'Don't Look Up' Is Basically About How Collectively Stupid Society Is

[Quixote1818]

‘Don’t Look Up’ Is Basically About How Collectively Stupid Society Is
BY MUSTAFA GATOLLARI
DEC. 27 2021, PUBLISHED 1:11 A.M. ET

You can never really underestimate a human being's capacity for stupidity and blatant willingness to completely ignore evidence. Adam McKay's latest Netflix feature, Don't Look Up, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Timothee Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, and Tyler Perry is basically about this very real human phenomenon. And there are a lot of folks who think it might also be about COVID.

Is 'Don't Look Up' about COVID?
In terms of the film's plot, no. Don't Look Up is about a team of scientists who have discovered that a huge comet is on a collision course with planet Earth and all of the trouble these folks go through to warn the world, though they have hard data acquired through lifetimes of research to back their claims up. When they attempt to alert humanity of the problem, they're met with mockery and mobilization of different political leaders and parties who use the kerfuffle surrounding the event to further their own agendas.

In the movie, Jennifer Lawrence plays astronomer Kate Dibiasky, who discovers a massive comet while working with Dr. Randall Mindy. At first, they're stoked to make such a glorious scientific find, but then they realize that the comet is probably going to hit the planet that we're living on (Earth, in case you missed that day in school) and kill us all.

Link to article: https://www.distractify.com/p/is-dont-look-up-about-covid?utm_source=dfy&utm_medium=facebook%20&fbclid=IwAR3_a3Udfbd6fheo2GkKCYJJRg7k9fcXCl11_mvixx0tbF7ZBuhLiU1o_U0

[Zorro]

1. It's also about how the media is making society collectively stupid

Lots of chummy infotainment masquerading as news sources.

[tenderfoot]

18. Today's network news broadcasts reminds me of 'Entertainment Tonight' or the NFL Channel

Which is why I no longer get my news from television.

[ratchiweenie]

22. Just what I said to my hubby last night when we watched it. Loved the show.

I think it will become a cult classic like Idiocracy.

[DeeNice]

3. Watched it over the weekend, I recommend it.

It wavered between hilarious and poignant. And pretty well nailed the reason we can't seem to work our way out of our current debacle. Three word slogans are not the key we would like them to be.

[Demovictory9]

20. Me too. Rejoined netflix just to watch it

[smirkymonkey]

31. Just watched it yesterday and that is an excellent way to describe it.

Hilarious and poignant. I really found parts of it so funny, yet other parts were so profoundly tragic and I kind of had a hard time balancing my emotions while I was watching it.

I thought it was a really good movie, but it shook me up because it hit so close to home. It perfectly pointed out the absurdity of the times we are going through and how disorienting it can all be.

I have sometimes felt like I have been going mad in this Trumpian/post-Trumpian world, yet I don't see that a majority of others feel the same. It's always business as usual. This film made me feel that someone out there gets it and has captured the zeitgeist perfectly. Yet, nothing will change for the better, will it?

[RKP5637]

4. We watched that last night! It's extremely well done, accurate, on target and just what is

going on and our future. It certainly portrays society for what it is, wacky as hell, delusional, gullible and profits at all costs.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. "Collectively stupid" isn't a helpful phrase, IMO, partly because it's way too easy to see one's

self as smarter than society and to think that "if ONLY everyone were as smart as me, we'd be getting somewhere." It's just really, really hard to get a large group of people to act collectively toward a common goal, if they don't select into it, no matter what it is.

[Caliman73]

15. Agreed.

Even the analysis of the movie is plagued by the need to simplify very complex information about human behavior. To derail movements, people with decision making power and influencers need only create doubt. Collective action is, as you say very difficult, but nearly impossible when there are conflicting messages about what the problems are and solutions to those problems.

People like to think that America was completely united during WWII in order to "defeat the Nazis" but there were groups of disaffected people like, young Chicanos (Zoot Suiters) who did not feel "patriotic" and up to fighting for a country that reviled them, peace activists who simply did not believe in war, Nazi sympathizers, etc.. who were not banging the drum for America's involvement. If you go by the Japanese actions in the war, you can argue that WWII stated in 1936-37, but even if you go from the beginning of the European war in 1939, it took more than 2 years and a direct attack on the US Navy for America to declare war, and it wasn't all, "Let's all unite and get in there".

Collective action is difficult, and is made even more difficult when the interests of groups diverge and there is a fractured and often corrupt, or at least perversely incentivized media structure that amplifies disparate messages.

[world wide wally]

6. Just finished watching it. Great movie!

I think Meryl Streep was supposed to be a female Donald Trump. And of course there were his rallies with the 3 word chants, "Don't look up"

[sheshe2]

8. My take?

The Pres was a combo of Ivanka and Mellie as the next generation of trump a**holes to take office.

