Don't Look Up (2021) (with a little bit of Squid Game (2021))

The cultural moment to discuss Squid Game is probably over, and the momentum surrounding Don’t Look Up seems to be heading in a similar trajectory if not for the valiant efforts of fools such as myself who keep offering yet more blisteringly hot takes about the incessant discourse around the film. But I have a hunch that we’re going to see yet more insightful, dark, thought-provoking, and topical critiques of the present moment that dominate online discourse for several weeks before fading away into a cloud of memes. Don’t Look Up especially seems to generate a particular reaction of indignation at its critics, with them being accused of “missing the point”, “being elitist”, of even of flat out denial of the seriousness of the crises the film’s massive comet for which the film’s planet killing comet is a metaphor for. For the record, the opinion of this blog is that the crisis caused by anthropogenic climate change is a disaster of a proportion it is difficult to articulate, and that this failure on the part of various people to fully take on board its significance is a legitimate source of frustration. Talking about Squid Game on a recent interview by Jacobin Slavoj Žižek commented on his lack of interest in the show as a work of anti-capitalism insofar as it just depicts capitalism with all its horrors and subtleties and leaves it at that; to me, Don’t Look Up is guilty of the same crime, but with an even less suitable metaphor.

              A comet hitting the earth is not a good metaphor for climate change. A comet, like the expansion of the sun, the heat death of the universe, or countless other hostile cosmic phenomena are simply things that exist, and that will happen someday. The film Melancholia uses this existential property of an attack from the heavens as a way to in part discuss mortality itself and for this purpose the literal cosmic horror of a big dumb rock works quite well. Climate change however is an innately immanent problem, it is a consequence not only of the specific cause of greenhouse gas emissions, but is a networked problem with the destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity, the ingratiation of microplastics into the deepest recesses of the ocean and the inhumane treatment of animals both domestic and wild that provide ideal environments for new diseases to flourish. To “solve” climate change one would need to examine it as a symptom of a wider problem facing human existence in its current form, and that if we overnight found some way to replace all fossil fuels with magic rocks or something, a host of potential new crises will emerge from the current system of accidental terraforming.  

              Don’t Look Up isn’t ignorant of this problem and translates the causes of the climate crisis onto the various attempts to stop the comet. First the scientists in the film are met with denial, scepticism, and well-meaning befuddlement, before corporate greed transforms the relatively straightforward solution to the problem into a disaster as the Silicon Valley “tech will fix it all” approach plays out as one would expect. I’m always down for an attack on these space weirdos whose supporters continue to appear out of the woodwork when someone points out that maybe robber barons shouldn’t be in a position where they think they hold the secret to saving the world in the palm of their hands and to the film’s credit, the depiction of these people as being fundamentally reprehensible is well done. What the film doesn’t handle so well is the nature of the original plan, presenting it as an option that those in power are simply choosing not to do simply out of greed, when in reality the logical solution would result in a net loss in perceived standards of living for all but the elites.

              The fragility of modern supply chains is plain to see in 2022, with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic showing the countless ripple effects that even small interruptions in globalised shipping and production can have on material availability. It is difficult to envision a world where some renewable resource simply replaces greenhouse on a one-to-one basis given the immense energy requirements of the global supply chain, and the net environmental losses caused by deforestation and industrialised meat production. To implement the reductions in emissions needed to match what climate scientists say we need, would involve limiting these other related parts of the system. The ability to eat produce from any climate and in any season is reliant on incredible feats of logistical design that rely on vast monocultural plantations interconnected through efficient economies of scale. That these problems are exacerbated by the additional stress of every link in the chain needing to extract an increasingly higher profit margin given the tendency of the rate of profit to fall only adds to an inherently unsustainable system.

