancelling of the movie, The Interview due to threats from a group, ironically called, The Guardians of Peace, but it seems like we need a Malcolm to show us that this is a culmination of events and should not be all that surprising.

            

I haven’t seen The Interview and nor was it on my to-watch list. Frankly I found the premise disturbing from when I first heard of it: a movie about assassinating an actual living president and not a fictional one that Hollywood often comes up with that alludes to an actual head-of-state we know. No, this is about an actual sitting president, one that comes from a nation that doesn’t get along with the nation making said movie. It’s easy to see how this can lead to some enticement. Yes, Kim Jong Un isn’t the first and probably won’t be the last sitting president to be killed on TV or the big screen, but the audacity with which it becomes the premise of a whole movie seems to be the final straw that broke the camel’s back.

            

For years Hollywood has gotten away with a lot, most notably the stereotyping of groups of people. Think the often used Russian villain, the Arab belly dancer, the Arab terrorist, the Asian who if he’s not a karate master is used as comic fodder (think Mickey Rooney (yes, Caucasian Mickey Rooney) playing an Asian neighbor in Breakfast At Tiffany), the White savior and so many other stereotypes, some of which still live today, that have become Hollywood staples over the year.

Part of the reasons I believe these stereotypes have existed for so long in Hollywood is because a.) we enjoy the movies, so we overlook things and b.) we all know most stereotypes are used to perpetuate a negativity and don’t really define a people. If they did, then the millions of Arabs and Muslims round the world should’ve been the ones hacking into studio e-mails and threatening to blow up theatres for showing movies that portray them negatively, yet that hasn’t happened. So either the Arabs and Muslims aren’t all terrorists or they’re still trying to figure out how to hack e-mails. I’m pretty sure of the millions, there are people who know how to do the latter, but just haven’t. Or they’ve realized that some crazy American Caucasian people with no seeming Muslim or Arab connection that shoot up screenings of The Dark Knight Rises are enough problems for America.

To be clear, Hollywood ISN’T the only movie industry to portray groups of people negatively, all movie industries (knowingly or not) do it to some degree (I might get a headache if I start with Nigerian movies). But as the premiere and most watched movie industry in the world, this puts Hollywood under more scrutiny. Not to mention how blatant some of these stereotypes are being portrayed on a daily basis. It’s also funny (if you can use that word) that it is the North Koreans who are attempting to bring down years of unfair portrayals, even if you don’t approve of their methods and you shouldn’t. Considering that the most sophistication we’ve seen of North Koreans over the years through the media is their ability to shoot off nuclear test missiles, this recent action by the Guardians of Peace, puts them in a much totally different light.

Some of Hollywood’s stars have reacted to the cancellation of The Interview with disgust. While I don’t agree with the complete censorship of the movie, I agree with Sony’s actions. What would you rather have; no movie or the possibility of people actually being killed? I’m also amazed at how some of these stars don’t see the irony in all this. It’s like post 9/11 when the American public started asking, “Why do they hate us?” It’s confusing, because first of all, who’s “they”? And second, if you have to ask that question then you’re fully unaware of the hurt on the other side.

             

Hollywood is clearly unaware of the hurt on the other side and in this case that of North Korea. This isn’t an anti-American piece for the record, if it was I would’ve started it hailing the Guardians of Peace. It’s just that after years of Hollywood getting away with so much, the North Koreans in an ironic twist ended up being the ones saying “enough” for everyone else, even though everyone else didn’t ask for it (well, we’ve been asking for quite some time in a more civilized manner) and certainly not like this. It’s the irony of the world we live in really and no I don’t expect this one incident to stop more unfortunate plotlines and portrayals from coming out.

             

And things get worse, when things get political. Already the White House has linked North Korea to the hacks, this despite the latter saying they have no hand in it (whether or not you believe it is true). This is no different to that one time a whole religion, race and region got linked to the 9/11 attack. At best, the White House should take North Korea’s word and avoid an incident where we prematurely attack another nation (if it’s been done over a fictitious claim of weapons of mass destruction, why not a fictitious plot in a movie? Now that’s a plot for a movie!). The only thing the White House should be taking seriously is if indeed the once again ironically named Guardians of Peace have the ability to actually attack movie theatres and kill innocent lives. Everything else should be Hollywood’s business to sort out, otherwise the White House will become like those nations they condemn for getting involved in their nation’s media enterprises. Yeah, I said it.

