“Don’t Look Up” is a pep rally for the blue team in the culture wars. Ostensibly a movie about a comet hitting Earth and putting an end to existence as we know it, it is really a demand that we see through the superficiality of mass culture (particularly on the internet) and take action on climate change. As a result, Trump voters will hate it.
While the movie certainly has amusing moments, it also has the following weaknesses:
- Meryl Streep plays a populist president who is clearly intended to resemble you-know-who. With all due respect, however, no woman can plausibly play Donald Trump, because toxic masculinity is the very heart of his appeal. He is unimaginable without it.
- A comet strike is not a fair analogy to climate change, which is a much slower process. That, along with our ability to impose costs arbitrarily on other parties, is what makes it a more difficult political problem.
- The movie appears to assume that climate change denial is driven by the cynicism of right-wing leaders and by the superficiality of internet culture. In reality, it has two different sources: economic self-interest and faux libertarian ideology. As I’ve noted many times before, there is no rugged individualist solution to climate change, so it is far easier and more comfortable simply to deny that it is happening.
A word to the wise: if you watch it, don’t turn it off until it is completely over. The very end is important.