              That Don’t Look Up attributes this to the profit motive alone speaks to its ideological blind spot that ultimately sinks the film’s ability to satirize rather than describe the current moment. The scientists played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are the film’s main voice of reason and by the end of the film choose to stay on the doomed earth with their loved ones rather than embark on the elite escape rocket. This noble act of staring mortality in the face after coming to terms with them having done all they can transforms this from a cautionary tale into a tragedy, the materiality of the comet has triumphed over what it is attempting to represent. The film says to everyone who’ve been seriously trying to fix the problem “it’s OK, you did your best, and even if you don’t succeed that’s OK too. Enjoy the little things, enjoy life in the face of death”. This is a comforting message, and especially if you spend your days trying to get people to listen to your incredibly dire message, comfort is not only welcomed, but necessary for one’s own sanity.

              But this tone is at odds with the film’s stated intention of being a satire, and it is at this point that the flawed, but overall noble heroes become an ideological problem. In positioning these figures as the heroes, the film is inviting the audience to identify with them, and likewise identify with their course of action, which boils down to overcoming a crisis of confidence, realising you’ve been swayed from your ideals, and recommitting to the same course of action. The film speaks to the frustration of climate activists and researchers, without examining whether perhaps this strategy is itself flawed. Deciding that people are too stubborn, stupid, greedy, or frightened to understand the gravity of this situation ignores the idea that people may have good reasons for opposing these measures. When people discuss voters in coal mining regions voting for policies that exacerbate climate change, one assumes that the removal of mining jobs from the region will be accompanied by an influx of new green jobs to the same region. If one looks at the history of de-industrialisation in the western world, one can be forgiven for doubting the certainty of such promises. Even if someone knows that their livelihood will result in catastrophe down the line, potential future catastrophe seems less scary than guaranteed short-term catastrophe.

              Just like Adam McKay’s previous film Vice the ideological position seems to be the class of people who are media savvy enough to “see through the bullshit”, to blame the easily swayed people who are plugged into the media and regurgitate its lies. To this end Don’t Look Up is genuinely more targeted at US liberal media and figures like the Democrats than their conservative counterparts because the film assumes that it’s viewers can “see through the system”. This position makes sense for a supporter of Bernie Sanders and hey, if I had to choose one of the candidates in the last two elections it would have been him too! But Bernie lost, and for all the accurate diagnoses for why he lost on the part of his supporters, the real question is “what is to be done?”. It’s clear that asking people to “trust the science” is not a good strategy, not only because it doesn’t seem to work, but also science isn’t there to be trusted, as it exists within the same systems of power that this film is itself critiquing. Science is a heuristic for truth not a synecdoche for it and tailoring an approach to get to grips with why people reject its conclusions seems to be a better start than a continuation of the same exasperated begging.

              But to do this would mean an examination of the film’s own ideological position which it is clearly not willing to do. To have the scientist’s character development be tied to the nature of science as an apparatus of power structures rather than an uncomplicated source of truth, or to have the act of recognising an ideological problem be shown to be impotent without a material course of action would have the viewer inhabit a position that forces a degree of introspection. This would be a recognition that there is no ideologically neutral position to view these events from, forcing a call to action, or at least a deviation from the current status quo. This lack of a serious interrogation of one’s own position, not as some neutral spectator of ideas, but as a grounded body in space seems to be a product of the same idealism that sought to subsume the existential materiality of the comet under its metaphorical meaning. To do this would rob the ending of the film of it’s feel-good yet tragic payoff, but perhaps that’s a good thing.

              Even if one views the film as primarily a satire of the media response to an event such as this, be that the climate crisis or COVID-19, the question of the ideologically unexamined spectator looms like a spectre over the entire film. One can say that the film bears an uncanny resemblance to the events that took place after the film’s production, but if the end result of that resemblance is simply to reinforce rather than to critique one’s own view of society, then who exactly is this satire benefitting? Those (such as I) who already agree that the response to COVID and the climate crisis was a farce don’t have that conclusion challenged all that much, and those who disagree have the convenience of this metaphor being distant enough from reality such that they can read the film in a completely different way should they choose. While The Big Short and The Other Guys ended with a clear target and a means by which to go after them (the banks and stronger financial regulations), both this film and Vice have correctly identified the targets but have also identified that these issues are not so easily corrected.