            

 In a twist, some good things have some out of the hacks, especially if you’re a movie buff, plots and possible movie ideas have been released as well as the fact that Hollywood is very much Hollywood still and things like race and gender are still an issue that the people working there have to try and get by from female actors getting paid less than their male counterparts to the jokes that once again have stereotyped the viewing interest of a race to certain types of movie. It’s always nice to see your long running thoughts on Hollywood be proved right.

            

Do I think The Interview should’ve been cancelled? Yes, but not indefinitely and Sony did right by releasing it online instead. While I would at some point want to see the movie, I totally understand Sony’s initial stance and while I don’t believe in full censorship, I think sometimes we need to understand that there are some cultural and in the case of this movie, political differences that we have to take into consideration from time to time. Cultural (and sometimes, political) sensitivity has become a big deal for Hollywood, which is why they respect Chinese rules in their attempt to penetrate that market. But here’s where the hypocrisy lies, Hollywood ISN’T trying to break into North Korea financially or rather can't, so cultural sensitivity has been thrown out the door in favour of “freedom of speech”. It’s pure hypocrisy. I understand it’s not the job of movie industries like Hollywood to be accurate; it is after all a business built on fantasies. That said, most fantasies aren’t meant to hurt people.

             

Since its release online, The Interview has broken records reaching 15 million downloads. No doubt some Americans downloaded it as a form of patriotism and allegiance to their “freedom of speech” and I applaud such commitment to their country, but again it begs the question is Hollywood and by large, the American public missing the point? I couldn’t imagine this film being approved of it was about assassinating an Israeli head of state! Never mind if it had little or nothing to do with anti-Semitism. I couldn’t imagine the United States allowing it have that much exposure.

A FUNNY LOOK AT GENDER EQUALITY: ‘CAUSE EVERYTHING SHOULDN’T BE SO SERIOUS

*Some of this is written with sarcasm and humour... figure it out!

Gender equality is pretty much on everybody’s mind even if you don’t know it. From Malala Yousafzai winning the Noble Peace Prize in her effort to go to school against the ruling of the local Taliban in her region to the capture of schoolgirls in Chibok, a lot of women’s rights issues is in the forefront. The history of modern women’s right as taught to us in school started with the rights of women to vote in the late 19^th century onwards after years of suffrage. I say, “Modern”, because long before then there were gender equality successes and because our history books sometimes tell us stories like how the history of Africa started when the White man found it.

As far back as roughly 1400 years ago in the deserts of Arabia, a man named Muhammad with a vision from God ushered in a new religion called Islam and with it came a lot of social equality one which included the rights of women to property among other things. Prior to this time, infant girls were buried by some of the Arabs who saw them as a bad omen.

Muhammad put a stop to these killings as well as giving women a say in who they wanted to marry. The right to property (even though a certain percentage) thus made Islam possibly the first monotheistic religion to have enshrined a woman’s inheritance as part of its social core. Women were allowed to speak (even in the mosque) and more importantly with the ban on what was essentially an honour killing (something that can be clearly seen to predate Islam and other monotheistic religions), young girls were allowed to live. It’s funny today that a religion associated in the news with killings was saving girls centuries ago.

Coming closer to recent history, prior to the suffrage there were of course the so-called She-Wolves of Great Britain, the royal ladies who ruled or attempted to rule over England (sorry Mary). These women of course were extended privileges not offered to the common womenfolk until a royal named William married a common lass named Kate or something like that. In ancient Zaria of Nigeria, Queen Amina ruled over parts of what is now Northern Nigeria and what is now largely a patriarchal society. She like Elizabeth the First refused to marry for fear of losing power and gender equality. She is also famous for reportedly sleeping with men from the warring tribes she defeated then having them killed the next day. The story is she did this so the men wouldn’t brag about having slept with her. Now you may think she did this to protect her “chastity” as today’s Northerners do under the cloak of “conservatism” (well, actually we don’t kill people… not for that), but my theory to why she would do this might be because she didn’t want to have to fight for joint custody with any possible future baby-daddy or maybe she heard of the actions of the pre-Islamic Arabs and was just livid (you know some women can go overboard). Who knows?!

