A Post-Post-Modern Defense of Analysis

 Scott Alexander wrote a review of Don’t Look Up, and then tongue-in-cheek defended it with:

Look, there’s a weird game called “movie criticism”, where you take a movie as a jumping-off point to have thoughts on Society or the Human Condition. In the real world, people watch movies because they’re funny, or they have cool action sequences, or because the lead actress is really hot. But the rules of the “movie criticism” game say you have to ignore this stuff and treat them as deep commentary. I agree this game is not as fun as, say, Civilization IV: Fall From Heaven. But I have deliberately limited the amount of time I play that game for the sake of my sanity and my career, which means I need to play other games, and the “movie criticism” game seems okay.

Which is funny because Scott is funny. But also I’m one of the people clearly skewered in this explanation. (Also my wife is playing Civ VI right now, so I guess that makes a new gender dichotomy - are you the spouse who writes to a movie blog or the spouse who plays Civ VI?)

So, really, why write abstruse analyses of movies? Is it just apophenia? Can we actually defend this from first principles? Is there anything we are *actually figuring out* or are we just having entirely subjective fun here?

Especially when we talk about themes. Someone says a movie is really about recovering from grief, or the unbearable weight of responsibility, or how we change ourselves for capitalism and -- maybe it's supported by the text but who cares. You might as well collect the first letter of each page of a novel and talk about what message can be read into that random noise.

What makes art good is a question that can't really give an objective answer to. No matter what you say, someone else can say "well I don't think that's good" and what can you say then?

What makes art powerful though? What makes it popular and impact the culture and people talk about it years from now?

... I could say "what makes money?" That somewhat is a solved problem. The advertising budget for a movie + the prior reputation of its inputs (franchise, actors, maybe director) can predict box office numbers really well. And even if MCU films for adults are only 90% formulaic, the CGI cartoon movies for kids that make half a billion dollars (Secret Life of Pets, etc) *are* 100% formulaic. So we're not talking about just money.

Sure, "cultural relevance" and psychological impact are vague quantities we can argue over, but hopefully we can agree they have *some* objective existence. If we are saying Shakespeare and Jaws and Miyazaki *mattered*, I'm not wholly incapable of defending the claim.

(We could go the entirely symbolic-social cynical route and say all of them are only widely appreciated because the existing order told them to exalt them but... I have enough dignity to not believe that. There was something *good* there that had an impact in the Real we could not ignore anymore than the Soviet politburo could ignore Chernobyl.)

We make thousands of movies every year. And dozens of them have actors and writers and directors and technical artists who can claim to be among the best on Earth. Plenty of skill and quality go into these dozens. But which ones will *stick*? Which ones will the audience love and have "long legs" as the box office analysts say and will be in memes next year and in best of lists next decade and studied by schoolchildren in a century? What will be Avatar the Last Airbender versus... James Cameron's Avatar?

So there, we have a question about objective qualities that is difficult and deep and we can look into.

Here's a follow-up: why do we watch more than one movie?

If all you want is say, witty actors and flashy swordfights and swelling music and good jokes, why haven't you just found your favorite example of this, and watched it over and over?

We do this with many of life's pleasures. The best sushi we find... we keep going back to. Porn has repeat value, for sure. You probably have a song you've listened to more than a hundred times.

But there are some forms of art where our joy declines precipitously the more we've already seen it. Videogames, books, movies. Sure there are some beloved examples we visit again every so often, but nothing ever matches the excitement of the first time we saw it.

Let's just fiat that our brains need something new for a reason we can't explain. Okay, but then how new?

If I just took the plot of Die Hard, and had actors of the same rough charisma as young(er) Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman, and wrote the same style of jokes but slightly different punchlines, and shoot the action scenes again... would that satisfy our cravings? Why would it matter that critics would say it's just Die Hard again? We liked Die Hard! Why do we need new plots and new twists and new characters?

(Sometimes we don't, but more often we do? Even remakes have an entire meta-structure of how much needs to be changed for the remake to be "fresh.")

So now we have two serious questions: what makes a work "powerful", and what unites all the art we personally like even as we want it to be eternally different?

Well one theory is themes. 

What is the underlying theme of a work? How much clarity does that theme have? How much does the artistry support that theme?

The great hypothesis of reviewing is that the above three questions determine a lot both about the lasting power of a work, and whether individuals who are attached to those themes will like this work?

