About Face: The Vicissitudes of Humanizing North Korea in The Interview

Since news on North Korea tends to be abundant and our memory of Hollywood blockbusters short, the national security crisis that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's 2014 Christmas release The Interview initiated now belongs to a hazy past of North Korean yarns. 1 But the film is worth revisiting and reviewing, I think, and not only because its immediate reception history offers an especially iconic manifestation of reportage on North Korea—a discourse that oscillates between, or in this case combines, unsmiling exposés of human rights violations and farcical caricatures of a bizarre alternate reality. The fact that both the film's content and its reception frame the Orient's famous inscrutability in terms of Kim Jong-un's censorship policies shows how U.S.-North Korean relations re-inflect age-old Oriental stereotypes and the profile of the ideal American subject. What I find truly striking about The Interview though—and what got lost amidst the strident celebrations and resounding indictments—is that the film actually takes a rather unorthodox approach to characterization. Like many potted stories about North Korea, The Interview locates its dramatic tension in the power imbalance between the exploitative despot, the brainwashed horde, and the truth-serving journalist. The film, however, rescripts this human rights problem on the specific terms of how the horde and the despot relate to characterological indices of humanness. Most surprisingly, it locates moral value in humanizing Kim Jong-un.

The most well-known and controversial scene of The Interview is the pyrotechnic incineration of the fictional Kim. In June 2014, North Korean officials deemed The Interview an "act of war" in response to this scene and threatened action if it were released. Rogen, Franco, and Goldberg remained bravely resolute in their decision to kill Kim on screen despite North Korea's threats of retaliation  (in a similar spirit, their film's protagonists heroically see out Kim's downfall to the end despite his nuclear pomp and bravado). On November 24, a month before the film's Christmas Day release, parent company Sony Pictures was hacked, an act of cyberterrorism that U.S. President Barack Obama pegged to Kim Jong-un's regime. When the responsible party warned it would attack theaters showing the film, Sony pulled the release, drawing widespread criticism. Obama proclaimed: "We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States."2

Truth is at the heart of Goldberg and Rogen's film, in that its titular "interview," conducted by harebrained talkshow host Dave Skylark (James Franco) and his producer Aaron Rapaport (Rogen), also serves as a staging ground for North Korea's allegations of warmongering and the United States' trumpeting of human rights. The film opens with Rapaport being snubbed by a reporter at 60 Minutes, a slight that inspires him to report "real news." Rapaport and Skylark strike upon the idea that interviewing the mysterious leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un (Randall Park), will lend their show credence. Piggybacking onto this quest is a CIA assignment to assassinate Kim. Whereas interviewing Kim serves the relatively modest aim of initiating Rapaport into the circle of "real news,"offing Kim in the name of American democracy catapults Rapaport and Skylark's mission into the far more prestigious realm of international human rights. For both the actual filmmakers and their fictional media representatives, the censuring of North Korea for policing the flow of information to, from, and within its borders enables the valorization of America's freedom of expression. The common visual correlate of such critiques is a "black hole" on the satellite imaging of Asia, wherein North Korea is a dark mass among a sea of light.3

In The Interview, this problem of freedom of speech holds not just moral implications but characterological ones as well. The film's first scene features a young North Korean girl bellowing an anti-American tune to a homogenous congregation of admiring listeners clad in monotone gray-blues. A missile in the horizon launches, seguing to an American news broadcast headlining Kim Jong-un's nuclear tests. Immediately following a series of these reports, Skylark's title sequence splashes onto the screen. This opening sequence aptly introduces the main players in America's narrativization of North Korea: 1) the ordinary masses, whose faces we never see due to their total captivation by an ideological production; 2) Kim Jong-un, whose representation is limited to headshots on news broadcasts; and 3) the American media, within which the serious and the fluffy administer different camps. In sum, what we have here are the core character types that have structured human rights discourses about North Korea.