[Demovictory9]

21. I assume her son represented Jared kushner

[Thunderbeast]

24. Don Junior!

[Demovictory9]

25. Oh!

[Raftergirl]

7. Watching it tonight

after a podcaster recommended it. He said it is a metaphor of how we have dealt with Covid.

He also said it was funny.

[John Ludi]

9. This is one of the few times

that I wish I hadn't canceled Netflix.

[tenderfoot]

10. Disagree. It's about trusting BILLIONAIRES to solve problems that they couldn't care less about...

except being able to profit off of them.

[mopinko]

13. big part of it. billionaires and their vapor-plans.

thought the dude was a thinly veiled elon musk. such a brilliant plan! make of literally smoke and mirrors.
and yes streep was def trump in a dress.

[tenderfoot]

16. While the characters are based on real people, that those kinds of people ascend to power...

is another point that is being ignored.

Why do we idolize overtly horrible people?

[mopinko]

17. i read a statement recently that i think of often- more than misery, stupid loves company.

so true. and i also think about my da, an alcoholic, who idolized other drunks who made it big, jackie gleason, dean martin, the rat pack.
we all see the world through a lens of self validation. they see these idiots, and feel like their dreams can come true. and dream is all they have to do.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

30. This👆

[leftstreet]

11. It's about the greed and opportunism of our overlords

Business, politicians, the media

The average person wasn't really featured in the movie, just representations of our overlords and the failure of capitalism

[msongs]

12. well there's a plot never seen before lol nt

[Baked Potato]

14. Great movie, loved it! Nt

[greenjar_01]

19. The scientists themselves are also implicated

Or at least they have their own problems. Portraying it as a simple contest between the scientists - who know the objective truth - and the stupid public and their rich manipulators misses some of the nuance of the film, in my view.

Di Caprio's character is quite literally seduced by the lifestyle and fame of his role as comet warner - as represented by his clownish affair with the Cate Blanchett character, a vapid, pleasure-seeking zero of a person with whom he has nothing in common.

Lawrence's character isn't innocent either. The gag where the Air Force general tricks them into paying for free snacks, and Lawrence's character can't stop thinking and talking about it is probably the funniest touch of the whole film (and maybe the only one that really gives us a deep character study), but it also shows her up to be easily distracted by small and silly outrages, a deep character flaw that in some ways defines her general rage and inability to connect with people (a lesson some could take - er - close to home ahem ahem ahem). There is some truth to the meme-ing of her as a "you're all going to die" psycho - it's in some ways an accurate portrayal of her rhetorical failure, indeed, her rhetorical incapacity.

The scientists are certainly correct about the comet. But their inability to convey that is not all on the non-scientific others. They're culpable as well. Indeed, even when they finally land on a workable and rhetorically effective description (Just Look Up), they immediately overdo it as the benefit concert, thereby tying it to political identity formation and giving their opponents an easy opening for inverting the slogan.

The film is at pains to express that scientific communication should be obvious and indisputable. But it also, perhaps inadvertently, points to all the ways that science communication today is itself a failure - and not only because of other actors in the public sphere.

[KT2000]

29. They did not flinch

I was waiting for the soft landing where everyone came together. They told the truth instead.

The General selling the free snacks and Dibliasky's obsession still makes me laugh.

The battling science made me realize we are living in a courtroom. It has always been thus, but every issue has now become the war to win over the jurors - us. It's not the facts that count, it's the dog and pony show that counts.

[Mr. Ected]

23. Kind of renders our abiding concern with our country, our planet and our destinies moot, doesn't it?

Sure, part of being human is declaring the truth of your spirit, but when it's obvious that mankind is destined to destroy itself one way or another, what good are opinions and free will anyway? The only question is when.

[Thunderbeast]

26. I found my self rooting for the bronteroc

[KT2000]

27. +1

[albacore]

28. I have read.... and respected... the opinions expressed on this thread....

However...

I believe we are overthinking this thing. We need to employ Occam's Razor, and go for the first, simplest explanation.

Stupidity.

Carlo Cipolla wrote about "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity"
http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/

Bonhoeffer wrote that stupidity is more harmful than evil.
https://sproutsschools.com/bonhoeffers-theory-of-stupidity/

And that brilliant philosopher of our time George Carlin commented on stupidity, too.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

If you think all that is elitist... just look at the stupid things you have done in your life.

It's a species-wide phenomenon. It transcends "race", gender, nationality, and time.

Let's hope our Stupidity doesn't end our species.

[JI7]

34. they aren't going to

"hopefully, even a Trump-humping, Qanon-senser can see the light and WAKE THE FUCK UP!"

[raccoon]

33. I gotta see that! Nt

[mainer]

35. I thought it perfectly fit the COVID situation

And Jonah Hill was pretty much a parallel for idiot Donald Trump Jr.

[prodigitalson]

36. Reminded me of Dr Strangelove nt