You’ve probably heard by now that Sony Pictures Entertainment has been hacked—everyone from The New York Times to Re/Code to Gawker has been reporting on the fallout—but, in an age of ever-expanding income inequality, I’m not here to discuss tawdry Hollywood gossip or other irrelevancies. For-profit media organizations seem content reporting on the hack through the angles of unsubstantiated theories (the North Koreans did it!), glitzy trivialities (Tom Hanks’ alias is Johnny Madrid!), and jingoistic fear-mongering (a headline from a Business Insider article says the hack is “an act of war”). What the for-profit media hasn’t told you is that the Sony hack can teach us a lot about capitalism.
The leaked documents make clear that, above all else, Sony Pictures isn’t in the business of making films—they’re in the business of making money. That shouldn’t be surprising, of course, given that Sony is a corporate entity that exists under a capitalist economy, but what’s unique about the Sony documents is how clearly they illustrate that Sony’s primary goal is profit.
Take a gander at these internal documents regarding the upcoming Sony film The Interview, for example, in which Sony states in no uncertain terms: “[I]t is important we don’t turn off a big chunk of the potential audience from the outset … There are several themes to this movie that can be utilized in your territory’s main positioning. … Feel free to position the film as an action comedy vs. situational comedy, or buddy comedy vs. outrageous comedy—whatever is optimal for your market.”* These excerpts make clear that Sony isn’t trying to do anything with The Interview except get as many people as possible to watch (read: pay) for it. As you can see from Sony’s internal documents, all that really matters about The Interview—position the film however you like!—is that it gets sold to audiences in a way that is “optimal for [the] market,” which is corporate-speak for “generate as much profit as possible.”
Even the Kevin Hart drama—in which a Sony executive said about Kevin, “I’m not saying he’s a whore, but he’s a whore”—is an example of capitalism in action. Sony, ever on the lookout for profit, balked at Kevin’s demand to be paid additional sums of money for a “social media blitzkrieg” to promote one of his films. From Sony’s perspective, this was unjust and would cut into their profit on the film. Seeking to maximize the bang for their buck, the Sony executive then leaves no doubt as to what they wanted: “We paid for [Kevin’s] ability to open a film which included his social media savvy.”* After checking Kevin’s Twitter feed, it’s clear why Sony was eager to tap into his “social media savvy”: Kevin’s cover image is a promotion for his new film The Wedding Ringer, he has 14.6 million followers (read: potential customers), and his feed is replete with promotional material for his various projects. (One wonders whether the Sony executive was, in the final analysis, correct). The numbers we’re dealing with may be sky-high here—no one’s saying Kevin Hart is broke—but at the end of the day we’re still talking about capital (Sony) and labor (Kevin Hart), and the former wanting to squeeze as much out of the latter as possible for as little money as possible.
It’s really that simple.
But, as usual, the for-profit media have largely missed the point. What could have been a “teachable moment” to demonstrate that Hollywood isn’t interested in educating or entertaining folk—they want profits and nothing else—has devolved into a circular conversation about celebrity gossip and cybersecurity. And they continue to miss the point. For example, just a few days ago Re/Code reported that Sony was already aware of gaps in their cybersecurity months before the hack. And yet Sony apparently stood by and did nothing. This should not be surprising because we already know why Sony stood by idly: profits. It would have cost money for Sony to upgrade its systems and enhance its cybersecurity, and that money would have cut into their profit margins for the year. Nothing—not even the security of their employees’ confidential information—was allowed to stand in the way of Sony’s profits.
And if there’s something else to be learned from the Sony hack, it’s that we cannot trust for-profit media organizations to report on issues relating to capitalism and profit-seeking. Todd VanDerWerff made that abundantly clear in a recent piece for Vox—which is itself owned by for-profit entity Vox Media Inc.—when he dismissed the information relating to Sony’s business practices as simply a catalogue of “the boring way that giant media corporations make money.” He’s wrong. The Sony documents don’t reveal the “boring way” that corporations make money—they reveal the inner workings of capitalism, in which it is laid bare for all to see that executives at the world’s largest corporations don’t care about their professed line of business (whether it be making films, videogames, electronics, or widgets) so much as they care about incoming profit. We ignore corporate America’s relentless quest for profits at our peril.
—Winston A.
* Emphasis mine. Also, in the event Sony’s lawyers are reading this, please be advised that I have never downloaded the documents or even seen them. My entire article rests on what I have read about the documents from other news outlets.
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1 Comment
All you had to do is see a Hollywood movie to figure know all that. I wish someone would write an article on similarities between media and government treatment of this Sony Hack case being attributed to the DPRK and the assassination attempt of the Pope being blamed on USSR. Even if they declare North Korea was not behind the attack, so many num skulls who have seen it on TV (its all they talk about at the bars) are going to be believing the DPRK was behind it still and continue with their distorted ideas of the potential for aggression from the DPRK.