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.