It might be true. It might not. There's some correlation we can make, but it's loose and it never really proves causation anyway. But, for the sake of this particular form of art, let's accept it as true. 

(What would Die Hard be without the subplot about his collapsing marriage and the cop who couldn't use a gun? 95% the same, or would its heart be ripped out?)

So first we can analyze the acknowledged great works on these metrics. What are there themes, and how much does the artistry support them?

From that we can ponder: what themes resonate with audiences (even the audience of I), and what film-making skills support them?

The next leap is to say: what art will be successful? Using the hypotheses we've come up with about which themes are resonant and what supports them, can we look at two movies by famous actresses and say "this one will be remembered, and this one forgotten?"

(You can even say "this movie that was forgotten just never got seen by people and if more people knew about it, then it would stick in memories and impact the culture." A not practically verifiable hypothesis, but still theoretically about something objective.)

And now the whole door is open. You argue about what theme a movie really has, for the purpose of determining if it will impact the culture, and as evidence you can say how much it resonated with you personally if you also care about that theme.

Don't Look Up (What This Movie Is About)

 After I published my best of 2022 list, I also saw the Matrix (bad) and Station Eleven (good) and the discourse topic du jour "Don't Look Up." I don't really have anything to say about the first two yet, but Don't Look Up is... surprisingly good.

Which you know, is unexpected for a moralistic allegory about climate change. And it's certainly been criticized on that front, for being more concerned with political allegiance than being good art.

I'm sympathetic to the above point of view. There's certainly a lot of people who will insist you like tone-deaf art as the price for being their political ally. The key to understanding this film is that it's not about climate change, and then you can realize how good it is.

DLU presents a challenge to us Barthe-ian believers of "the author is dead" in that the authors - writers, directors, actors - are all very much alive and clear on what their movie is about and saying so on Twitter. And yet, it's really not.

Matt Yglesias agrees that the political situation around climate change simply does not look like what is depicted in the film, whereas the metaphor the allegory is using is actually important and tracks with how it's discussed in the film as well.

I'm going to go further and say the movie isn't really about existential risk or any governmental policy at all, because DLU is not a movie about solutions. Climate change is really a term for a broad coalition of allies and policy changes aimed at responding to the effects of pollution.

Don't Look Up is about the importance of being sad in a particular way.

You see this most clearly in the early parts of DLU - their first meeting with the President and their first appearance on the web show "Daily Rip" (RIP, get it?) They've waited all day to talk with the President, and fumble at the start trying to impress how important this is and the President bluntly says "What's your ask?" like someone who gets a million requests a day and it all comes down to how much it's going to cost her. And the good guys' politico mumbles something about NASA plans and the conversation deteriorates from there. Same for the first talk show appearance. It's a huge breakdown for one character and a major plot turn in the movie, but there's still no discussion of "what are you asking people in power to do."

(We later get a major plan in response to the comet, but not in this scene. Most of an hour of a movie passes before there is any discussion of "what can we do.")

Now, I could believe that originally there was more discussion in the movie of what measures to take and the science of dealing with a comet, but that got cut before it's boring compared to the struggles of human emotion. But that rather reinforces the point then.

What is emphasized in all these scenes is "how people should be reacting to the threat of the end of the world." Our protagonists are breaking down and freaking out and taking this incredibly emotionally. The rest of the world is being satirized for not caring enough. Maybe they find a dumb way to deny it, or maybe they airily acknowledge the threat, but regardless they are far more interested in empty political scandal or celebrity gossip.

(Side note to mention how central "male desirability" is in this movie. Leo DiCaprio's schlub scientist is played up as a surprise viral sensation with meme-able daddy hotness. The woman President is embroiled in scandals over trying to put her nude model boyfriend on the Supreme Court. Even the celebrity scandal revolves around one singer not being able to get over her celebrity boyfriend who cheated on her.)

Now the people who do care correctly go through a variety of metaphorical scenarios for this. We know of the intended interpretation that is for the "caring" to be in the form of a political movement that can't get the rest of the country to agree with them because they are too stubborn and contrarian. (In fact one thing DLU captures is the horror of being a subject of political polarization: even when half the country supports you, they do so in unhelpful and annoying ways that make you feel just as bad. All the viral video sections about Dr. Hotty are reminiscent of the radio call in show at the start of Hancock this way.) But they are also depicted on the far end of the spectrum of universality as being like a small cult that is convinced everyone is going to die and their friends and family don't want to argue with them so they are "polite" and even pretend to go along - but of course polite pretending is at great dissonance with someone really believing they will die.

