Context: In my “Writing in the Disciplines” class this semester, I asked my students to write reviews of either Don’t Look Up (which we watched together) or another piece of media. I wrote along with them, and this is the result.
I first watched Don’t Look Up on Christmas Eve, with my partner and two close friends. Due to the skyrocketing wave of the Omiron variant, it was the first Christmas I had ever spent away from my family. The movie has everything I want: astronomy, comedy, political commentary, and an all-star cast. But above all, I immediately identified with Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), the PhD candidate and audience surrogate who first discovers the comet that will collide with the Earth in six months.
As a PhD candidate researching queer people’s use of TikTok, it’s unlikely (to put it mildly) that I will ever discover an impending apocalypse. But nevertheless, I see myself in Kate throughout the movie. When showing the film to my students during our media criticism unit, I was horrified to realize that Kate and I were even wearing (essentially) the same sweater.
After Kate and her advisor (Leonardo Di Caprio) meet with the President (Meryl Streep), who decides to do nothing about the comet for fear of spoiling her party’s chances in the midterms, the Chief of Staff orders them to keep the existence of the comet strictly confidential. And this is where the differences between Kate and I become most relevant.
If it were me, that comet would have been all over Twitter before I even got into the Oval Office. Probably even before they made me wait in the hallway for seven hours and charged me for free snacks.
When choosing a movie to watch with my students, I ended up picking this one because it’s about such an important topic and is the subject of so many different takes. A rich text with which to practice writing reviews! I also picked this one because it’s deeply concerned with issues of science communication, the topic of the course’s second unit. This movie was such a good fit for the kinds of conversations I wanted to have with my students that I redesigned the entire syllabus over winter break to give us space for the film.
The movie asks, what should you do in Kate’s position? Dr. Mindy (her advisor) asks her the same question, and he sarcastically offers the following options: start an online petition, organize a “mob” with picket signs, or overthrow the government. This scene takes place right after Kate has loudly informed the patrons of a shrimp restaurant that the government called off the mission to deflect the comet in the hopes of turning a profit.
For me, the turning point of the film comes when the FBI threatens to prosecute Kate for treason unless she signs a plea bargain promising not to make any more public comments about the comet or the government’s response to the crisis. Kate signs it.
This is another point where Kate and I diverge. I would not have signed it. And I would not have signed it because I am part of a political organization that would have supported me — publicized my trial and used it to fuel protests against the government’s inaction. And if the FBI tried to disappear me instead, they’d publicize the hell out of that too.
Kate picked the option that offered a much more pleasant last few months of life, but in agreeing to remain silent, she sacrificed her chance of saving the world. Could she have succeeded, if she had made a different choice? Maybe, maybe not. But that’s a hell of a lot better than certain death.
I believe it’s not yet too late to avert the worst effects of climate change, but we are running out of time very, very fast. In 2007, I watched An Inconvenient Truth in my sixth grade social studies class. That same year, researchers estimated that carbon emissions from industrialized countries would need to be 25%-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 in order to meet target warming goals. That year has now come and gone, and at that benchmark, annual emissions were up more than 50% relative to 1990. Now, the IPCC thinks meeting that original target (less than 2 degrees Celsius of global warming by 2100) is impossible, and 1.5 degrees might be impossible too. While it won’t happen with a bang, like the comet, the window for action is narrowing.
The evening before the comet hits the Earth, Dr. Mindy drives Kate and her boyfriend to get groceries for a family dinner. During the car ride, they listen to one of his favorite songs, and he talks the whole time, earnestly trying to make sure Kate appreciates all of the lyrics to the extent they deserve. And I realize that while I am most like Kate, I am also like Dr. Mindy, showing my own students a movie I love, and talking through the whole movie to make sure they notice all the things I think are clever.