Don't Look Up :) !

The film Don’t Look Up is a satire of the lack of awareness and care given to the climate crisis. Targeting humanity, especially people who claim the climate crisis to be a hoax, the film reflects a criticism of the ignorance prevalent in nowadays societies towards climate change. The film not only condemns the society and the government for the lack of preventative measures, but also highlights the ways the mainstream media works to overshadow politically, scientifically as well as socially important events. The film tells the story of two scientists who discovered a comet headed towards earth and their efforts to make the public and the government pay attention to it. The global issues that are addressed throughout include: ignorance towards climate change, dominance of social media in people’s lives, power structures silencing the people who don’t fit the mainstream narrative. By developing a unique metaphor of climate change through the symbol of comet, the film becomes the voice of many climate scientists that are unheard today and provokes a reaction in the audience to take action towards climate change. Diverse techniques are utilized throughout the film to facilitate conveying the message and the global issues.

Primarily, production value, which is created through framing and camera angles are used to convey the frustration that the scientists have due to the ignorance of the comet. Extreme close-ups are used to focus on the facial expressions of the subjects and delineate their emotions. Their reactions mainly serve to demonstrate the shock that nowadays climate scientists have towards the ignorance of climate change. During the close up scenes another technique that is used is camera angle, eye level is used to again convey the sense of anger and fear of the scientists.

Secondly, editing techniques come into prominence in the film. Shortcuts and montages are utilized in conjunction with non diegetic sound to create a sense of chaos throughout the film. The background sound formulates the atmosphere and the mood in the film. For example, a tense background sound is used when the scientists first found the comet. Montages of tweets and instagram posts are used as shortcuts to show the public’s response towards the comet, increasing the pacing of the movie; thus contributing to the tense atmosphere. Though at the same time, they reveal humans’ reliance on social media, as instead of taking action towards solving the issue they just share their views on internet. Thirdly, typecasting is utilized to mainly formulate an imagery of today’s capitalistic society. Whereas, the president is a stereotype of a self-interested, ignorant, so-called public supporter, which serves to highlight the resemblance between authority figures, the CEO of the BASH company is a stereotype of wealthy capitalists, who dominate not only the capitalist markets, but the functioning of governments; thus in a larger sense the society.

Ignorance towards global issues is a common issue that can be observed in different contexts. In the film there is an ignorance towards the comet headed towards earth and the scientific facts, whereas in the novel Ceremony there is a white ignorance towards the ongoing destruction of earth. Throughout the novel the devastating effects of white warfare are displayed combined with the lack of awareness of the effects that are created. Guns, machines as well as the atomic bomb are used as recurring symbols to refer to the white warfare and the destruction caused by it. Another similarity can be observed in terms of the effort to undermine significant events. Whilst in the novel, there is a desire to overshadow the cultural assimilation of native american people through interpellation and promises, in the film there is an inclination towards overshadowing the importance of comet through non important daily magazines. In short, in Ceremony, there is not only the ignorance of earth exploitation, but also the ignorance of Native Americans’ values; in the movie there is the ignorance of a planet killer. Even though in both works the issues regarding the destruction of earth are tangible, there is still this ongoing lack of awareness, which is similarly criticized.