The Interview, however, offers a radically different approach to remedying human rights in North Korea, despite operating under the same assumptions as documentaries, policy, and both soft and hard news.4 The more common approach among North Korean watchers is to address the inhuman plight of the North Korean masses.5 In undertaking this cause for humanity, such critics often conflate the characterological problem of rounding out stereotypes with the geopolitical and biopolitical problems of defending against human rights crimes. With respect to the "vast majority" of "ordinary North Korean citizens," for example, Sonia Ryang asks: "do we know who these people are?"6 David Shim, meanwhile, declares: "the notion of a faceless and brainwashed horde of 'ordinary' North Koreans ... encapsulates a refusal to acknowledge the individuality of these people, thereby implying a repudiation of them being granted the status of fellow humans."7

Such attempts to humanize the faceless North Korean horde presume a compulsory anonymity resulting from the North Korean state's disciplining of the individual body. The protagonists of The Interview, by contrast, dole out retributive justice by humanizing Kim Jong-un. The Interview operates on the implicit belief that characterization—the process of creating a humanlike proxy—can not only counteract the actual Kim Jong-un's politically inhuman actions but also remedy the formally dehumanizing effects of stereotyping Kim as banally evil. This characterological approach to humanizing Kim intersects with a crucial plotline. Sook, a turncoat within Kim's administration, vetoes the CIA-hatched plan to poison Kim. She tells Skylark and Rapaport: "Killing Kim won't change anything ... He will be replaced ... The people need to be shown that he is not a god, that he is a man. Then they will be ready for change." Sook's recommendation inspires a tactical plan to humanize Kim. At the center of the plan is Kim's interview on Skylark Tonight. Says Rapaport: "You get Kim Jong-un to fucking cry like a baby in front of all of North Korea? They'll know he's not a god." This notion of justice via humanization appears in two stages. First, the film treats humanization as a process of characterization, of fleshing out Kim's unknown interiors. At the film's end, however, humanization appears as a scheme to cut Kim down to size by emptying and scandalizing his bodily cavities. Both instances of humanization challenge the profile of Kim that the Western world and that the North Korean people have seen thus far.

What the world within the film and the world of its viewers have seen, to be sure, is Kim's disembodied face. For literary and film critics, as well as for pseudo-scientific physiognomists, the human face is special body part: as the "personality" made manifest, the face constitutes the most distinctive aspect of a person. In The Interview, King Jong-un's face performs an ideological function and directly services the "cult of personality" that has been used as shorthand for North Korean authoritarianism. Reproductions of Kim's face, sometimes coupled with his father's and grandfather's, are seeded throughout The Interview—on the walls of Skylark's and Rapaport's hotel rooms, in a grocery store, as a stage backdrop, pinned on shirt lapels, and, of course, throughout various U.S. news headlines. It makes sense that it is the graphic detonation of Kim's face—this body part on which something as prestigious and as coercive as "personality" is mapped—that spurred a geopolitical crisis.

As an element of the film's narratological infrastructure, the reproductions of Kim's face not only signal an authoritarian "cult of personality," but act as a pretext of sorts for Kim's entry in the flesh—a scene that doesn't come until the film's halfway point. This scene reframes the power dynamics so that Skylark is the cult of personality and Kim is merely a nervous "superfan." (Kim's admiration of Skylark is the journalists' ticket into North Korea.) Kim's first lines—"It is, uh Kim Jong-un"—are uttered in a high-pitched, shaky voice from behind a closed door. While Skylark and Rapaport fail to make the connection between name and person ("Kim Jong-who?"), Kim immediately recognizes Skylark and is even able to imitate his trademark pose.

Given Skylark's effects on Kim, it makes sense that he is also singularly capable of excavating Kim's true nature. In uncovering the different dimensions of Kim's character, Skylark eventually finds himself exclaiming, "You know, this is so weird. You are like the coolest guy. But a lot of people say that you're bat-shit crazy." Kim also turns out to be a mirror for Skylark to reflect on his own inner state. Both characters have carefully crafted their personality "cults" for broader consumption—as evidenced by Kim's hegemonic face and the Skylark's signature pose. But the high polish on these shiny personalities in fact conceals common feelings of insecurity. Sitting in a military tank, Skylark and Kim discuss being called "stupid and incompetent" by their fathers and "dumped on by the media." Then, taking Katy Perry as a spiritual wellspring, the two outcasts bond by recalling to each other the lyrics to "Firework": "Do you ever feel like a plastic bag / Drifting through the wind / Wanting to start again?"

