Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Don’t Look Up looks down on you
Don’t Look Up looks down on you
Jul 8, 2025 2:31 AM

The most popular film on Netflix right now is either a successor to Dr. Strangelove or a self-righteous and overly obvious attempt to shame the average American. But it does have a lot more of Leonardo DiCaprio than you’ve seen before.

Read More…

The techno-gossip that passes for objective knowledge these days assures us that the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up was watched extensively—more than 321.5 million hours streamed. Does that mean about 150 million people around the world watched it? Or maybe 100 million watched it to the end, but another hundred watched only a third to a half of the way through? As usual, Netflix releases on this score read like propaganda; we cannot know how popular the movie really is, but it seems to be the only popular thing in America except Spider-Man.

What is it about and why is it popular? The movie is a satire about the apocalypse: Two astrophysicists discover an earthbound asteroid sure to end life on earth, but nobody in Washington, neither politician nor journalist, cares. So we get to experience the sarcasm and earnestness of a professor—Leonardo DiCaprio, acting the part of a somewhat fat, aging do-gooder—and his bizarre emo grad student—Jennifer Lawrence, in yet another role of a crazy young woman whose problems we have to take seriously, but now uglier than in previous movies, to suggest some kind of rebellion against glamour or some kind of seriousness.

menting on the movie from the liberal side that dominates our media, following the earnest interviews of writer-producer-director Adam McKay, assures us that this is a metaphor or an allegory for climate change, a death sentence for mankind we prefer not to acknowledge out of our endless foolish selfishness. The good news is that this suicidal tendency is instantly curable, by obedience to Progressive liberal elites, who have no admixture of foolish selfishness themselves—they are our exasperated saviors-in-waiting, as soon as we learn to obey them unquestioningly as they revolutionize our way of life.

Don’t Look Up seems intended to effect this transformation from foolishness to obedience. How? Apparently, the big idea in Hollywood is to enlist every star available. The oldest, Meryl Streep, plays a president so corrupt that she hires her son as chief of staff, ­ Hill, playing an arrogant loser, and only listens to science briefly on­ce she’s involved in a sex scandal, but soon aborts the humanity-saving mission because of corporate capitalism’s suicidal desire mercial exploitation. The youngest, Timothée Chalamet, a recent Hollywood and media darling, plays a shoplifter love interest for Lawrence and poster boy for the spinelessness of the young generation, not previously something to brag about. Apparently, America can finally wake up to moral reality by dreaming about these actors. We need some real leadership, and it’s going to be celebrities! The stuff of satire like Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s 2004 Team America World Police is now offered without any guile as our deliverance. I mend that satire on American moralism and elite hyper-moralism instead, because it is much less self-indulgent; if you want another visionary satire on the shallowness of American celebrity culture and its mind-bending madness, just watch Zoolander. I promise you, if you watch these movies, you will understand why our celebrities are the way they are and why they line up for nonsense like Don’t Look Up and even brag about it.

All told, Don’t Look Up reminds one of the mad, silly video celebrities made in March 2020, just as America was experiencing house arrest, singing John Lennon’s Imagine from the bottom of their luxury, to remind ordinary Americans how much they need celebrities. Of course, Imagine is a song worse than worthless, since it has encouraged vapid people to e holier than the rest of us for more than a generation, but at least Lennon had musical talent. Don’t Look Up is equally moralistic, earnest, and vapid, which signals a new era in American celebrity. You will spend much less time laughing at jokes than popeyed at the dumb arrogance that passes for superior knowledge about the inner workings of American elites, slavish piety about scientific elites in particular, and studied contempt about the dumb masses.

Let us recapitulate: Don’t Look Up tells the story of how Americans, personally and institutionally, just won’t listen to the science, even if it kills them, along with everyone else on earth. It does so apparently to great popular approval, which suggests that at least the “Netflix class” is listening with some enthusiasm. There is a contradiction in there. Further, this is a movie filmed November 2020–February 2021, which apparently had no interest in the cult of personality liberals created around the now-disgraced and former governor Andrew Cuomo and the still-sacrosanct embodiment of science Dr. Anthony Fauci.

