This blog post is 12+ years old from 2009 with President Obama's first term. Our posts focus on national affairs and culture, and occasionally technology. Sometimes our observations receive a critical eye, but our 'pen' remains unblunted as we keep a sharp eye on the ways and directions of American politics and culture.
With this said, we report on the recently released, apocalyptic-dystopian-themed movie, Don't Look Up (Adam McKay, author, producer, and director, 2021, Netflix Inc,). [Note: the film's themes ring very true by our close readings of politics, culture, aerospace, and astrobiology.]
This film is a brilliant parody, with excellent acting, excellent script, and excellent scenery and staging. BUT IT IS NOT FUNNY! It hits close to what's happening in America right now, today. It is a mirror of current America reflecting our double speak politics, personal and institutional cynicism and corruption, and above all, the overriding monetization of everything even the coming extinction of planet earth (as if that makes sense).
Acting: great-as-usual performances by Streep and De Caprio. Also great to see how Jonah Hill has honed and matured his craft. Jennifer Lawrence is significant as a kind of Greek Chorus-like critical eye and commentary that keeps things from slipping entirely into the numbing, erratic madness that was the last president's term.
Watching "Don't Look Up" was a learning event rich with already-witnessed but newly-processed reflections on the last presidential term that will be recorded as a historic 'low' in America's 250 years. The Trump years are extra sobering when seen through this movie.
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With the 'Jan 6 (2021)' investigation committee hearings underway in a few days, we can ponder this film about American disfunction and decline into absurdity.
But. Not funny? Why? Because its exaggerations seem like current America - double-speak politics and players, media crassness, conspiracy and corruption, and a pervasive monetization of everything even extinction, that reduces 'truth' and extinction to this evening's tv ratings.
As the result of reading a few early, at-best non-committal reviews of Don't Look Up, I put off watching it until my daughter 'suggested' I see it. (I've learned to 'hear' my daughter as much by her tone of voice as from just her words. Her message was 'Dad,...a tool.') With that guidance, needless to say, I was very impressed by the film's crafting, acting and message but disappointed that the film hasn't gotten the praise it deserves... I feel this is coming.
"Don't Look Up's" portrayal of a ratings-obsessed media corporate bloc even in the face of global extinction is damning but isn't this what appears to be the current media reality?
This film is not funny because its seeming science fiction content is real:
- A potentially planet-killer cosmic body might hit Earth, 2027-2037 (European Space Agency);
- NASA already landed a probe on a comet in 2005 (! hmmm!);
- Humans leaving Earth - Elon Musk plans to launch his SpaceX Mars colonization ship in 2024-25 (USA DOD has so far given Musk maybe 10 billion dollars and Musk anticipates by 2030 getting a trillion dollars more for transporting a million humans to Mars)
Mass media's cynical hyping of eventual extinction has long been a 'usual' and we already have in place the film's puppet red-hats, i.e., Trump's MAGA crowd; and the curtain is being drawn back revealing the willingness of the military-industrial combine to go with the flow in order to make and acquire more exotic weapons and gear.
Don't Look Up should be viewed by as many American and global citizens as possible. It should become an important assignment in future college and high school courses on a wide variety of subjects (film making, politics, satire, media conduct and ethics, corruption, history, social movements, astrobiology and extinction, global warming ...and other areas that are, or should be, of national concern but are ignored, downplayed, spun around, demeaned ...all out of a cynical institutional and individual commitments to special interests usually involving money or institutional preservation for the sake of... self-preservation. (It seems appropriate here to reference the American Supreme Court's 2010 granting of human-like, political-donor status to business corporations and their interests to the political action group, Citizens United (Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee, US Supreme Court, 2010).
Don't Look Up revisits the spirit and insights of prior classic literary works about the weaknesses and failures of human governance structures. Notably, my list of such works includes the 'gold standard' of dystopian social illness, 1984, (George Orwell, 1949), which brings into sharp focus the complicity of individuals with our institutions-become-'persons' to oppress, monitor and imprison...ourselves.
One should also include in such a list of predictive, dystopian books: Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1932), Keep The Flags Flying (Evelyn Waugh, 1930), and Little Brother (Cory Doctorow, 2008). In these works, a central theme is the overriding dismalness of human constructs and our species' atavistic, not-far-from-monkeys-with-hands-stuck-in-the-cookie-jar inability to let go and save themselves when there is money to be made ... even in the face of a soon-to-come tomorrow when money and material goods will be meaningless. (Note actor, Jonah Hill's, masterful rant lamenting the coming loss of luxury condominiums, 'the good "stuff" of society as if this was the most significant loss from extinction - I am liking how he has continuously honed and broadened his acting craft over the years ... in this case a wicked, nearly perfect portrayal of our former president's erratic ramblings.)
Other important and distinctive themes in these works include keen perceptions of society's inequalities, its dis-and-malfunctions, pervasive cynicism, the manipulation of political and especially populism, the vulnerability of humanity to sharp-eyed 'users and manipulators'.
The result seems to be an American 'normalization' of superficiality... in many areas, we seem to prefer a superficial life of artificiality - of emotions, tastes (ersatz foods), work, etc. More so, is the normalization of societal stress ... on institutions that lose sight of their purposes and on individuals who are so heavily stressed they (we) lose the ability and incentive to protest or even react. (Or, seek artificial means to counteract stress such as opiates, alcohol, and a myriad other palliative means (open-market or illegal).
My overall reaction to 'Don't Look Up' was the same as one of the movie's messages — humanity, in the face of truly global dangers, is being badly served by the complicity of Big Media with our other national estates (eg, government, military, politics, ...) to sell and preserve their specific institutional interests rather than protecting the nation's or humanity's well being.
In this 'New World', global extermination becomes merely another media spin project as if 'extermination' is simply a dictionary entry to be replaced with a nicer sounding synonym ... and as if it all is a fantasy existence whose meaning is how much money one can get and how extravagantly one lives.
"Superficial" is too mild a description of where we were under DT (aka RICO Dedito, aka TFG). Meryl Streep's POTUS is both superficial and evilly so because she knows exactly what, why, how and where-to she is spinning. (Are these the qualities needed to be elected POTUS?)
I didn't laugh watching "Don't Look Up" and I still won't laugh during the twice-more times I plan to watch it. I see its characters - the heroes, the satanic, the naive, the herd, and the corruption, and end-times, all being played out on our stage of reality right now.
[The author - world citizen, educator, technologist, candidate for elected office...santiago-compostela pilgrim.]
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