![]() In the case of Don’t Look Up, insisting that the film is just an allegory for global warming blinds us to the fact that in addition to satirizing our climate inaction, the film draws attention to the fact that the human species is threatened with extinction on multiple fronts: climate change, yes, but also renewed tension among nuclear powers, the possibility of malevolent artificial intelligence, supervolcanoes of the sort lurking beneath Yellowstone, pandemics for which COVID may be a mere dress rehearsal, and, of course, comets. Yet there’s a flip side to allegorical interpretations: They can also function like blinders, illuminating one viewpoint while crowding out competing ideas. At its most basic, reading allegorically is about digging deeper, going beyond the “surface” of a work that we might otherwise be tempted to dismiss as a fluffy blockbuster or escapist beach reading-like a comedy or science fiction movie-and revealing it as doing intellectual heavy lifting. When critics or academics proclaim that George Orwell’s Animal Farm isn’t really a book about talking pigs but totalitarianism, for example, they’re making the case that the novel has a subterranean, secret, and above all more serious meaning. Yet there’s a flip side to allegorical interpretations: They can also function like blinders, illuminating one viewpoint while crowding out competing ideas.Ĭalling a movie (or novel) an allegory is often a way of saying that it’s smarter than it appears at first blush. ![]() However, while the critical consensus that Don’t Look Up is a climate change allegory is certainly not wrong, this interpretation is also limited. It also doesn’t hurt that DiCaprio, who plays a leading role as a bumbling astronomer, is one of the world’s foremost celebrity climate activists. Don’t Look Up is, after all, a movie about a social media–obsessed civilization ignoring scientists as they warn the world about a threat to life on Earth, only to be undermined by politicians and business-folk who prioritize present profits over future peril. ![]() This interpretation of the film makes sense, and there are good reasons to endorse it. He is not alone in this view: The overwhelming consensus among critics is that McKay’s new comedy is an allegory for climate change, a film that lampoons our refusal to take sufficient action to deter an all-too-real environmental crisis that is rapidly spiraling out of control. Strangelove, going so far as to suggest that the former might galvanize climate activism in the same way that the latter supercharged the anti-nuclear movement during the Cold War. Writing in the Intercept, Jon Schwarz even compares Don’t Look Up to the heralded nuclear war black comedy Dr. It is scenes like this that lead many critics to see Don’t Look Up as a rather on-the-nose commentary not about rogue comets, but rather America’s failure to address climate change. response to a crisis that is entirely preventable. The experts in the room are astounded, shocked that political expediency, rather than planetary protection, will dictate the U.S. “The timing is just atrocious,” she opines.Īlthough the head of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), advises her that NASA has plans in place to deter such a catastrophe, Orlean decides that the game plan will be to “sit tight and assess” until after the election. Orlean, exhibiting a similar degree of impatience, interrupts the astronomers’ presentation to ask, “What is this going to cost me? What’s the ask here?” before lamenting that the midterms are on the horizon. The president’s son and chief of staff (played by Jonah Hill) lounges on the couch, nurses a bad case of coke sniffles, and proclaims to be “so bored” by all the world-ending comet talk. ![]() Predictably, the meeting goes disastrously. From the beginning, the scientists’ efforts are marked by futility, encapsulated in an early scene in which Kate Dibiasky (Lawrence) and Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) are brought to the White House to debrief President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) on the impending extinction-level event. Streaming just in time for Christmas, Adam McKay’s decidedly uncheery Netflix comedy, Don’t Look Up, finds Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio playing a pair of intrepid astronomers as they try (and mostly fail) to warn the world about a planet-killing comet that’s hurtling toward Earth. ![]() It also contains spoilers for the film Don’t Look Up. This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the C lim a te Desk collaboration. ![]()
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