Walking out of Vice I found myself feeling that the exercise was somewhat masturbatory, that this combination of cinematic and theatrical talent circled around to confirm what I already knew, that Dick Cheney was not a nice man. This, coupled with the mean-spirited digs at “media obsessed youth” seems to be a way of avoiding the discussion about our own complicity as members of an ideological order. We can sit back and feel good about ourselves because we consume the “right” media, we can see through the spectacle, and it makes us feel good. Doctor Strangelove or In the Loop offer no such privileged position as everyone is in some way complicit, the moral lesson of the film is more that the situation itself is so toxic that there is no voice of reason standing out among the fools. When the world ends at the end of Kubrick’s film, it ends with an act of sheer ignorance, both on the part of the men pushing the button, and the frantic discussion of some sort of eugenicist nightmare happening in the war room. While Col. Jack D. Ripper started the events of the film, he really isn’t to blame in the way that Don’t Look Up’s elites are, rather it’s the system itself that enables such a ridiculous act to end the world.

Perhaps I am asking too much of the film, many people have enjoyed it and who knows, maybe it’s galvanised some people to fight harder for a better world. Even my critique that it’s a feel-good movie at heart isn’t necessarily bad, don’t people deserve to feel good? What does concern me is how this will impact the future of how these issues are discussed in our culture. To prevent or even learn to live with the next pandemic, or the next environmental disaster, or even to achieve some modicum of normality within the crises happening right now, there needs to be a shift in how we see ourselves as ideological subjects and films like this don’t ask those questions. If you liked Don’t Look Up, that’s great, McKay is a smart and talented filmmaker, I like Succession, but the film’s blind spots make it hard to recommend as anything more thought provoking than a fun experience for the media savvy cinema goer.

 If I were to predict the lasting legacy of the film, I would probably compare it to Squid Game, the South Korean “anti-capitalist” show that took the world by storm last year and is getting another sequel. I quite liked the show, the characters were well written, the production design was great, real edge of your seat stuff. But the message, that contemporary capitalism in South Korea was so brutal that these absurd games offered people a better chance than the games out there, once absorbed offers not much else concerning how people are to react. The protagonist Seong Gi-Hun is shown going through stages of grief and guilt the final episode but in the end decides to use his winnings to try and make a difference for those who’ve suffered. The show seems to be saying that one doesn’t need to wallow in guilt for being part of this exploitative system, and that the average person can make a difference if they try, as seen in the stranger helping the homeless man in the snow.

I’m not going to comment on the final scene since it’s unclear what the aims of the second season of the show are, but what is immediately apparent is the degree to which the show was incorporated into systems of consumer capitalism. The show’s iconic designs were featured in various marketing campaigns as well as spawning a cottage industry of Squid Game merch. Just like in Don’t Look Up we are allowed to walk in the shoes of the hero and can manipulate the images around us to bring us joy, to give us a sense of control over the world when we photoshop a new dalgona meme or tag the latest political debate with #DontLookUp. Here the limits of this descriptive approach to critiquing neoliberal capitalism become apparent, in that if you’re producing a cultural form that behaves like capitalism, odds are that its going to be incorporated by capitalism. I’ll still recommend Squid Game to people, it’s a good show that isn’t explicitly reactionary (looking at you Disney), but I’m not going to describe it as anything substantially more profound than that.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope that we get a great work of art like Boots Riley’s exceptional Sorry to Bother You coming out soon. But I have my doubts given the roaring success that these feel-bad-feel-good shows have had. Hell, maybe a big rock will appear in the sky and McKay’s prediction will seem more prophetic than I gave it credit for. In the meantime I’m digging myself a bunker in the nearest mineshaft.

