This Moment is Un-Satirize-able

Don’t Look Up can’t overcome how stupid this time in history is.

In the movie Clueless, there’s a scene where a character wants to burn something and asks rich girl Cher if her fireplace works. Cher nods and turns it on with a remote control. This got a huge laugh in 1992. Imagine! Rich people are so silly and excessive and shallow!

But now lots of people have that fireplace, one that turns on with a switch. My mother has one, and she’s not a mansion-dweller in Beverly HIlls; she’s a retired schoolteacher in Clive. So many of the laughs from that movie don’t quite work now that reality has caught up with it. Remember how Cher picked her outfits using a computer? How is that much different from our online shopping n’ Instagram life? The joke doesn’t pack the punch it did 30 years ago, but that’s not the movie’s fault. It’s the times.

I’m talking about the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up. (Light spoilers.)

A lot of reviews are like, “Good performances, but it needs more punchlines.” But there are a ton of jokes in that movie. Can you imagine: what if the world faced an extinction event but didn’t take it seriously due to greed? What if some politicians just flat-out denied the overwhelming science? What if the president — get this — had, as her chief of staff, her own son?! And they were both stupid and evil and vindictive and selfish? What if billionaires cared more about their bottom line than human lives? What if corporate media preferred salacious, light stories rather than downers that used math? What if regular citizens flocked to a pseudo-populist movement couched in science denialism and petty grievance? What if we’re on a crash course to doom and our leaders don’t do anything about it? Can you imagine?

The problem isn’t that the jokes aren’t there. The problem is, our present moment is un-satirize-able. Our current moment is that stupid, that absurd, that ridiculous. My biggest quibble with the movie is that it gives people too much credit.

I’ve seen folks compare it, unfavorably, to Dr. Strangelove. The satire bites harder in Dr. Strangelove, though, because nuclear war was frankly easier to satirize. Idiocracy? Same thing.

The agony of today is that we have slipped beyond satire. Everything is already so fucking stupid. Remember when Trump asked a seven year old if they still believed in Santa Claus, because “at seven, it’s marginal, right?” This was on a Christmas call-in show at the White House — the same call-in show where, this year, some guy called in to tell Joe Biden to “Let’s Go Brandon” and we’re all supposed to act like that’s some kind of sick burn, when in reality, it’s fucking stupid. It’s un-satirize-able. Elon Musk as Time’s Man of the Year? Un-satirize-able. Our last chance at meaningful climate change legislation is tied up in the Senate because the tie-breaking vote belongs to a coal baron who drives a Maserati to work? The same guy who won’t authorize an extension of the Child Tax Credit, which slashed child poverty by 40%, because he thinks people will just use the money for drugs? Can’t make it up.

I watched the movie and I did not like it, but only because it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. It showed me the world exactly as it is — maybe, frankly, a little better than it is. So, y’know, that’s depressing.

But the jokes are there. They’re right there — on us.