Netflix has just released a new star-studded dark comedy that sends up the current times in which we live. The film is allegorical, particularly of the Trump era.
The story begins with a graduate student (Jennifer Lawrence) who discovers that a 10 km wide comet is headed straight for the Earth and will collide with it in just over six months, destroying the planet. Along with her advisor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a top government scientist (Rob Morgan) they try to alert the Trump-like president (Meryl Streep) but she, along with her idiot son (Jonah Hill, no prizes for guessing who he is based on) who is her chief-of-staff, does not take the threat seriously enough and instead worries more about her poll numbers and how to use the news to her political advantage. The news media represented the form of a happy-talk TV show with co-anchors (Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry) also make light of the situation.
The insidious role of social media is also parodied with comet denialists, egged on by the president and her son, charging that the whole thing is a hoax and adopting the slogan ‘Don’t Look Up!’. The billionaire head of a social media conglomerate (Mark Rylance) is portrayed as a greedy, soft-spoken, sociopath with grandiose space and AI ambitions, who is a big donor to the president and can command her to do his will. He is clearly a composite of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, someone who sees a money-making opportunity in the comet.
The comet is clearly meant as a surrogate for real crises like the pandemic and climate change, except that the window for action is much shorter and more definite, and how difficult it is to get people to take crises seriously enough to take the actions needed.
I read this review that criticizes the film for being so one-sided in the way it makes fun of the denialists and their enablers that it will never persuade those on the other side to change their minds. I think it is naive to think that any film will be able to do that. I think we are too deep into our separate news and social bubbles to react thoughtfully to any film, however well-made, that makes the case for the other side.
This is a farce that one side of the political spectrum will find funny and the other side will simply hate or, more likely, will not watch.
Here’s the trailer.
If only the film had been more subtle, goes their logic, then this horde of incorrigible morons who have no use for of comprehension of actual scientific data or facts would have changed their minds and become rational.
Bollocks.
At this point, all we can do is point and laugh at the fuckwits as they drag us off the cliff. Literally our only other option is to begin culling them, fast, but too many of us are too pacifistic and soft-heart/headed to do what’s necessary to save the planet, so we’ll perish along with them, because understanding the situation and being prepared to change to prevent it won’t immunise you from the ignorance of the moronic majority.
(On the subject of that last paragraph, I have this to offer anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists: I *know* for a fact Covid isn’t artificial, and here’s why.
If it were possible to engineer a virus to selectively wipe out the sort of dull-witted oxygen thieves who deny the efficacy of vaccines and don’t believe in global warming and don’t want to take the actions necessary to slow, stop and reverse it, then it would already exist and the problem would have gone away. Scientists in general, and the sort of scientists those idiots rail against in particular would, if you think about it, be very highly motivated to produce such a product if it were possible. It would literally save the human race, after all, and have the side benefit of making all their most vehement and annoying critics drown in what was left of their own lungs. If there was ANY chance such a thing could be done, it would have been done already. Covid clearly isn’t it, because too many idiots are surviving it.
As it is, if any biomedical scientists think it IS possible, get a kickstarter initiated -- I’ll line up to contribute.
@2 No, don’t you get it? They are the *smart* ones, and it hasn’t worked yet because they keep outfoxing those dumb scientists!
I don’t think I’d call for folks’ death just because they disagreed with me. OTOH, I can imagine feeling a little bit of schadenfreude if the anti-vaxxers were all to die off of COVID. (That’s a character flaw of mine, but there it is.)
I don’t think I’d call for folks’ death just because they disagreed with me.
If all they were doing was disagreeing, that would be one thing. But they are acting on their beliefs in ways that affect others, which is another thing entirely.
sonofrojblake calls it a “cull” but the time has passed where it could legitimately be called “self defense”
If it were possible to engineer a virus to selectively wipe out the sort of dull-witted oxygen thieves who deny the efficacy of vaccines and don’t believe in global warming and don’t want to take the actions necessary to slow, stop and reverse it, then it would already exist and the problem would have gone away.
It’s a BABEL-17 style mental virus called Qanon. All that is left to do is get them to drink cyanide kool-ade, which is entirely plausible.
Maybe all we really need to do is not allow billionaires to run our country. Anyone have any ideas on how to do that? Maybe some laws like Germany only stronger?
@bill seymour, 4:
As mjr has ably pointed out -- that’s not all they’re doing, by a long, LONG way. When the dolt-eliminator virus is released and does its work, I’d fully expect there to be a lot of people left after messy bit with whom I’d disagree on all sorts of things. Corbyn-supporting Labour voters, just as an example, nasty antisemitic gits though they may be I’d deny them the oxygen of publicity and power but not the actual oxygen of, y’know, oxygen.
Marcus and sonofrojblake, point taken. They’re hateful people who are physically dangerous and revel in it. I just wish there were some less violent way to render them ineffective.
I’m well aware that they would take great pleasure in seeing me dead, but I want to avoid being like that if I can.
It seems to me that our recent escalation of tensions with China may give them the incentive to actively pursue a first strike virus as self-defense. With the evidence of the past two years before them it would be a simple matter of using a few agents to spread the virus near a US virology lab and our typical response would guarantee success. Lucky for us the complexity of creating such a virus gives us plenty of time to succumb to the effects of global warming instead.
Alan:
They’re not that stupid.
You mob, however, may possibly be.
(Unlike you, they have thousands of years of experience)
It is a sad state of affairs for Mr Singham places a fictional movie under “Science”.
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Another FreeToughtBlog contributor did the same.
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Bankruptcy in more ways than one.
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Pity.