Merry Christmas

This is not a jolly festive post, I wish it was, and I wish it wasn't my first post in a while. It is an opinion piece on the Sony Pictures email hack or rather the devastatingly objectionable response to it by men, big bloody, unimportant men, doing relatively unimportant things, and being colossally paid for it.

Seth Rogen, Brad Pitt and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin went on the offensive the other day, claiming that these criminal acts are being compounded by media outlets who are 'doing exactly what these criminals want.' I'm not going to go into an argument of hypocrisy based on individuals who conduct their lives courting public attention and then balk when it bites them, as I do see a line between the private lives of all individuals and their more public, working lives. What I find objectionable is the way they have chosen to express their chagrin and the distasteful worldview it might reveal.

I find that I can't agree with Brad Pitt or Aaron Sorkin and I would rarely agree with Seth Rogen anyway, on any point other than the information was illegally obtained.

Sorkin points to the information in the leaks not being news worthy and 'small potatoes'. To suggest that Jennifer Lawrence being on pay deal worth 2% less than Bradley Cooper or Christian Bale for appearing in the same film is anything approaching 'small potatoes' is a devastating lack of sensitivity and perhaps more suggestive of the endemic sexism in the film industry. The majority of this post is based on this article but my feelings have only been strengthened today by the surfacing Aaron Sorkin's own emails which seem to further underline an alarming general disrespect for women or at least acknowledge the woeful state of writing for women in film that has become accepted.

Just as alarming is Brad Pitt assertion that he sees no difference in 'News Corp hacking [personsal] phone calls and hacking [the business] emails' of a multi-billion dollar international company, I find this to be beyond reprehensible. To suggest the the level of intrusion his family has faced here is the same as that of a family grieving the criminal loss of the life of their young child, by hacking the murdered girl's voicemails is an act of grand self importance that may just have marred Pitt in my eyes forever (not that he cares and nor should he). Even the celebrities personal mobile phones that were hacked in that instance is not the same as employers bad mouthing staff via works communication.

At Aaron Sirkins' 'small potatoes' end of the scale, these hacks might reveal a culture of snipping, childish, petty name calling and back stabbing that we might find in most places of work (only most would have the good sense not to leave a virtual paper trail) and then there are the rightly potentially damaging revelations of, at best, patriarchal traditions in the film industry being upheld and it may possibly point to something much worse, it may point to institutionalised misogyny, supported by one of the biggest distributors of information in the world.

These hacks may be criminal but to suggest that they are not news worthy is dangerous. Companies like Sony hold so much sway politically and culturally in society that the views of their heads is a very public matter, these people make decisions that will shape representations of women, of racial, cultural and sexual minority groups, and of areas socio-economic division - or as we more commonly know it, life. They are as much a part of the Ideological State Apparatus that Louis Althuseur warned us of as the 'media outlets' they are speaking out against (and through).

I love the movies, I really do, but the arrogance and self importance often shown by those involved makes me want to take up knitting. J