In Adam McKay’s 2021 climate satire Don’t Look Up, two scientists have to convince the world that a comet is about to destroy the earth. As they embark on a media tour to get the word out, the scientist played by Jennifer Lawrence is mocked and memed for being too caustic when warning of a literal doomsday. Meanwhile, her counterpart, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is embraced by the media and the public for his even temper and telegenic nature, but also corrupted by the insistence that he soften his warnings of impending disaster into a more palatable message.
I was not a fan of the film. I thought it was a tiringly heavy-handed effort from a director who seemed to loathe his own audience. But just because it was too obvious and condescending to be effective satire does not mean it wasn’t accurate in its depiction of how many people react in the face of unprecedented disaster.
In one pivotal scene, two banter-based talk show hosts just want Lawrence’s character Kate Dibiasky to lighten up when describing the threat the comet poses. “Are we not being clear?” Dibiasky asks exasperatedly. “We’re trying to tell you that the entire planet is about to be destroyed!”
“It’s just something we do around here,” Cate Blanchett’s character chirps back blithely. “We just keep the bad news light!”
This week, a clip of that scene spliced together with what ended up being a near-reenactment from a British talk show was posted to Twitter by a user named Jānis Lācis (@Lidotajs) and reposted by activist and author Ben Phillips. It quickly racked up more than 20 million views because the comparison is just so unbelievably spot-on.
A clip from Don’t Look Up, and then a real TV interview that just happened pic.twitter.com/CokQ5eb3sO
— Ben Phillips (@benphillips76) July 20, 2022
Europe is coming off of a massive heat wave and the UK just saw its hottest day on record ever yesterday, with temperatures reaching 40 degrees celsius, or 104 Fahrenheit. In many areas of the U.S. that might sound awful but manageable, but the UK and other European countries simply aren’t built for that kind of heat. It’s estimated that less than 5% of homes in England have air conditioning and there have been reports of roads melting, rails buckling, and other infrastructure failings. Fires have been surging across London and other UK cities, as well as much of Europe.
But speaking to meteorologist John Hammond, two hosts on Great Britain News just couldn’t understand why he was being so gloomy. The interview took place last week, before the heatwave, on a gorgeous, sunny, 70-degree (about 20 Celsius, they said) day. But Hammond warned the hosts of what was coming, saying he predicted there will be “hundreds, if not thousands of excess deaths” because of the heat.
“The charts that I can see in front of me are frightening. So we all like nice weather, but this will not be nice weather,” Hammond said. “This will be potentially lethal weather for a couple of days. It’ll be brief, but it’ll be brutal.”
“Oh John!” host Bev Turner exclaimed, cutting him off. “So, John, I want us to be happy about the weather! I don’t know whether something’s happened to meteorologists to make you all a little bit fatalistic and harbingers of doom.”
Turner says that every time she turns on the news—”particularly on the BBC“—all anyone can talk about are the potential fatalities. And apparently that’s a real downer for her.
Of course, what’s happened to make meteorologists so “fatalistic” is the extreme climate crisis and effects they see not just in the future but right now in the immediate present. Although scrolling through Turner’s Twitter, where she continued to tweet about “heat hyperbole” and “mass hysteria” (in between constant anti-science, anti-COVID safety, and anti-LGBTQ+ posts), it’s clear the host from the network which has been called England’s equivalent to Fox News is perfectly content to simply not look up.
(image: NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX)