For reviewers, the softer aspects of Kim that Skylark draws out have been the film's strongest suit. A document leaked during the Sony hack observes, "Play up Kim Jung [sic] Un as an interesting character in his own right. We have learned in testing that moviegoers respond very favorably to Kim Jong-un when he is seen as more of a recluse who can be charming at times as opposed to a person who is simply a dangerous dictator."8 This unprecedented approach to portraying Kim Jong-un has also been among the actors' recurring boasts. On December 28, 2014, for example, James Franco posted on Twitter: "Randall park [sic] is flawless! He humanizes KIM [Jong-un]!"9 Perhaps the most vocal proponent of Kim's humanization has been Park himself. Best known for his starring role in Fresh Off the Boat (2015-present), Park self-identifies as an "Asian American" and is conscientious about the community's cultural politics. Pitting a round, humanlike character against a flat, dehumanized caricature, Park says: "[A]s an actor I wanted to give [Kim] some layers and portray him as more of a human being, a vulnerable multidimensional human being that just so happens to be responsible for all these horrible things."10 The quandary that Park faces as an actor is that political inhumanity and characterological inhumanity are so easily conflatable. He worked to "[make] sure this guy was real" since "I never wanted to play a caricature." But, Park says, "I did think 'Am I humanizing him too much?' Because he doesn't deserve to be humanized too much."11

The viewer may be similarly loath to sympathize with Kim too much. If we have become as taken in by Kim as Skylark has, then Rapaport's warning to his gullible friend might turn our heads: "Kim is a master of manipulating the media. You're the media. You get what's happening here?" In the moments before the titular interview, Dave and Kim converse backstage. Here, we appear to reencounter the unheroic Kim—except the film now guides the viewer to see Kim's self-doubt as an act of double-dealing. Offering Dave another gift, this time a puppy, Kim seems to treat him as both a venerable television celebrity and a long lost confidante: "I live a lonely life, Dave. And it warms my heart to know that there is someone in this world with whom I can truly be myself ... I'm just me and I do my best." Kim's lines here seem of a piece with his previous lamentations. But in disclosing a telling smirk to the camera, he cues the audience to reevaluate the feelings of vulnerability he had exposed earlier: is the dictator's apparent inner depth merely an effect of his inner trickery?

When Skylark eventually realizes that his experience of North Korea has been a sham, from a fake grocery store to a "fake fat kid," he reneges on Kim's friendship. Emboldened by a desire for justice, Skylark and Rapaport resolve to carry on with their assigned plan to assassinate Kim. Sook, Kim's former propaganda officer, sets the two on the path to humanizing Kim rather than killing him; such a fate, she indicates, would more successfully deindoctrinate the North Korean masses. At the heart of Sook's plan—and the second scene of Kim's humanization—is Skylark's internationally broadcasted interview of Kim. Skylark's concluding question to Kim revisits familiar terrain and turns a celebrity gossip show into a vehicle for political enlightenment and freedom of speech: "Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again? Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin, like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?" If, before, Perry's lyrics were the template for Kim's confessions of insecurity, then here they are the catalyst for his tears, farts, urine, and feces. We see, then, the lyricized fragility of the inner self materialize in a profound lack of bodily control and, more specifically, as the crude vulnerability of the body to exposé. As all of Kim's bodily contents discharge on screen, the interview concludes with Skylark triumphantly enthusing: "You're just a flawed man with a big old butthole. And you pee and poo just like the rest of us." Unlike Skylark's first encounter with Kim, which fleshes out the epic hero into an ordinary character, his interview of Kim reduces him from an omnipotent godlike dictator to a pathetic mortal. The first scene brings to the fore the deepest thoughts and feelings buried within an undecipherable man. The second also showcases the contents of Kim's inner being—only in this instance, the contents are of the more somatic variety.

