pollums:

What the arguments about censorship of The Interview ignore is the long history of racism and propaganda films in the US. Films like The Interview contribute to a larger climate of suspicion and distrust of Asians, and Asian-Americans are on the receiving end of that suspicion. At least 110,000 Japanese Americans were held in internment camps during World War II. George Takei himself has spoken on his experience in an internment camp. I have friends whose parents didn’t teach them Japanese because they feared their children would be attacked if others knew they were Japanese.

And don’t forget that hate crimes against Asian-Americans have historically been aggravated by overseas conflicts like the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Mark Wahlberg committed several hate crimes in his youth, including knocking a Vietnamese man out with a wooden stick and permanently blinding a Vietnamese man in one eye while shouting anti-Vietnamese slurs. Violent hate crimes against Asian-Americans continues to this day, and some say hate crimes against Asian-Americans are on the rise (EDIT: should mention that the hate crimes are largely against South Asians, AGAIN in response to overseas conflicts) In 2006, 4 Chinese men were violently beaten by 2 white men with a steering wheel lock bar in New York. In 2007, an old Vietnamese man was pushed into icy water and drowned by a self-described skinhead in Chicago.

So the implications of an anti-North Korean film like The Interview run pretty deep, even if it doesn’t specifically target Asian-Americans. And as justified as much of the outrage against North Korea is, it just doesn’t actually do anything to help ease the suffering of North Koreans. The only thing it does is satisfy the white savior complex, mythologize the accomplishments of white male filmmakers, and also very likely contributes to anti-Asian sentiment in the United States.

So no, I don’t care about The Interview not being released.