I can’t enjoy anything produced by the mainstream culture machine any longer because the propaganda is too dense and increasingly too obvious to ignore. I am all too painfully aware that I am being manipulated under the guise of entertainment.
I have now watched the propaganda production “Don’t Look Up” twice — the first time on account of my curiosity and the second time on account of my wife. The second experience was way worse than the first because, as tends to happen with movies seen multiple times, new details are crystallized as the novel humor of the first go-round fades.
For those who have not seen it, the premise of the movie is that a giant comet with existential implications for life itself is careening towards the Earth. Two scientists (played by Leonard DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence) pick it up first via telescope. They try to warn the government and media, which refuse to take the threat seriously. Everyone dies in the end because no one in a position of authority would heed the warnings of these scientists, indulging instead in ritual distraction, denialism, and avarice.
What is immediately obvious and not subtle at all is that the comet threatening to wipe out humanity is meant to be a proxy for either a.) a COVID-19-like virus or b.) “climate change.”
Over and over and over (I lost count of how many references), DiCaprio and Lawrence’s characters tout something called “peer-reviewed science.” The dialogue tediously, constantly refers to “peer-reviewed science” like it’s the Lost Ark or whatever — the key to all of humanity’s liberation from ignorance.
I have written about the corporate state media’s incessant admonitions of the peasantry to “trust the experts” over the past several years as if they belong to some sort of new-age high priest class immune to error — like the “experts” weren’t the ones who created the whole COVID-19 mess in the first place in a dingy Third World lab.
Another of the heavy-handed recurring themes is the irredeemable ignorance of the Deplorable masses, with frequent montages of social media users posting empty selfie videos and unfavorable depictions of what are clearly supposed to be Trump supporters saying “anti-science” things, which is obviously the worst thing anyone could ever be.
The president (played by Meryl Streep), who is pretty obviously a caricature of Trump, and her nepotistic chief-of-staff son (played by Jonah Hill) are too preoccupied with their own political interests to care. A pair of vapid, narcissistic newscasters in the mold of “The Today Show” or “Good Morning America” hosts want to discuss frivolity when the scientists are invited onto the show and react negatively to the dire warnings offered.
Don’t get me wrong: some of the scenes are actually hilarious, and some are even insightful about human nature and its follies. But the propaganda is just so damn thick that it ruins the whole production. The self-righteous preaching is the elephant in the room that’s impossible to look away from.
Like the Bible of satire, “A Modest Proposal,” high-quality artwork of this genre requires a certain degree of tact and subtlety to really hit home. Great satire can be outrageous in its content, but the parallels of the reality it seeks to mock should never be so overt as to be obtuse.
Furthermore, the grossest of all satirical works is one that serves to buttress state power, which this one does. Blind allegiance in The Science™ is the indisputable over-arching message of the film. This is the opposite of the utility of the genre, which is meant to expose and strip away the clothes from the emperor, not give him fresh ones and pleasure him in the process.
