Slalop Krijek does not critique movies. He invents psychoanalytical "meanings" ( whatever what that might mean to the freudian sect;)) to specific ( generally american or ..rarely european ) movies and projects them onto his twisted lense ..before he spits them( pun intended) as definitive truths
@@eldjoudhi Zizek is not a movie analyst, he rathe tries to say something about our condition by dialectically comparing it to an interpretation of a fiction.
The motivation of the general was that his time is more imiportant than theirs (as he saw it), yet they were sitting around spending an equal amount of time doing nothing. So to correct this imbalance, he initiated a financial transaction, a kind of tax or tribute. The irony of this is the victims - DiCaprio and Lawrence, are at the the top of another hierarchy, that of Hollywood actors. Assistants to them scurry around getting them ready for their scenes, including this one, and looked on, probably with considerable bemusement, as they were "exploited".
Her and dicaprio already fought nearly to the bitter end against the selfish billionaires and the president so I thought it was just a clever hint at how those in power will make it seem like THEY are crucial to your wellbeing, when in reality it's the other way around. A company can exist without its ceo, a ceo can't exist without having a company to plot over. But hey if you were triggered by a satirical movie having a little callback, and were smart enough to notice it but not understand it, then you do you bud.
I don't know if I entirely agree with this. I felt like the movie was showing more of a descriptive than a prescriptive narrative. It wasn't saying that climate change is as easy to see as "looking up" at a comet in the sky (at least not at this stage of climate change). I think it was saying that by the time we can point to natural disasters and definitively and intuitively argue that they are the result of climate change, it will be too late. The meteor will be too close, and we'll rely entirely on unknown and untested technologies to fix it at that point. The movie did depict various kinds of people in more or less moral lights, but it also depicted ordinary and decent people (like Katie's boyfriend towards the end, who expresses doubt that the meteor exists) as being susceptible to the broader systemic forces that lead to the disaster in the end.
Even clever people can miss the point. You got it bang on though. This is where conversations work better than monologues. You might have stopped him in his tracks with that comment.
He also offers a prayer meaning his belief isn’t necessarily objectively based. It reminds me of some atheists who don’t understand correspondence theory.
This movie is still being "reduced" by reviewers, who usually go for the "stand up ovation since it's a satirical film on how ridiculous conservatives are when it comes to climate change" or "this movie it's objectively a bad movie since the movie is basically saying 'climate change bad'". Reviews that fall under such premises seem to be missing the whole point, the bigger picture. The movie shows a perspective that nothing, not even a enormous evident problem which can end civilization as we know it, bring "people together". It goes to a simple argument: we are not in a mental, social space which allows and prepares us to deal with our problems. Rationality doesn't work, irrationality doesn't work. Denial makes sure nothing will change. Power corrupts. Personal interest, hedonistic goals are often put first. The scientist enjoys the game. The politics bend over to capital interest since the ones in power were put there by large corporations who want nothing but control the world. Every single little person in that movie is within a system that will not be changed from the inside. Look, even the fact that reviews are either blindingly saying it's a masterpiece or saying it's liberal propaganda about only climate change, proves the point of the movie. People are either arguing about who got it worst and who knows best in a house fire or saying there's no fire. The fire being a problem, that's it. The intricate aspect of it all is that the movie shows we have problems relates to climate change, inequality, ignorance + illiteracy, governance, economic and social relations and so on. That's the movie. It's all of that...
How can it make a point of "nothing brings people together" when it grossly misrepresents what would actually happen? If it were to make that point shouldnt it show what would actually happen: a lot of different countries working together to prevent it, but also general chaos from people thinking that the world will end
Both critiques feel slightly empty: For problem 1: I do not think that the film "suggests a rational self-control view". The film is about "seeing", in particular, perception by politics, media etc. It merely supposes, that there is a simple, objective reality to be seen. The film does not present an alternative way of organizing society, neither is it interested to question the premise of a simple objective truth. Of course it is valid to criticize the film if someone doesn't like this premise, but framing this as being self-contradictory as in "systemic" vs "controlled" feels kind of forced. For problem 2: even though it is a bit of an ad-hominem, I think this is the stronger critique. The film could at least acknowledge its own hypocrisy and I think it would have been a better film if it had a bit of self-irony.
I don’t think there is a way to point out the problem with generating attention without engaging in the problem of generating attention. This hypocrisy is acceptable. It’s like warfare. How do you stop a violent invading army? Well, you use a violent defensive army. Sometimes it’s best to fight fire with fire and by extension, engage in hypocrisy.
I like that the movie shows the frustration of the scientific community in a good way. But in the end it doesn't really criticize the system. Its more of a cheerleading attempt to improve our selves, our own individual attitudes. The movie never really acknowledges that the system, the very core of it, is creating this existential threat in the first place.
