When all the world’s a spoof, then?

Not that you can adequately gauge lovehate of a film thatrsquos only trending on Netflixmdashas with boxoffice that merely tells you how many people watched it What is kinda surprising to me is how Adam McKayrsquos Donrsquot Look Up polarised film critics Therersquos the obvious explanation by way of expectations which is the mother of all opinion anywayTo list only Oscar winners let alone Alist nominees and topnotch cameos Donrsquot Look Up an Oscar bait itself stars Leonardo DiCaprio Meryl Streep Jennifer Lawrence Cate Blanchett and Mark Rylance What could they possibly play to justify their collective presence in one prophetofdoom picIn this case a clever cocktail of people from public life mixed into multiple characters from a toxic Trump as a woman US President with Ivanka Kushner below a Zuckerberg Musk Jobs right here MSNBC TVrsquos cohost Mika Brzezinski there right down to Ariana Grande pretty much showing up as herself elsewhereThe assertion being if humans do go down theyrsquoll do so entertaining themselves to death When all the worldrsquos a spoof in a hyperconnected postmedia age what else must a political satirist do but place a camera to show it as we see it Black comedy then becomes hopeless humourOnly that as an audience what we receive isnrsquot real or documentarylike Chernobyl nor fictional as a distant apocalypse Independence Day There are no more things known and unknown for there to be the doors Maybe there should be a name for this genreAnother good example would be the series Black Mirror where say people recordingreplaying every moment of their lives through harddisks in their eyes or giving starratings to strangers on streets is neither scifi nor journalism Or it is terrifyingly both firmly located in the zeitgeistWhich is why Donrsquot Look Up feels very different from Stanley Kubrickrsquos Dr Strangelove 1964 about Cold War and the impending end of the worldmdashIrsquom guessing inspired by the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962Itrsquos neither like the writings of George Orwell or Hannah Arendt after WWII which gave the impression that mass misinformation and tyrannies at least help produce quality literature They probably donrsquot Their books got written after those dictatorships were goneDonrsquot Look Up is about two relatively fledgling astronomers DiCaprio Lawrence who spot a fictional Comet Dibiasky that is on its way to destroy the earth in six months flat They get access to the US President to present these indisputable factsThe response from the President Streepmdashwhorsquos more real than parody with a smirk of smugnessmdashgoes ldquoSit tight and assessrdquo Which in Indian bureaucratese would translate to ldquoThe situation is tense but under controlrdquoShersquos still more concerned with ratingsnumbers in a forthcoming election Now I donrsquot know if an actual comet could destroy the planet as the film suggests Chances are one in 65 million years apparentlymdashthatrsquos what took away the dinosaurAlthough I do remember from Std 5 or 6 suggesting likelihood of a similar disaster with Comet Swift Tuttle hurtling towards the earth in the mid rsquo90s that helped me hugely with a science project in schoolThe comet in Donrsquot Look Up is a standin for global warming Sure most of us donrsquot take it seriously as a crisis Yes we toss around tokenisms on saving the earth as if the planet needs savingmdashitrsquoll carry on anyway itrsquos our species that may not noBut this isnrsquot apathy as much as the fact that humans arenrsquot probably wired to look beyond themselvesmdashmake that a generation or two ahead max For what are children but somewhat an extension of narcissismselflove as wellI suspect somewhere at the back of their minds most are convinced climate change will not altogether destroy them in their lifetime They can take it easy even get contrarian on practical demandsI know this is serendipitous and that McKay wrote Donrsquot Look Up before the pandemic But what if we replaced the comet not with climate change but with COVID19Not as a fictionalised Apocalypse Now But as documentary evidence of exactly what followed both in America and India Observe the continuing obsession with elections politics demagogues and divides that deepened Look at big companies that spoke of profits neverthelessObserve antivaxxers to other naysayers some of them climbing the Capitol Hill in Washington DC Recall Indiarsquos ruling party that officially proclaimed having destroyed the global virus under their national leader even before the second wave hit Worried about the optics these were humans disregarding human issues including mass deaths from an invisible enemyYup thatrsquos what happened when the comet actually hit No the world didnrsquot come to an end It did for those who are no more ldquoThe powerful at the top are not even smart enough for the evil yoursquore giving them credit forrdquo a Regular Joe character says in McKayrsquos film Donrsquot Look Up is a comedy I can see why so many saw no humour in itMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper