Not only is it impossible to find the climate change satire in Mr. McKay’s movie that he claims is there. Alas, there’s no market for parodying the aspects most in need of parody. Millions of us have grown too comfortable pronouncing ourselves passionate about a problem we don’t bother to understand. Our politicians have stopped asking whether policies advanced in the name of climate change (e.g., electric cars) would actually have an effect on climate change. A certain kind of Harvard left-winger won’t countenance any proposal that doesn’t also fight capitalism, racism and patriarchy. A cadre of scientists make a profession of believing whatever the media needs them to believe. They are easily recognized because they employ the modifier “existential” for a climate problem that doesn’t actually threaten human existence. In this sense, “Don’t Look Up” fails not on its own terms, but on the terms its director foists on it, because no movie would be brave enough to take on the shibboleths that have subsumed the climate debate.
– Holman W Jenkins Jnr, Wall Street Journal ($) He is referring to the Netflix film Don’t Look Up.
Planet of the Humans did give a pretty big broadside to the renewable energy industry. Mr. Moore went up in my estimations when he set out to make a film in favour of renewables, didn’t find what he expected, and then made the film anyway. One critic of the film accused him of asking “gotcha” type questions when he interviewed the advocates of renewable energy. The questions were simply the ones that any sane person would ask really.
I would suggest that the film An Inconvenient Truth will gradually evolve into being sceptical of climate change by virtue of being consistently wrong.
I doubt you could make a successful modern Netflix movie without including some gratuitous slime about gerbil worming or about deplorables these days. It’s a base requirement, that you make fun of the right.
I thought that “Don’t Look Up” handled that requirement nicely, by including such crap, and then also including an almost equal amount of crap making huge fun of the liberal world.
Everybody got slimed in this movie, and once I realized that that was what was happening, I thoroughly enjoyed it. No side, no viewpoint ended up looking good or noble or informed, not even the protagonists. (Well, maybe the cute chick.) Everyone walked out of that movie grumbling that they had been cheaply misinterpreted and slandered.
So I think the movie ultimately fails because it has no appreciative audience left in the end. It’ll now go on to make very little additional money. Everyone will resent it.
I saw the movie. My brother tried to tell me it was a satire about climate change, so I told him to just look out for the comet! I still haven’t seen the comet yet, but I may be in the wrong hemisphere.
If they really wanted to make an on-point satire about climate change, they would have had the astronomers spend an entire career making doomsday predictions that proved out to be comically wrong, over and over. End-of-world deadlines would pass by one after another, each one a non-event, and each one followed by a new prediction of disaster looming on the horizon a few years out.
Finally the clique of doomsday astronomers would declare that “the science was settled” and that there was “consensus”, that the “debate was over”. They would be the ones demanding that others “don’t look up”, since the time for such looking had passed.
And the solutions they proposed, from start to finish, would be exactly the solutions that a Red Cadre stalwart would propose. Ironically, the one solution that actually could be useful against a comet (a nuclear-powered rocket) would be the one solution that they would steadfastly oppose (cause nuclear is baad, mmkay?)
I wonder when Netflix is planning on making that movie?
Stonyground – I was shocked by Mr Moore as well. I expected him to lie – and he did not lie in Planet of the Humans. Instead of the smug man I expected – he appeared to be truly concerned that ordinary people could really suffer from this agenda, and ordinary people are suffering and will suffer far more from this agenda.
As for “The Science” – as soon as someone used that term it is obvious that was dealing with a CULT and a cult with a political agenda. Real science is about debate – not censorship and threats. This reminds me “The Science” of Sir Francis Bacon (of whom Sir William Petty and Thomas Hobbes were followers) which forbad the idea that the Earth went round the Sun, but (in The New Atlantis – 1610) had an elite of supposed scientists controlling society – supposedly for the good of the people. If you can forbid teaching that the Earth goes round the Sun why not also forbid that the sun dominates weather, and pretend that the early 1930s (and so on) were hot when they were cold. American and other official agencies have no problem at all manipulating data – “the cause”, the “scientific” control human beings is all that matters to them. After “Social Justice” (which includes “Climate Justice”) depends on total control (total power) – and if a scientist does not go along with this Collectivist agenda they must be removed from a university (or, indeed, any responsible position).
The justifications for “scientific” control of humanity (the evil of “Technocracy”) were different two centuries ago when Saint-Simon was trying to win over bankers and others to Collectivism (in the name of “science” “scientific planning of society” – very World Economic Forum and United Nations), or even in the 1970s – when it was Global Cooling (not Global Warming) that was claimed as a justification for Collectivism.
But the aim is always the same – total power, total control.
Paul,
Science – true pure science which means a combination of theory and empirical work – is not about achieving a goal. Essentially science should be a quest for truth (though the definition of “truth” is tricky here – I know that Newton is wrong in principle but 99.9% of the time his stuff works). So, science is difficult philosophically. And essentially what this comes down to is motive. I have openly truncated polynomial expansions to a certain order of power (otherwise the maths would become nightmarishly difficult) or made it obvious I’m working with just the data I have. Science is a mess. Life is a mess. We do our best but to claim to be Gods and that things are “settled” and that therefore all of society ought to be re-jiggled on some immutable truth from a computer model is outrageous.
You are right. It is about control. It is about control not by divine law but by scientific consensus. That really comes down to the same thing.
I saw it a few days after it was released and thoroughly enjoyed it. Especially the end scene.
NickM.
Yes indeed. And that is why these “scientists” (who think that data manipulation is fine if it serves “the cause”, and wish to crush all debate, and all freedom to dissent) are TRAITORS to science, and their “The Science” is not science at all, it is a CULT – a power cult.