Don’t Look Up is the phenomenon of the moment. Everyone has seen it; Everybody talks about it. Difficult to miss, unless you are on a spiritual retreat. If this is your case, Don’t Look Up is the latest film by Adam McKay (director of Vice and The Big Short), released on Netflix in late December. It features two scientists (Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence) who, discovering that a meteorite is about to annihilate the Earth, try to alert the world and come up against the stupidity of a humanity unable to apprehend the apocalyptic gravity of the situation.
Let’s say it straight away, Don’t Look Up is a great film in that it captures the shortcomings of our time in a masterful way. He paints a vitriolic portrait of American society, in which one can also recognize what the world has largely become. Everything is there: a short-term political power of a confusing vulgarity, incapable of putting the best interests of humanity above the electoral grub; media of a distressing stupidity, which turn the most serious information into derision, level everything down, swear only by the “news” people and the credo of permanent entertainment; Silicon Valley gurus who manipulate the masses and gamble the fate of the world at tech roulette.
Each character is a magnificent archetype, remarkably observed and portrayed. That of the American president (Meryl Streep), a Trump in petticoats, larger than life. That of his son (Jonah Hill), who also serves as chief of staff, as a champion of revolting consumerist arrogance. That of course of Leonardo DiCaprio, the whistleblower researcher who embodies a science overtaken by the society of show business and techno-prophets. The most successful character is undoubtedly that of the CEO of Bash Cellular, a mixture of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, extremely disturbing, illuminated by his billions, his technological toys and having a power of influence as colossal as dangerous .
The clinical analysis of our world is so successful that, after watching Don’t Look Up, to say that the line is only barely forced… Difficult to do more.
Double shot
And yet, at the same time, Don’t Look Up conveys a false, cliché and corny message on its main subject: global warming. Because yes, all the commentators have pointed it out, the meteorite that threatens humanity is a metaphor for global warming. The character of Leonardo DiCaprio would also have been inspired by the American climatologist Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
This is where the analysis seems much less relevant. What tells us Don’t Look Up about global warming? Quite simply that we are too stupid to measure its gravity and act accordingly. The president thinks only of the “mid-term” elections and the scandal caused by the appointment of a sulfur-smelling profile to the Supreme Court. The media only think about ratings. Steve Jobs’s substitute for his profits and his high-tech toys. And the rest of the people only to “gossip people”.
This is the meaning of the film’s title: Don’t Look Up, cosmic denial. Don’t look up, keep ostriching, running away from reality. The problem with global warming is that we refuse to face it. The problem with global warming is denial. But not only. Without wanting to reveal (spoiler), it is also out of greed, lure of gain that we do not react to the threat. On the contrary, it is enough to face the problem in order to be able to solve it. In this case, it suffices to send the comet a few nuclear bombs to divert or destroy it. This is where we touch the limits of metaphor. To get rid of a comet, you can press a button. But there is no equivalent button to get rid of global warming.
The film therefore conveys a double cliché: on the one hand, we do not want to face reality, on the other hand, there is a technological solution that would allow us to react to it. This is doubly incorrect. And that is the real climate problem. First, without wanting to deny that there are of course still climate skeptics and that powerful fossil industry lobbies continue to weigh in, most Westerners and most world leaders are informed and aware of the climate issue. Secondly, to respond to it, we must fundamentally transform the global production apparatus.
It is not out of stupidity, selfishness and recklessness that the French worker takes his car to go to work. This is because he does not (always) have a choice. It is not out of stupidity, selfishness and unconsciousness that a German uses coal-fired electricity, it is because he needs electricity to live. It is not out of stupidity, selfishness and recklessness that consumers around the world maintain the plastic industry, it is because supermarket shelves are full of them. It is not out of stupidity, selfishness and recklessness that governments do not close coal-fired power stations and prohibit gasoline engines. This is because the world cannot function without them yet. The real problem with global warming is neither denial nor greed. The real problem is that to deal with it, you have to change the world. The real problem is not psychological, but material. The challenge to be met is physically titanic. “We look up”. We look at the problem head on. But that does not refresh the planet.
*Antoine Bueno is a sustainable development advisor to the Senate and author of “Future, our future from A to Z” (Flammarion).