 

Dune (2021)

If anyone asked me what film I was most looking forward to over the past two years, my answer was Dune. Now having seen the film comes the hard part of actually needing to think about the expectations I had placed on it, as well as questioning whether the moment for Dune has passed, whether the counter culture of the 60s has said all it could have and this is yet another stale repetition of mystical white heroes wandering around in the desert. In short, Dune must answer the question "why don't I just watch Lawrence of Arabia instead?". Having seen the film twice now, once in IMAX and the other on a more reasonably sized screen I think I can confidently say that Dune meets the challenge set by its predecessors and exceeds them not by attempting to subvert the themes of its source material, but by overcoming them. The thoughts here are of course contingent on the upcoming film's ability to deliver on the promises set by part one, an ability I once ascribed to Star Wars: The Force Awakens; however, unlike that doomed project, Dune has signalled a recognition of what makes its story stand out from those around and before it.

In The Empire Strikes Back (a film I have a great deal of fondness for) Yoda describes the force as something that binds all things in the universe, a pantheistic vitalism that confirms that “luminous beings are we, not this crude matter”. Despite various handwaving allusions to midichlorians (the spiritual powerhouse of the cell) this core claim that the force is something that transcends location or culture is maintained through the series, with the final shot of The Last Jedi encapsulating the emancipatory promise of this idea better than perhaps any other Star Wars film (the discussion of The Last Jedi is for another time perhaps). It would be great for something like the force to exist wouldn’t it, indeed the appeal of this sci-fi spirituality is so intense that there are people who claim to actually practice the Jedi religion though their midichlorian counts are still unconfirmed.

Yet despite this idealistic potential the Star Wars films remain focused on the adventures of a single family and their aristocratic pals, as the actual power of the force seems to be concentrated in the chosen few who are gifted enough to control it. Were the Star Wars films that simplistic that most likely wouldn’t have achieved the longevity that they currently possess as the most powerful moments of the series come from the virtuous rejection of this power. Luke’s confrontation with Darth Vader at the end of Empire comes after his rejection of Yoda’s teachings, and it is only by rejecting the power of the force at the end of The Return of the Jedi that the Emperor is defeated. One could argue that the lesson here is that the noble response to being handed power is to reject it, retreat into the solitude of the temple or swamp and preach a kind of guided passivism, and yet the films themselves are in constant tension with these ideas. Instrumentally all these ‘rejections’ of power result in the outcome that would have been desired by its use. Yoda’s wisdom is not helpful when the Death Star needs to be exploded, the neutrality of the Jedi Council leads to the destruction of the republic and in the sequel films… something something dark side bad, found family good. Real life, material reality makes impositions on people that can’t simply be brushed away as “crude matter”.

Dune is different in that in many ways it inhabits a more spiritual world (unlike Star Wars where the Jedi religion is seemingly forgotten, everyone in Dune is very religious), that spirituality is first and foremost a materialist one. The consequences of the Butlerian Jihad with its ban on thinking machines has created a world where the minds of humans must be manipulated just as machines would have been. Mentats supplement their computational minds with juice from the Sapho root, the Bene Gesserit engage in millennia long breeding programs to produce carefully constructed human minds, and the navigators of the Spacing Guild infuse their bodies with spice such that their metabolism becomes dependant on the drug. These are all fantastical exercises of mental power, yet each of them is reliant on the innate physicality of the human body. Physicality here is not simply a physicality in simple contrast to a cartesian idea of the soul, but one that exists at the confluence of the biochemical forces of life, geology, ecology, and physical spacetime that manifests differently for each system the bodies are located within. The sense of purpose, solidarity, metaphysical presuppositions, and power to influence the world and others that was achieved by the transcendent force, is here achieved through an immanent spirituality that emerges from these enmeshed materialist forces.