With the coming of women’s voting rights in the last century, a lot of women’s issues now came to the forefront like women’s liberation. Of course if you ask in some fringe quarters of the internet, women’s liberation was nothing but a ploy by the American elites to tax women (who made up half the American population) and to destabilize society. Hey, we’re covering all grounds here. This is an all-perspective equality article.

There’s no doubt that there are a lot of women issues that should be in the forefront like education and the rights for women to work, but then there are things that really have nothing to do with gender equality masking at such. We no doubt still live in a world where some men fear women in the workplace and not in a she’s-my-boss-so-I-fear-her kind of way, but in a what’s-she-doing-here-and-why-should-I-be-taking-orders-from-a-woman kind of way. It’s for reasons like this gender equality should and does exist. Most girls in rural areas are given hurried education, in the sense that their education is limited, because it’s not seen as their main goal in life. In some of these societies, marriage is seen as the life goal of a woman. If you live in a developing country you might know what I’m talking about. It is important to note that marriage isn’t the problem here, but rather the urgency and manner in which it is sometimes carried out.

It is also here that I have to point out that while the Chibok Girls issue is also seen as a women’s rights issue, it is important to note that their captives Boko Haram aren’t just against female education, they’re against all types of education they perceive as Western. Before the abduction of the girls, severally schools were shot at and mostly, if not all, male students were killed. There wasn’t much uproar from the world until the girls were kidnapped. It seemed this was the chord that struck the world and even at that it took a while to even catch the world’s attention. Like I said, while the Chibok Girls crisis can be seen as a women’s right issue, what led to its happening was less based on a hatred for women and more a hate on a perceived type of educational system.

Of course with gender equality comes feminism, a word/term which many till date are finding hard to define. Men can be feminists too and for a while we weren’t sure if we were allowed into the illustrious club. Feminism’s new anthem came courtesy of Beyonce (all hail Queen Bee) last year with a song called Flawless in which she tells other supposed feminists to bow down. The song features my fellow country-woman Chimamanda Adichie, who I just had to mention she’s my fellow country-woman, because that’s the only link I have to her. Well, that and a game of six degrees of separation that I can play by linking her and me through a fellow writer by just two degrees, but I digress.

The song, Flawless features a TedEx speech by Adichie where she talks about feminism and invited us to the club proclaiming, “We should all strive to be feminists!” I bought my form the next day! In that TedEx speech she highlights some of the issues facing women in societies like ours like being made to shrink themselves or being made to only aspire to marriage and so on and so forth. Aside from being a good song, Adichie’s speech is one of the two most memorable things about Flawless. The other being that I always remember to put my hands up and twist them frantically when Beyonce sings, “I woke up like this… I woke up like this… Flawless” like such:

                            

Of course my constant hand-twisting to Beyonce’s Flawless did not go unnoticed in my former workplace, as my co-worker, a female I might add, questioned my sexuality. Clearly, despite Adichie’s invitation not everyone was welcoming of me to the feminist club. It’s not my fault I’m flawless… I woke up like this… I woke up like this!

Like all things except maple syrup on french toast, feminism does have its downside. Some men have faulted feminism as the reason why some women act more manly than men, which can be worrisome if all you want to do is go home and get in bed with a warm body full of more curves in all the right places than you have and you can understand why some men don’t like that attitude, but the worst downside to feminism is when women turn on women for not being “feminist” enough, even if the word itself doesn’t come up. You know what I’m talking about.

When former volleyball pro and fitness expert Gabrielle Reece proclaimed that in her opinion for a good marriage to last, women should be submissive to their husbands it drew a shit-storm… mostly from women. It was a topic on Wendy Williams and all those feminist TV shows like The View. Apparently it’s a crime in some feminist circle for a happily married woman of 17 years to mention the secret of her marriage. I thought you all wanted to know!

Now, Reece isn’t the first woman to mention that being submissive in marriage is a good thing… for her. It’s been said by individuals and promoted by cultures for years. We can argue that the problem here is that the duties of married men to their spouses is never repeatedly mentioned as that of married women and you wouldn’t be wrong. The other problem is in the new age of feminism, the word, “submissive” holds some negative connotations and I understand that, but I dare say to the women who question Reece, how dare you, the nerve of you women. You don’t see us men up in arms when other men are being submissive or push-overs like the case of Bruce Jenner, do you? First of all to quote a movie line, “ain’t nobody got time for that” and secondly and most important of all, it’s THEIR relationship, not ours. What works for the Reeces or the Jenners is their business, although after 25 years, word is Bruce Jenner discovered male gender equality and finally got a divorce so everything is right in the gender equality universe.

