Thursday 18 December 2014

Thankyou Kim Jong-un!



I don’t know how to express my gratitude. People say you’ve done some pretty horrible things in your reign as dictator in North Korea (I’m not sure - because, like so many I don’t read newspapers anymore). But whatever your mistakes in the past, somehow, you’ve finally seen your way to do some good. You know what I’m talking about don’t you, Mr. Jong-un? (Or should I address you as ‘Your Highness?’ Or ‘Your Holiness’? I’m never sure. Frankly, I wouldn’t know how to address our great Canadian leader Stephen Harper in similar circumstances!)
Anyway, Your Magnificence, you know what I mean. You succeeded in stopping a new movie called The Interview from its Christmas release. You’ve done a great service to The American People. Did you see This isThe End? I’m sure you did (I mean, who didn’t)? For that would certainly explain why you decided to put a stop to The Interview. What a piece of boring garbage This is The End was! And so you decided, in your deep spiritual wisdom, to nip another Rogan/Franco commercial blockbuster in the bud even before it had a chance to cheapen our lives with it’s soul-crushing mixture of cheerless, witless, gags, useless nonsense, and intensely unfunny profanity. 
Thankyou, Oh Great One.
There is one obvious benefit of course. Hopefully, cancelling The Interview will be a blow to the commercial film careers of  Seth Rogan and James Franco. They are a couple of pretty smart guys. And Seth Rogan, I think, has some real artistic talent (Franco may simply be a ‘pretty face’ — I’m not quite sure yet, as I’ve always been blinded by pretty faces!) But the point is, both Rogan and Franco show both the intention and potential  to develop into serious artists. But now they might — since their commercial movie hopes have been dashed in this particular instance — turn their time to more serious intellectual pursuits, i.e: novel creation, playwrighting, and HBO.
Bravo, Peerless Leader!
And, if you’re not too busy issuing proclamations and reviewing the troops,  could you turn your immense brain to some other subjects that immediately require your attention?
Could you see your way to making terror threats against the movie musical remake of Annie (You know, the — ‘Let’s do it over again and make a fortune, only this time we’ll have a BLACK Annie, so it will be socially relevant’)? And could you stop all future sequels to The Hobbit and The Hunger Games? In fact, could you threaten to bomb theatres in American that show bad movies, period?
I would be particularly glad if you could take the care to jeopardize the sequel to Frozen. (Any threat to Disney would be welcome. I’m asking you with the utmost respect, Your Supremeness!)
Legions of future generations will thank you.
I don’t know if you’re aware, Jong-un The Amazing, but girls around the world have learned from the hit animated film Frozen that to ‘Let it Go’ means having your hair turn from brown to blonde, and your dress transform from the colour of mud to sparkling blue! And the young women who learned their ‘feminism’ from Frozen now idolize glamorous celebrity Emma Stone (who in a recent very prestigious speech at the U.N. taught us that modern women might improve their lot by being nicer to men)!
In fact, could you do me one final favour (I promise, this is the final one!). Jong-un The Omniscient, could you simply drop a bomb on Disney studios? 
Not just a bomb threat — a real bomb. 
Like, soon?
Of course you would have to do it in the dead of  night. I don’t want there to be any loss of life. But certainly it would be great if you could destroy all that digital technology that is responsible for ‘special effects.’
I’m sure you’re aware, Oh Jong-un The Terribly Special, that there was a time when Hollywood films had value, when they weren’t all hatched from the tiny brains of fat, dumb, sexist, capitalist executives yearning to pack their pockets with loot, but from the brains and loins of visionary directors and writers the likes of: Bill Wilder, John Ford, Martin Scorcese, Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma, Ruth Ford and Garson Kanin, and Frank Capra — to name a few.
But that time is over. As Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer predicted so many years ago, entertainment in America  has become purely an industry, and what inspires movies these days is dollar signs in the eyes of CEOs!
Again, thanks, Your Umatchable Wiseness!
Western culture is forever in your debt.

(apologies to Jonathan Swift)