Both scenes of humanization, finally, present Kim, the cult of personality, as one who is easily taken in by the faces of bigger cults. Kim's admiration for Skylark, expressed through the gifting of a bust, betrays the power that an American celebrity holds over him. Skylark's interview of Kim stages the standoff between these two personality cults by presenting alternating shots of Kim's face and Skylark's face. The backdrop for these characters' faces are more faces: throughout the interview, Kim and Skylark are cast against larger-than-life painted faces of North Korean personalities. The painting behind Skylark is unrecognizable, with the camera frame including only the lower right corner. The painted face behind Skylark, however, is gradually revealed, in increments that correspond with Kim's increasing discombobulation, until we can clearly see that this face belongs to his father Kim Jong-il. At one point during this visual progression, Kim actually turns to look at the painting, as if seeking guidance. At the height of his distress, Kim wails, "I don't need my father, I am strong."

In addition to juxtaposing embodied faces with painted ones, the interview scene also pits Skylark's face against Kim's. This showdown between Skylark's celebrity stage presence and Kim's meticulously scripted persona—the attempt of each to topple the other—casts "humanity" not in terms of possessing a complex interior, but as the consequence of exposé and manipulation, of catching or forcing someone off guard. This face-off, furthermore, underscores Skylark's function as Kim's foil. Not only is Skylark key to the film's characterization of Kim and to our apprehension of Kim's humanity, but, more significantly, he showcases the values—namely, truth and authenticity—that Kim lacks. Unlike Rapaport who seeks in North Korea professional prestige and social relevance, Skylark is much more self-interested, debonair, even featherbrained. His aspirations for visiting North Korea begin and end (just like the film itself) with a "bestselling tell-all" entitled An Unexpected Journey: Dave Skylark's Adventures in North Korea. Other incidents seem to affirm Skylark's inflated sense of self and his implicit claim to the rights, privileges, and swagger of democratic humanism. Protesting the CIA's insistence on America's "total deniability," he lobbies to assassinate Kim on camera. In his zeal, he nearly gives the plan away to journalists without any provocation. Instead of using the plain carrying bag that the CIA designated, Skylark insists that his ostentatiously patterned shoulder bag is more true to himself. When taken as a foil to Kim, the exemplar of secrecy and deception, Skylark seems to exhibit the qualities critical to a just, equal, and free democracy. His inability and refusal to conceal his true feelings and desires, even when mandated by national intelligence, may appear self-righteous and self-indulgent in the context of U.S. domestic politics. But when the obnoxious U.S. talk show host (to speak nothing of the obnoxious U.S. film) is thrown into the context of North Korea, these traits become recoded as accountability and pluck. An American co-worker may have license to joke that Skylark would mistake Kim Jong-un for "the guy from Gangnam style," but Skylark's apathy, myopia, and gullibility later become hallmarks of his faith in the transparency of truth.

The Interview concludes with Skylark reading from his tell-all: "This was a revolution ignited with nothing more than a camera and some questions, questions that led a man once revered as a god among mortals to cry and shit his pants." These triumphant lines illustrate the value that an increasingly cryptic North Korea holds for an increasingly globalized, sterilized, and homogenized America. As I see it, Skylark and Rapaport's most magnificent feat in the film is neither killing the North Korean despot nor liberating the North Korean masses—nor humanizing either entity. Rather, Skylark's exhibition of Kim's face and his posterior works to recuperate bygone universals—truth and authenticity—for the contemporary American subject. Unlike Kim, Skylark is the cult of personality who treats the face not as an occlusive instrument but as a screen for projecting an inner truth. The risk-ready American journalist, himself an increasing relic in the Internet age, amasses new value in North Korea, where he becomes the ideal mediator of the public and the private, making the (sur)face no less truthful and no less authentic than the inner self. Seeking out the destinations and stories that mainstream news outlets eschew, Skylark and Rapaport—the melding of high-risk tourism, investigative journalism, and humanitarian duty—present North Korea as the last frontier for truth and authenticity, the key to satiating Western man's pangs of nostalgia.

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Sunny Xiang is an assistant professor of English at Yale University specializing in 20th- and 21st-century Anglophone literature, especially contemporary Asian/Asian American literature. Her book project is entitled Voicing Asia: Post-Cold War Novels, Geopolitics, and Human Rights.

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