Apocalyptic comedy Watch the ground! After the Christmas launch on Netflix, it quickly jumped to the top of the digital platform. At the same time, the tsunami provoked reactions, among which the enthusiastic ones prevailed – there was also a comparison with the cold-war Kubrick satire of Dr. Strange love. According to the positive responses, director and screenwriter Adam McKay has been able to make an apt satirical allegory of the climate crisis, which humanity has ignored, and now he cannot agree on how to react, even though he is heading for destruction.
Look down! but it is not an excellent example of the precisely timed satire we need to realize our situation. Satire does not function here as a revelation of the dysfunctional state of things that is supposed to lead to movement or change, but primarily as an expression of the authors’ frustration and a demonstration of their moral and intellectual superiority; like pointing your finger at all the idiots around. From politicians to deniers of scientific facts to banal celebrities. Formally, however, it captures the current mental and media chaos.
A sure bet
A giant comet is flying to the planet. It is estimated that it will hit her in six months and fourteen days and the end of the world will come. A pair of astronomers – PhD student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and neurotic professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) – are trying to warn responsible positions. Mainly NASA and politicians, specifically US President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep), who obediently wear her purse her arrogant son, who has become her chief of staff. However, no one takes the warning seriously and the situation with the comet eventually begins to live its own life when interest groups begin to question that it is flying to Earth at all…
Adam McKay is an established name on the American comedy / satirical scene. In the 1990s, he wrote sketches for Saturday Night Live (SNL). Collaboration with one of the SNL’s permanent members, Will Ferrell, later led to a number of anarchist comedies such as The Reporter: The Story of Ron Burgundy or The Brothers of Coercion, which, despite outright humor, are sensitive, disguised statements about male identity. He subsequently switched to a more serious genre of darker political and social satire.
He was nominated for an Oscar for screenplay and direction for Betting on Uncertainty about the Economic Crisis. Another film was dedicated to Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the Iraq war (Vice). As he told The Atlantic magazine, Look down! it arose from the need to “do something about the climate” as a dark shadow that kept coming back to him. And personal investment makes the film feel distinct. Look down! is the result of annoying its creators. Frustrations from the world, politicians, the media and fellow citizens who turn a blind eye to reality or be swallowed up by false realities. The goals are drawn here more than clearly – because they are the ones that fly low and slow.
The staunch American president, who is one American public, and her blunt and confident descendant are transparent echoes of Donald Trump and his involvement with his own family. Politicians don’t like the comet because it’s ahead of the election. You need to win more than solve specific problems. The panopticon of the characters also includes the sociopathic billionaire à la Elon Musk, who, as the main sponsor of the president, has constant access to the White House. He gets the idea not to destroy the comet and save the planet, but to monetize. Here, McKay is aiming for the connection between high politics and business, which has long characterized American politics.
The media will also be loaded. Specifically an entertaining news talk show that is only interested in the audience, not the truth. And because of that, they infantilize and distract the audience. “We want to give bad news with ease,” the moderator jovially explains to the confused and frightened astronomers, followed by a perverse implementation of his motto. The moderators react to the announcement of the disaster with one joke after another. The objection that some reports are meant to be bad and shocking is beyond their comprehension.
However, parodying a politician who has become a parody while in office is a difficult discipline. Like eccentric billionaires, whose space trips are the target of jokes on social networks and whose business practices are perceived as unethical and semi-slave. And McKay isn’t doing anything in this regard that he’s not shown a million times, such as his home comedy show Saturday Night Live.
Frustrated fun
In addition, Leonard DiCaprio’s cast adds a level of frustration to the role of the man who comes up with the facts but hits his head on the wall. Prominent Hollywood conservationists have been drawing attention to climate change for years without much response in the real world. Now he ran out of patience. He said for twenty years that the world was heading for destruction, and no one took his environmental documents (such as 11 o’clock) seriously. Perhaps like McKay, he said that the message in the entertaining genre of comedy and reverse catastrophic thriller would have a greater effect. At the same time, there is a feeling of skepticism and resignation from every shot: as humanity, we had everything and that’s how we messed it up.
The message is the key word here. The filmmakers have made an agitation film to warn that the planet is in danger of extinction and that people are turning a blind eye to it. They are unable to connect and act. Basic scientific facts become the subject of debate about their veracity instead of acting on them. On the one hand, that frustration is well understood. At the same time, however, the creators let her swallow it.
If they say they want to talk to as many people as possible, they do it in a very special way. They speak primarily to the same blood type. To the convinced who share frustration and opinions. To the city liberals for whom the Land is watch! a comfortable confirmation of their own worldview (the whole film is also a narrow reflection of the American socio-political scene and McKay is angry at populist politics). Everyone else is here for the fun.
What to look for! on the contrary, it thrives, a scattered and chaotic form that quickly jumps from genre to genre. From comedy to journalistic film, political satire and documentary to catastrophic film and family melodrama. This is exactly what reflects the media confusion and cacophony that floods the public space. The result is the feeling that nothing makes sense or solutions. “The goal was to take the spectator for a ride at the amusement park, and the last stop is one thing – a landfill,” McKay told The Atlantic.
On the one hand, it is good that viewership numbers have jumped in the film about the climate crisis, which disappeared from the public debate due to the pandemic, but did not disappear as a devastating scenario for the planet’s future. On the other hand, the question is whose attitude, opinion or lifestyle can change the film’s screams. And strong acting performances (paradoxically) largely divert attention from a certain comfort of thought. When the emotionally tense, divided scientist Leonardo DiCapria or the opportunistic, corrupt president Meryl Streep disappears from the screen, there is a figurative black hole in the tone.
Satire should come alive and illuminate things differently than we are used to perceiving. To provoke, to provoke, to stimulate to think differently (just remember the physical reaction at Borat, the clever illumination of the political behind the scenes in It’s a soda or the emotional connection at Black Viper). Look down! it doesn’t do any of that. Its creators don’t ask questions and in the end they mainly do what they blame in the film with a fun talk show – they infantilize their audience. You could almost say that their film is another piece of media cacophony, which it already critically captures.
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