January 1, 2022
The minute hand on the Climate Doomsday Clock has moved another notch closer to “midnight” — or should it be said that we are well past midnight, and it is just a matter now of expressing our mutual consternation at how quickly it is all dissolving. “Ice will change. Yes, the Arctics” were the opening words of an over-the-top prose poem I wrote in 1973 that got published in LAMP IN THE SPINE magazine, edited by Trish Hampl and Jim Moore. It was four pages long, and should have been cut by at least two-thirds, though I could never figure out which two-thirds.
The South Pole will become the Ukraine of the 21st century.
In the meantime, Hollywood’s response is “Don’t Look Up,” which will no doubt have at least one academic somewhere scrambling to revise an almost finished manuscript that focuses on cinematic critiques of “Network” and “Dr. Strangelove.” “Don’t Look Up” is morbidly funny in the same way as those two films, and if you haven’t seen it, you should. However, the “Black Actors Matter” movement doesn’t seem to have caught the attention of the scriptwriters or producers. As for Asian-American representation, the one character most visible in “Don’t Look Up” gets to play the self-immolating victim of the blame game.
“Network.” “Dr. Strangelove.” “Don’t Look Up.” A trilogy of “whiteness.” Sigh. An even bigger sigh when one sees how utterly white the Silicon Valley survivors of the apocalypse are in the coda that interrupts the credits of “Don’t Look Up.”
What would be my fantasized nomination for algorithm of the year? One that would allow me to replace in any given movie the actress or actor playing a part with someone of my choosing, other than a white actress or actor. A keyboard casting in which I get to play a postmodern version of Ted Turner.
But it’s not just race that is crucially effaced in “Don’t Look Up.” With its focus on the United States as the protagonist in a futile attempt to save the planet, it seems apparent to this viewer that the real allegorical anxiety is not about the climate but about the United States as a global empire. All one has to do is consider who is not mentioned in the film. If Russia is barely referred to, imagine how it would feel to be Chinese and watching this film? “Excuse me. We have rockets, too, not to mention a willingness to save the oldest large civilization on the planet.” Given the premise of the film, does anyone really think that the Chinese would be oblivious to the same information?
As for chapter four of this book on the ever palpitating whiteness of the culture industry, all the versions of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” would serve as a palate cleanser of straight drama to balance all the “comedy.”
Finally, even as I was watching “Don’t Look Up,” I was wondering how one could make a sequel. I recollect that a super-volcano is perched near Yellowstone National Park. “Don’t Look Down” is in early production. Feel free to contact any casting directors, but only if you’re white. “Don’t Look Now”: nothing’s really changed.
About Bill Mohr