There is no greater example of this approach to spirituality than the culture, ecology, and faith of the Fremen and Arrakis, which is convenient as that is where the film spends most of its time. The spice that forms the foundation for the Imperial economy is a by-product of the life cycle of the sandworms, who also happen to be the greatest logistical impediment to the harvesting of spice (big worm eat spice harvesting machine). Unlike the homeostatic balance of the force which seems to flip back and forth between light and dark, the logic of Arrakis is profoundly ecological in that its foundational concept is that of the feedback loop (the weird is also associated with such loops, as such it is no coincidence that the Fremen call the Bene Gesserit witches “weirding women”). Sandworms produce spice but they also impede its harvesting, to kill the worms would be to kill the spice leaving the system not in balance, but in tension. This tension is seen throughout the cultures of Arrakis and indeed, the wider Imperium. The Fremen way of life requires non-indigenous plants and animals to be cultivated and protected from the sandplankton and sandtrout that ensure the homeostasis of the sandworm/desert ecosystem; and yet, the desert provides the Fremen with their material protection from the off-worlders as well as connection to the sandworms which are sacred and venerated as gods. Without spice harvesting there would be no need for the Imperium to come to Arrakis, robbing the Fremen of their access to the resources they need and yet it is Imperial spice harvesting that threatens the Fremen way of life.

That the Fremen’s plan is to terraform the planet through hoarding vast reserves of water speaks to their understanding that the desert itself is not enough to sustain them, and yet without the desert, there could be no sandworms, the very basis of their way of life. The prophecy that the Fremen venerate, that of the voice from the outer world that will lead them to paradise is the very same one that Paul knowingly exploits in order to secure his power. When Paul arrives on Arrakis he dismisses the myths planted by the Bene Gesserit as superstitions meant to control the people, but once he finds himself deep in the desert he has no issue promising the total terraforming of Arrakis. We could stop at this level, leaving the Fremen doomed to worship an apocalyptic religion, where paradise comes at the cost of their own destruction and is offered by those with no intention to provide it; however, Dune does not stop there, as Paul is painfully aware, the Jihad that his coronation would begin is not one that he can control as the nature of an ecological feedback loop is one without a single causative element. Paul’s justification for this is that without his guidance this Jihad will spread further and wreak more destruction than with him at the helm, but it is this very position of leadership that destabilises the ecological tension that sustains the culture of the Imperium.

That the Fremen serve self-destructive goals is not a fault but is rather a product of being embedded in ecology. Aeons ago the insulating shroud of carbon dioxide that maintained earth at a pleasant temperature for carboniferous plants lead to their proliferation across the earth, they were so successful that for millions of years no other organism could even decompose their dead bodies, such was the radical innovation of lignin, the chemical compound that gives wood its strength. In so doing these carboniferous trees spelled their own doom, as the carbon taken from the atmosphere and locked in their indestructible bodies caused their greenhouse to disappear and the earth cooled. These reserves of carbon are now fossil fuels, the geological power of the earth having turned them into coal, oil, and gas. On Arrakis a similar process happened with the Sandworms, except it was not carbon that was locked beneath the earth but water, and just as a low CO2 atmosphere allowed a new ecosystem to supplant the old on earth, so too did a low H2O atmosphere allow the ecosystem of Arrakis to form. Ecosystems are constantly producing conditions such as this, are constantly in tension with their own destruction and are only held at bay by an inconceivably vast interrelation of other forces each trying to do the very same thing. What is important is that these goals are held in tension, and that one is prepared to deal with the consequences of what happens when this tension is released. The carboniferous trees are gone, but their invention of lignin can be seen in every tree growing on earth.

The “terrible purpose” that Paul chooses to follow is the logic of unleashing this tension, of removing the balances that preserve the ecological loops that his world depends on, and in so doing placing him outside the position in which he was able to take power in the first place. Just like Star Wars, Dune also advocates for a virtuous rejection of power, but it does not reward those who do so. Duke Leto is the epitome of this noble virtue, he is the leader of a single house among many and his power derives from his allies rather than his wealth. Leto also doesn’t choose to do what he does, but rather follows his place within the wider system that surrounds him. He is commanded to go to Arrakis and does so. It is in this position of powerlessness that he seeks to form an alliance with the desert power of the Fremen. Yet it is this embeddedness in the systems that sustain him that seal his fate, unlike Baron Harkonnen, who floats above the world extracting value like a bloated tick. That is the cost of this style of living, as the strength of an ecosystem is not the strength of the individual. The bright colouration of animals advertising their poison is of no use to the animal currently being eaten but is of great use to the species. There is a cost to this nobility and it is a cost that must be borne by the individual for the sake of the collective.

