Originally Posted by MandoMan
(Post 2045135)
I watched it last night and enjoyed it. Be sure to watch to where Meryl Streep, playing a Hilary-like president, dies. I laughed so hard that I had to back it up and see it again and laugh again. It’s so utterly unexpected, and the novelist George Meredith wrote, more than a century go, in his book “On Comedy,” that this is the essence of what makes us laugh. We must either laugh, or we must cry from shock and surprise.
“Don’t Look Up” is definitely Satire in the classical definition of the term, which means that it must have correction and improvement of a problem in society as an important goal. That is how it differs from comedy. Thus, Jonathan Swift’s novel “Gulliver’s Travels” is trying to teach us about the silliness of court etiquette, problems in education, political philosophy, attitudes toward war and peace, and much more. His famous essay, available online, “A Modest Proposal,” recommends eating Irish babies as a good solution to the problems of famine in Ireland in 1729. Was he serious? No, he was Irish, and he didn’t think babies should be eaten, but he made readers think about the effects of British policies toward Ireland that were causing the famine. Similarly, “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”—which I couldn’t sit through because I found it sacrilegious—was saying very serious and possibly true things about how aspects of a religion can come about because of misunderstandings or carrying comments to extremes.
“Don’t Look Up” is sometimes funny, but it isn’t a comedy. It is, however, a satire, and a good satire may seldom be funny. The situation is serious: a comet that will kill all life on earth arriving in six months. The reactions by the government are all too likely. This is NOT a Democrat or Republican thing. Not at all! I think any team in the White House would respond in much the same way, seeing the end of the world as a political opportunity and failing to see the seriousness of the situation. (We see this going on all over the country right now with state responses to Covid rules.) This part of the movie is satirical and all too likely. It horrifies as it makes us laugh. The response of the morning entertainment show hosts in the movie is dead on accurate. (I can’t stand those phony shows—I don’t find their semi-mindless banter and worship of celebrities amusing.)
See it. Enjoy.
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