Women are smart and beautiful creatures on their own, but the sad truth is sometimes it takes a man to point that out. When Muhammed Yunus started his Grameen Bank he realized that loaning money to women was way smarter than giving it to their husbands. For one, the women cared more about their family than anything. When the men squandered the money meant for their families, the women were forced to exercise patience and as is usually the case here in such societies i.e everywhere, the man’s actions were seen as a lapse in character. However, were it the women who squandered the money meant for the family, it would be very unbecoming of her. In fact if it were a Nigerian movie, threats would be made, possibly by a mother-in-law to have her replaced with another wife, preferably one from the village, because you know… they’re more submissive.

We can insinuate that the success of the Grameen Bank and inadvertently microfinance was built on the backs of those Bangladeshi women who managed their home finances better than their spouses would have. And some men here would argue that this proves a woman’s place is better at home, but we won’t go there! My only qualm is those Bangladeshi women never got featured in financial magazines or were even put on the cover of Women Today, instead we repeatedly get plastic Barbie dolls and so-called financial gurus people pay a shitload of money to tell us what we already know and also things we don’t know, but in the grand scheme of things won’t save the economy. Thank God when India’s Mars mission is remembered in the future, it would perhaps be recalled more by this picture of fellow scientists than anything else:

Photo by: Manjunath-Kiran.

That and how India made it to Mars on a budget thus shaming America and Russia for spending soooooo much money, (because America can’t do anything on scale and because Russia isn’t about to take smack from America)!

We will continue to praise the likes of Malala, while still praying for our girls from Chibok, all the while questioning why Beyonce was Time's Magazine most influential person of the year for 2014 when in my opinion it should've been Putin (I guess there's no  Russian equality in an American magazine conglomerate and let's not even talk about that scatching article on Putin by Madeline Albright. The nerve of that woman.)  

And I will continue to listen to rap songs with misogynistic lyrics, the mildest of which instructs women to back that thang up and I have an admiration for Too Short’s favourite word, though I hardly would advocate using it (it’s five letters, starts with “b” and ends with “h”) and I’ll gladly threaten any of my nieces that says the word, “boyfriend” in a conversation (even though I won’t do much about it) while in my presence, because you know… it’s a man’s world and like the lyrics to the James Brown song goes: it would be nothing… nothing without a woman!

EBOLA, EFFICIENCY AND THE POLITICS OF THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT

It’s very rare to find something positive to write about the present government these days, so when the opportunity arises, I believe one should take it just to be fair. Nigeria’s response to Ebola has been largely commendable and noticed by the world, in particular the United States (not that their approval is any star measure). So far the government has put in place measures to prevent the spread of the deadly disease, starting previously with calling off the doctors’ strike that was on prior to the outbreak to the recent postponing of school resumption dates till October.

           

The government’s response to the Ebola outbreak has been the most efficient this administration has been to a crisis and let’s not forget the individual efforts of doctors such as Dr. Stella Adadevoh. The response to the crisis not only shows we can get things right, but that there’s still some hope for the present government. While scores have died across the West African region in nations such as Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Africa’s most populous nation has managed to keep its death toll from the diseases to a minimum. While such efficiency demonstrated by both the private and public sector will be welcome across the board, this is Nigeria we are talking about, where one good deed is often followed by five bad ones.

           

While the government has set out to protect the public, it hasn’t seen the need to extend this to its political campaigning, for as the government warns of unnecessary gathering it continues to set out dates for the ruling party’s political campaign. Apparently, even Ebola doesn’t pose a threat to the almighty PDP. This high-handed tactic of the PDP government was recently used to turn the Bring Back Our Girls campaign into a Bring Back Goodluck Jonathan campaign. While there’s no denying that President Jonathan might return to power, it certainly won’t be because people overwhelmingly wished for it, certainly not in the droves they seek to make it look like.

So while I commend the government on its steps to prevent the outbreak- and let's not forget the paranoia of a sizeable population (saltwater, anyone?) -it pains me to see that business as usual is the order of the day for the ruling party. The lengths at which this government will go to proves how desperate they are to stay in power. At least for this one crisis, I can say we got an adequate response, now let's see if they can extend to other areas of worry while still trying to be the ruling party!