Leto understands this, thus his insistence that Paul not take risks that undermine the security of their house, but this is not Paul’s path and in so doing he destroys his father’s legacy. In the film Paul expresses to his father that he might not be the future of House Atreides and Leto responds that such duties are not sought out, but are offered and chosen, and that if Paul chooses not to lead he “would still be the only thing [he] ever needed him to be, [his] son”. By the end of the film, Paul knows that if he becomes emperor the Jihad will spread across the galaxy in his and his father’s name, a cause that would be the antithesis of everything his father stood for, and rather than heed the wisdom and support that his father gave him, he chooses to seize power and release the ecological tension of Arrakis. That Leto’s warning to Paul is given surrounded by the tombs of his ancestors speaks to the dire nature of Paul’s decision to abandon his father’s way, to destroy house Atredies.

If my hopes are well placed, Dune part two and hopefully Dune Messiah will go down the path of showing the consequences of breaking apart the ecologies of Arrakis and the spiritual and political destruction this wreaks on both the Imperium and the planet itself as the most exciting scenes in the second half of the book are all those that embrace the culture and religion of the Fremen that Paul is on a mission to destroy. Rather than the wish fulfillment of Star Wars, where spirituality allows one to transcend the issues of the material world, Dune has the potential to articulate a form of engagement with the world in which it is transcendence itself that is the cause of this suffering in the first place. Just like the Fremen, tapping into the water beneath the planet and in so doing returning the ecosystem to its previous form, we are doing this with the carboniferous forests deep beneath our feet. The question we should be asking is not one of the ethics of “destroying” the planet as we are simply returning it to a form that it once held, but rather what parts of ourselves are we destroying when we unleash the tension of these ecosystems.

What made Leto and the Fremen noble was their respect for their place within their ecologies, that there was nothing about them that transcended the material, but rather all that they valued was immanent to it. In imagining oneself outside of these systems, in trying to produce a mind that can deliver us from the tension that is required by such systems, we walk a dangerous path. What Dune articulates so well, is the allure of this path as well as its consequences and I am looking forward to seeing what the following films do with these ideas, and how people react to the conflict between what Paul promises and what he delivers. Unlike previous films that have walked this path like Lawrence of Arabia, Dune frames these ideas of religion in a materialist context that makes it impossible to isolate a single variable as the cause of any particular action. This is true environmental filmmaking as one cannot tell the story of Dune without any of its constituent parts, just as one cannot describe the story of modernity and industry without the hubris of the Carboniferous trees. I’m not willing to definitively praise Dune for achieving all these goals as so much of what I’ve written lies in the future, but what I have seen gives me great hope for what is to come.  

First Post

 Hello all,

In a period of mental exhaustion in between working on a chapter for my PhD thesis and scrutinising an academic journal's style guide, it came to my attention that if I were to keep up this whole academic thing I would need to give myself an opportunity to write that wasn't tied directly to my work. Even though I didn't have the energy to keep going with the tasks directly in front of me, I still had thoughts that I wanted to work through. The traditional targets of these barrages, people in my general vicinity and students, are probably not the best target for some of the things I want to talk about, and I find the short form nature of Instagram and Twitter to be frustrating given my tendency to write in run on sentences. 

Thus this blog emerged from the ether as a place to store observations on cultural studies without worrying about whether or not it will be funded or published. I'm not sure how often I'll post here, but I will lay out a brief statement of purpose here to hopefully provide some structure for what is to follow (if anything).

This is going to be a blog on cultural studies from a Poststructuralist and Marxist perspective, a great deal of the writing will be on film and screen studies, but that doesn't preclude other topics. I'm probably not going to get too involved in the nitty gritty of politicians and their world; firstly in case this ever does get associated with me I wouldn't like to cause some professional scandal, and secondly I find that world of online discourse painful to interact with and this is supposed to be a somewhat relaxing project for me.

I should probably think of some sort of sign off to end posts with.

Bye.