Last week's Oscar night — you know, where Will Smith won an Oscar after that other thing happened — was a disappointment for a lot of movies that weren't "CODA." But no one was more disappointed than fans of Adam McKay's apocalyptic dark comedy "Don't Look Up," a timely satire about humanity absolutely and thoroughly failing to act decisively to do something about an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The climate change allegory (or pandemic response satire, depending on who you ask) had early buzz to sweep all the major categories but ended the night with no accolades, apart from a solid Netflix rating.
I always think Oscar snubs are more interesting than what actually wins, because snubbed films are often exceptional and unique but had some aspect that made them divisive or unpalatable to the broader Oscar voting audience. In this case, maybe the message was just too real and too painful. Even a fictional depiction of our failure to act to save our planet from destruction cuts a little too close to reality, and in a time when we're all looking for escapism, it just wasn't a film that many had the stomach to watch and enjoy.
The problem is that there is no escapism from climate change. We need art to help us imagine the grim future that might be, if only to motivate us to do something about it. Guests from this weekend's show, "Writing the Climate Change Story," argue that there are climate change stories we need to hear, if only to get us thinking about what we might have to sacrifice tomorrow if we fail to act today.
So if you just couldn't stomach watching "Don't Look Up," that's okay. In truth, it's a funny but overly cynical narrative of how we might handle the endgame of climate change (or, in this case, our climate being changed to a molten fireball by a rock from space). But there are more important, more grounded, and more optimistic climate change stories out there — and we need to hear them.
—Mark