I don’t believe, therefore, that Hollywood liberals have either the intellectual or the moral authority to heap contempt on the rest of America. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence seem like very mediocre people no one would want to listen to on matters of personal or national importance, but they might be interesting, in a way, since they also seem to have the arrogance of Greek gods. The pieties of the atheistic elite—the kind of people who say they “believe in science” and that the politicians must “follow the science”—are not just ruining our politics, but they are destroying art and edy, satire. Since these people have no self-awareness, they portray themselves as our saviors. It’s a good question, and anyone’s guess, really, how much of the catastrophe they claim to fear they would inflict on us if they had the chance. Certainly, 2021 was not a year anyone would brag about, despite liberal control of our national politics.

McKay is famous for winning the Oscar for writing The Big Short, a movie I cannot mend, but which proposed to explain in edy form the 2008 financial crisis. If you’ve never heard of him, it’s all right—he’s not America’s next Mark Twain; not even a next Mencken. But he does demonstrate what our liberal elites believe to be intelligent, funny, and perhaps even popular liberalism. He is the poet of the kind of arrogance with intellectual pretensions that keeps a class of Americans busy despising the rest, especially the majority of poor, religious, working class or conservative Americans who just aren’t sophisticated enough. McKay also made an even worse movie about former vice president Dick Cheney, which got him Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Producer, and Best Director. Inasmuch as Hollywood can show us the prejudices of the liberal elite, McKay embodies them.

So what is his big idea? Don’t Look Up suggests we don’t listen to the science because we are too distracted by celebrity culture, clickbait, and social media. The four horsemen of the liberal apocalypse are mostly Kardashians. Talk show celebrities (played by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry) and social media music celebrities (played by Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi) overact to show you the aggressive stupidity that corrupts the public mind. Also, this opium of the masses is something we all instantly rise above the moment Don’t Look Up makes it into edy! It’s hard to imagine anything more infantile than this attitude to the American drama, but then McKay came up when SNL was descending into liberal arrogance—uninspired and instantly forgotten—during the Bush years. Again, McKay seems unable to reckon with the fact that liberal elites adore and fawn over him even more than he flatters them, very publicly, and pete in a slavish but frivolous way to star in his humorless movies. If social media is ruining America, the popularity of his movie is certainly the best example of it.

This is what I meant about a new era in American celebrity—a sickness of the soul, a psychopathy, has overtaken some of the liberal elite, to the point where they wish to edy in absolute lack of self-awareness and claim that they are unheard when they most claim popularity. I fear that success as much as failure—the way Hollywood is being swallowed up by a few tech giants plus Disney—is leading our liberal elites further into madness; mad elites are something America hasn’t really reckoned with since the beginning of the Cold War or, indeed, the Civil War. If I’m right, call this an early warning. If I’m wrong, you’ll have the pleasure of laughing at my silly worries.

The movie’s popularity, however hard to gauge, is something more important to reckon with than McKay, whom I expect will disappear the way of all celebrities soon enough, despite having directed some genuinely amusing edies (Anchorman, Stepbrothers, Talladega Nights). There is a Netflix class, not just in America, but more obviously in other countries—people who think they are more modern, more intelligent, more Progressive, and who feel defensive about their lack of influence or power. The majority of Netflix viewers are of course not of this kind, but they aspire to the prestige of the liberal elite and are guided to a significant extent in their taste by these offerings. Both groups are very important for understanding how liberalism is killing cinema, not edy, by their arrogance.

This movie, this director, and these accolades are a sad, sordid business. If the liberal imagination e around to the idea that if America disagrees with them, if they lose control of social media, if they have to deal with a democracy, then that’s the apocalypse and we deserve it, we’re in trouble. Satire is a form of art, it implies premeditation, cold reasoning, and a certain humorous detachment. Subtlety, even. This movie reminds us every minute that liberals are not capable of subtlety anymore—they are busy imitating the earnest, insistent, and loud propaganda of 20th-century tyrannies. What if our e to identify Progress with annihilation?

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Ecumenical Witness or Ecumenical Tyranny?
Robert Joustra, writing on the website of the Canadian think tank Cardus, has published a thoughtful review of Jordan Ballor’s Ecumenical Babel: Confusing Economic Ideology and the Church’s Social Witness. The reviewer understands that when, … controversial social science infiltrates ecclesial confessions, twin dangers promising the integrity of the Gospel, and splitting the church on political and economic issues. Ecumenical superstructures claiming to speak with ecclesial authority on technical matters worry me, even when technical experts are enlisted. The point...
Public Accountability for Public Officials
Via TechDirt: …a judge has tossed out the wiretapping claims pointing out that there was no expectation of privacy out in public. “Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public,” the judge wrote. “When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation.” There’s more here and here on the question of law enforcement and ‘citizen...
Review: Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers began Witness, the classic account of his time in the American Communist underground, with the declaration: “In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.” The line was most of all a deep recognition of the power of God to redeem what was once dead. Witness was a landmark account of the evils of Communism but most importantly a description of the bankruptcy of freedom outside of the sacred. “For Chambers, God was always the prime mover in...
Mere Comments: The Neo-Anabaptist Temptation
Today at Mere Comments I highlight what I’m calling the “Neo-Anabaptist temptation.” Check it out. ...
A Federal Tax Receipt
There’s an old saying to the effect: “Show me a man’s checkbook and I’ll show you what’s important to him.” It may not be quite the same as a checkbook, but NPR’s Planet Money passes along what a receipt from the federal government might look like for an average taxpayer (HT): As Third Way, who put together the taxpayer receipt, argues: An electorate unschooled in basic budget facts is a major obstacle to controlling the nation’s deficit, not to mention...
Samuel Gregg: Europe’s Broken Economies
Acton’s Research Director in the American Spectator: Europe’s Broken Economies By Samuel Gregg During September this year, much of Europe descended into mild chaos. Millions of Spaniards and French went on strike (following, of course, their return from six weeks vacation) against austerity measures introduced by their governments. Across the continent, there are deepening concerns about possible sovereign-debt defaults, stubbornly-high unemployment, Ireland’s renewed banking woes, and the resurgence of right-wing populist parties (often peddling left-wing economic ideas). Indeed, the palpable...
Global Warming Consensus Alert: KILL ‘EM ALL
I’ll admit – it’s been a long time since I’ve posted a Global Warming Consensus Alert because, frankly, any “consensus” that existed was blown apart by the release of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit e-mails, which revealed a whole bunch of underhanded activity on the part of scientists promoting the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. What’s the point anymore? The unshakeable climate “consensus” has been shown to be the fraud that it always was, and the catastrophic climate...
German Freedom and the Danger of Socialism
In this week’s Acton Commentary, I remember German reunification and reflect on its relevance for the present. Twenty years ago this Sunday, East and West Germany reunited, capping one of the most extraordinary transformations in modern history. Communism in the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites had collapsed; the oppressed nations of Europe rejoined the “free world.” My generation was the last to straddle the two worlds, pre- and post-Soviet Union. When I was in elementary and high school,...
Trailer: Doing the Right Thing
The Colson Center for Christian Worldview is preparing to release a new study DVD this fall titled, Doing the Right Thing: A Six-Part Exploration of Ethics. The DVD is designed as a resource for small-group studies and features leading thinkers who explore the need for ethical behavior in the marketplace, public square, political life and other areas. Hosts Brit Hume, Chuck Colson, Dr. Robert George and a distinguished panel — including Acton’s Rev. Robert Sirico and Michael Miller — undertake...
Questions on Work and Intellectual Development
Carl Trueman has a lengthy reflection and asks some pertinent and pressing questions on the nature of work and human intellectual development. Recalling his job at a factory as a young man in the 1980s, Trueman writes concerning those who were still at their positions on the line when he had moved on: Their work possessed no intrinsic dignity: it was unskilled, repetitive, poorly paid, and provided no sense of achievement. Yes, it gave them a wage; but not a...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved