Photo: L. Weikel

Don’t Look Up

We just finished watching Don’t Look Up on Netflix.  I’m still digesting it.

It’s not as if it’s a complicated plot or sophisticated premise. No, what I’m still digesting is how uncomfortable it made me feel. At least, discomfort was an initial feeling I experienced as the movie unfolded.

I had a rough idea of the plot of the movie, so the likenesses drawn to recent infamous figures were unsurprising. But the overall impact of that part of the satire was uncomfortable. (Satire doing its job, I guess.) It rang too true. In some ways, at least at first, it almost felt like a documentary.

Futility

What’s most disturbing is the inanity of society and the garbage that’s fed to us via so many outlets. While we know many people devote way too much time to staring at their screens, it’s still hard to look at that screen time being depicted as the pathetic mind-mushing tool that it is. And the vapid television programs! Oh my goodness, I just wanted to scream.

Hmm. Re-reading that last paragraph, I’m loathe to use the word ‘devote’ in the second sentence, given the sacredness with which I approach the concept of devotion. And yet I think it should remain precisely because, in so many ways, people are bastardizing the concept of devotion and applying it to objects or activities that actually disconnect them from all that is sacred or precious.

Yet again, the topsy-turvy, inside out reality we currently live in was on display. How do we counter craven power-seeking and money grubbing?

Photo: L. Weikel

Big Issues

This movie’s catastrophic event comes from outside of us – at the edge of our solar system, to be precise. But the analogies to the myriad big issues we have screaming for our attention (to just LOOK AT them, perhaps, and choose NOT to look away?) of our own making were obvious.

It’s unsettling to contemplate the reality of potentially losing everything we have here on Earth. Yet for me I think what’s most maddening is that we still have the ability to make some huge course corrections – but continue to fiddle around the edges.

I truly believe we still have time. But does it fit into our electoral schedule? I don’t know. The sense of urgency we should all feel about voting rights (here in the U.S.) bears directly upon the urgency demanded by climate change. We’re playing with fire right now. We can’t let those beholden to the (literal) dinosaur-based energy paradigm delay and obfuscate one more day. The tears rolling down my cheeks at the end of the movie were real, as was my desire to transmute my discomfort and sense of futility into action.

I believe the coming year has all the makings of seismic shifts in attitude and strategies. The sighted must take the wheel before it’s too late. Watch* and see if you know what I mean.

Feeling Passionate – Photo: K. Weikel

*and don’t miss the Tuvan shaman at the end of the movie, either.

(T+23)