But the other end of the spectrum of universality is even more important, and it is this: we are all going to die. Whether in six months or sixty years, death is inevitable. When people first truly realize this, it often freaks them out. Death will be forever and all our striving before then is meaningless. If you are a person really thinking about this, then everything everyone else does all the time seems like ephemeral distraction just to ignore that fact. And that's what comes across in DLU: the universal experience of existential terror and wondering why the rest of the world isn't as crippled by it as you.

It's easy to say "yes, this fear of death is a metaphor for how our generation feels about climate change." But I prefer to say "an insipid piece of propaganda actually managed to be a solid metaphor for how humanity approaches death."

***

Anyway, the major theme of the work out of the way, we can see the rest of the movie is... a lot of small details and creative bits that support this theme and are funny on their own. Things I loved:

• The three star general who cons the scientists out of snack money in the White House (and how one scientist just can not get over that, even as catastrophe unravels around them.)
• The news anchor who has an apocalypse kink.
• The split path between "working with power and losing your soul" vs "rejecting power and becoming a fringe element of society."
• The chief of staff son of the President. Every line Jonah Hill has in this movie is some new twist that sums up a character beat beautifully, from wanting to bang his mom to his rambling litany against the educated elites, to being left alone after his mom has launched off on a lifeboat spaceship.
• The Garden of Eden ending and bronterocs.
• The other ending, where the main characters die. The whole movie has mocked the rest of the world for being concerned with shallow banal life instead of the world ending, but in the final moments at the comet actually hits, even our scientists are arguing over what makes good apple pie and coffee, as the shockwave rips through their walls. We know they know and are trying to focus on what is good in life instead of the oncoming death.
• The way a woman who is reacting honestly to the terror of the world suddenly becomes dismissed as a BPD girl with crazy eyes.
• "Okay, I guess it really is all over in just minutes. You wanna fuck? Or shoot each other?" "I... just want to drink and talk shit about people."
• The "Don't Look Up" movements and the "Look Both Ways" opportunistic consumerism.

The biggest element to discuss among these is BASHLiiF and the movie's depiction of an antagonistic establishment.

This is one of the places where DLU goes off the rails as a climate change analogy. In order for the proper horror narrative, our plucky scientists have to face enemies on both sides: those uneducated rabble who are too distracted to see any threats, and the overeducated establishment too confident in themselves to listen to anyone else. We get the latter in the form of BASHLiiF the Facebook analogue and its genteel effeminate CEO and his panoply of scientists who soothingly reassure "don't worry, we big brains have this all handled, and are going to make a ton of money off of this." They even have a CGI presentation for the White House, reminiscent of John Hammond's "we spared no expense" animation in Jurassic Park.

Of course the fatal flaw of the establishment extreme is that they don't listen to anyone who offers criticism or correction, and instead deluge the critics with all the unrelated things they do know that make them feel so much smarter than you. This is all very stock villain stuff and fine, but what does it relate to in our political world regarding climate change?

Yes you can of course list various corporations or the iconoclastic scientists who will say we don't have to worry about global warming. But they are much, much smaller fry than this sort of "consensus so overarching it can't imagine opposition" that this type of villain is.

You know who BASHLiiF really looks like? Theranos (topical news point, since Elizabeth Holms was just convicted yesterday.) 

Theranos is much closer to the sort of thing that was "Look we are Science! No don't look at our actual numbers, just be in awe of how many establishment figures agree with and supports us. We've set up some good looking press photo ops for you that actually mean nothing." But of course people like Holmes and Biden wholeheartedly endorse climate justice.

The mention of COVID is really fortunate. Because the movie was conceived before COVID, and yet filmed during that crisis, and it can't help but to be shaped by that crisis. And COVID really is a better match to the analogy of DLU than climate change (which Matt above notes.)

Particularly the horror of "it's coming right now!" "oh no it isn't." The movie captures the feel of February 2020 for all the people who were reading news out of China and realizing this was going to be us soon, as the rest of the news was focused on the Democratic primary or whatever else. And of course the little snark where the President announces their new plan and the stock market goes up.