Don’t Look Up

I liked it too, Zooey. Very important film. I think its flaws are far outweighed by its message, the quality of acting, directing, etc.

(Not a fan of the epilogue, but that’s a minor quibble for me)

The negative reviews? I think they miss the mark, pushing too much for “subtlety” when we’re drowning in it, at least when it comes to the big issues of the day. It’s as if certain powers that be decided Americans can’t handle the truth, so we have to spoon-feed them indirect indirections about massive crises, and that indirection, IMO, actually makes it far easier for the right to jump in and gaslight the masses directly. Ironic, aint it?

The film was great at showing this, and I think it was plenty subtle when it came to not naming at least two serious crises while suggesting them.

Anyway, I think it’s a must-see movie. Nathan Robinson posted a defense of the movie over at Current Affairs:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/12/critics-of-dont-look-up-are-missing-the-entire-point

Throwing out subtlety altogether.

To me, it’s capitalism or the planet. We have to choose. Cuz we can’t have both.

WV,

I can’t remember if any comments were made directly about capitalism, but it’s pretty obvious that the writers and director see capitalism as the biggest hurdle in the way of solving the climate crisis. They also make it clear that financial elites, along with political and media elites, own the vast majority of the blame. It’s not a “blame stupid average Joe and Jane” film.

Btw, David Sirota was one of the two writers on the project. Some would put him in the leftist category.

Also, leftists have defended the movie from mainstream attacks. I posted Nathan Robinson’s review. Here’s one from Jacobin:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/01/adam-mckay-dont-look-up-climate-change-review

Thom Hartman has a good review as well, over at Salon. Will post the link in another post, to avoid the moderator queue.

wv wrote:

But I’ve become a mono-maniac about capitalism in these late-stage-days,
and so, if a film does not expressly call out capitalism, i am going
to rip it to pieces.

w
v

Interesting. Yet you constantly gush over this pro-capitalist propaganda piece…

wv wrote:

…now, all day, I’ll be thinking of “how would a leftist rewrite The Incredible
Mr Limpett….what would a marxist fish look like….?

w
v

Perhaps you and Bezos can mull that over together at the next “Goldman-Sachs Appreciation Day” event you two cohost?

wv wrote:

You liked Dont Look Up, but do you see my point? It never expressly
called out Capitalism. Never named it. Why do you think that is?

I mean no american film ‘ever’ ‘does’. Its not an accident.

w
v

I think the simple explanation is that most people (especially the limousine libs that work in Hollywood) don’t believe Capitalism is at fault for what’s happening. I don’t think they see it as *necessarily* bad. They see it as something that is often misused, but redeemable and maybe even good when not wielded by greedy industrialists and billionaires.

I see it as a loaded gun in a room full of 3 year olds. No matter how you mitigate it, it won’t end well.

Zooey wrote:

But it does not make point clear that the blue team is complicit. The red team is drawn with more distinct lines. The blue team is there, but they aren’t identified as the blue team. Thus many viewers miss the point. I think that’s true to say.

===========

Well, that is my point. And it would NOT…have…been…made, if it had
indicted Capitalism in direct, understandable, unambiguous terms. No studio would have touched it. Paramount sold it to Netflix. Neither would have touched it.

The director McKay, an old Saturday Night Live writer (complete libshit show)
is the guy who has this background, fwiw:

“…McKay rewrote the script for the Marvel Studios feature film Ant-Man, directed by Peyton Reed.[15] McKay also worked with Reed, Paul Rudd, Gabriel Ferrari & Andrew Barrer on Ant-Man and the Wasp to flesh out the story.[16] He has also expressed interest in helming a Silver Surfer movie for Marvel Studios.[17]

He produced the films Land of the Lost (2009), The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009), The Virginity Hit (2010), Casa de Mi Padre (2012), Bachelorette (2012), Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (2012), The Campaign (2012), Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013), Tammy (2014), Welcome to Me (2014), Get Hard (2015), Sleeping with Other People (2015), Daddy’s Home (2015), and The Boss (2016)..”
==

w
v

One major problem with naming capitalism as the issue — and it is — is that most people don’t know what the word means. I’ve had a gazillion conversations about that in the real world and online, and it’s pretty clear that the word has morphed into far too broad a sense of economics to be easily discussed.

Especially with those on the right and the center. Most just see it as a synonym for trade, commerce, and business more broadly, and all too many think of it as something that has always existed . . . not as something with an actual beginning, middle, late period and hopefully an end.

In short, when I espouse anticapitalism and alternatives to capitalism, all too many people immediately assume I’m against all forms of trade, commerce, etc. And I’m not. They don’t get that I’m opposed to our current mode of production, the one specifically that began roughly 4 to 5 centuries ago (depending upon the scholar or scholarly school one sees as authoritative on the matter). I tell them why, but I’ve already lost them by simply opposing “capitalism,” which they see as synonymous with all trade, commerce, Mom, Apple Pie, and the flag, etc. etc.

The nationalistic aspect of this religious love of “capitalism” is yet another major obstacle, of course. Ironically, America wasn’t a capitalist nation until after the Civil War. We had pockets of the nascent economic system prior to that, but most people lived outside of it.

Zooey wrote:

If you want material that indicts what we are doing, try the novel Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. It’s a pretty good read, mostly a kind of Socratic dialogue. It indicts the cultural assumptions going back to the “dawn” of civilization, the way of seeing the world that made Capitalism possible.

My son gave it to me for my birthday, and I read it over Christmas break. Good book.

===========

Look. It is MY role to be the senile one.

We talked about Ishmael long, long ago. Back in the book-baking days.
I believe it was one of Pa Ram’s faves. I liked it, too.

The one Quinn wrote after that, was not very good.

And yeah, you can find plenty of books that are anti-cap.
And you can find them because the system knows, Americans dont read.

w
v

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

One major problem with naming capitalism as the issue — and it is — is that most people don’t know what the word means..

=============

Yup. Absolutely. And of course, that is not an accident.

Capitalism dums the population down ‘politically.’

It would have to, in order to survive. So it does.

One of the 5 gazillion reasons, we are totally F’d.

w
v

That dumbing down part. I think it’s fair to say it’s the first economic system in world history with its own, dedicated, self-renewing PR wing. And that PR wing “colonizes” the mind, along with the body, and the macro and micro, domestically and overseas. It’s also fair to say it’s the first economic system in world history with its own “imperialist” laws of motion, baked in. It doesn’t require Napoleons in the political or royal realm for this to keep going; it colonizes everything with or without them — forcing that upon “the state,” or bypassing it if need be.

Of course, it would rather “the state” pay for all or most of that, and it mostly does in the modern era. But it doesn’t require endless wars to unify the people any longer, as Hegel said the Greek State did. Before, during, and after wars it keeps on chugging, imperialistically.

A lot more to it, of course, as far as the way it “naturalizes” the sense that it’s always been our one and only system, and nothing else can or should replace it. But, again, there has never been another mode of production with this kind of appalling stranglehold on hearts and minds . . . and, given its history of atrocity and exploitation, and it’s ongoing inability to “deliver the goods” to more than a small percentage of the populace, plus its planet-killing effects . . . Well, it’s just insane that the world hasn’t cast off its chains by now.

In-sane.