But the other myth is the construction of some objective “scientific community” to begin with. If we just put our trust in these well-intentioned technocrats, and organized society in relation to the quantitative mechanical outlines of efficiency and harmony that they’ve constructed for us (to desire) everything would be okay! But the idea of something like that is also what grounds a certain life-bare life distinction between quantitative efficiency and qualitative flourishing. Which is why you see the same technocratic elites make some ruthless decision like kill 5% of X population for stronger long term growth and benefits for the other 95%. As soon as the technocratic elite have determined that such a problem exists, the entire system is forced into a dualistic opposition of how best to solve the problem, all while taking for granted that X is a problem, that only X Y Z solutions are possible, and that the eventual creation of X Y Z society is the only legitimate form of social organization. It’s a lot like how foreign policy analysts will tell us everything we need to do to “fix” some foreign country like Afghanistan, have the “experts” come in and manufacture mass consent from the voting populace, all while we take for granted (us, not the elites since they themselves construct oppositional discourse to begin with) whether it actually is right, responsible, virtuous etc to engage in the technocratic reordering of that country to begin with. The other myth the movie pedalled is that science is somehow some objective identifier of “true” and morally correct knowledge above otherwise partisan systems like politics and religion. Whereas this modernist myth of the objective totalization of knowledge as an empirical study we simply need to apply to reality, with no sense of distinction between the social, moral, political, and scientific realms is the main foundational illusion of the movie to begin with. If only we “listened!” To the experts, everything would be okay! (Despite ofc these experts having been the ones who also justified the creation of the problem in the first place, especially global warming). And the only justification for trusting power and monied interests now as opposed to before relies on that enlightenment myth of progress, that somehow technocratic society is becoming mot just more knowledgeable but also more “moral”, all without any substantiation.
@@fahim-ev8qq It seems to me that people finding fault along these lines all missed that the 'scientific community' in the film was NOT virtuous and objective. The "top", Harvard and Yale scientists (whose positions were used as a cudgel against the truthtelling individual scientists the two main characters) signed on with the Silicon Valley plan that resulted in doom! The scientific community is shown to be ideological, not pure.
@@fahim-ev8qq "Which is why you see the same technocratic elites make some ruthless decision like kill 5% of X population for stronger long term growth and benefits for the other 95%." This is backwards; you're describing something less batshit than reality where the vast majority are crushed under a tiny handful of boots who now have nukes and will burn the world rather than give up control, and we all know it and are paralysed.
@@solgato5186 I’m not sure how what you’re saying is different than what I’m saying. For just one example, hasn’t the American ruling class sacrificed heartland America to focus on the expansion of coastal-urban elite influence and prosperity ? That’s what I mean, “expertise!” Is always an ideological mold, not the independent and objective source of truth.
@@fahim-ev8qq Humans on the coast are getting crushed too; and it's bigger than that--eight billion people getting stomped by a few thousand billionaires. Humanity should defend itself but we're too busy blaming each other instead of eating the rich wherever they live.
Unfortunately prof. Moeller succumbed to his tendency of discussing his own ideas rather than engaging with the work that he's criticizing in a deep and fair manner. Before criticizing a film, one must first figure out what the film is trying to say. Let's start with the point that the comet crisis is not like the global warming crisis, which I believe to be fundamentally misguided. ALL metaphors highlight some aspects of the represented phenomenon and obscure others. Before judging the accuracy of the metaphor, one must consider what the metaphor's purpose is. The metaphor of global-warming-as-comet 1) simplified the problem in question, 2) gave it more urgency and 3) made it more dangerous, *which all served to highlight the reasons why the problem is denied (ignored, belittled, psychologically repressed) by the society facing it.* And this is what the message of the movie is about: the reasons why, as a society, we ignore an urgent, important problem. These reasons might be working more subtly for global warming (because it's a different kind of crisis), but they should be of the same kind. If these reasons were not the same, if the crisis response of the fictional society was entirely different than that of the real world one, THAT would show the inaccuracy of the metaphor WITH RESPECT TO the message of the film. *Crucially then, the movie is not about solutions to global warming, it's about why we are not looking for solutions with the urgency that we should be looking for them! So what if the film misrepresents global warming? It's not what it's supposed to represent!* Now for the conclusion (19:53). Ad 1. You don't get to impose a theoretical framework on someone's work and then judge said work by how well it adheres to said framework. What if the author(s)... reject this framework in the first place? Don't think in these terms? What if the contradiction you found is entirely of your own making and the author(s) aren't guilty of it at all? Ad 2. The criticism again ignores the author(s). It's as if the production was made by an impersonal committee with absolutely no deliberate authorial thought put into it -- which is implicitly assumed here, with no support. Maybe there are people in there, trapped in these systems, commenting on the workings of these systems from the inside? Maybe we could hear them if we listened? What's more, the criticism here has a strong whiff of "aha! you criticize society, but you participate in society yourself, you hypocrite!". Apparently Netflix is (or rather the writers and directors of Netflix are) inherently incapable of certain kinds of messaging without at the same time being hypocritical about this messaging. I don't buy it. You can always communicate yourself out of hypocrisy. Still, there is definitely something to be said about how the serious message is made more palatable with satire and memes. The movie wouldn't be nearly as popular if it was a solemn tragedy, an approach that would perhaps be more appropriate, but paradoxically less effective. That's a clear point of similarity between the fictional world and the world that the fiction comments on and yes, the movie doesn't seem very self-aware in this respect. At least I didn't detect it. But go beyond what the film is trying to say and you fail to adequately engage with it.
Well put, I agree with pretty much all of it, and I get the reasoning behind the first part of your conclusion, and you're right, it's a weird move to flatly impose _your_ worldview onto a movie prima facie and find it wanting for not patting you on the back. But I would say that in this case, the screenwriter, David Sirota, would actually agree with the systemic perspective that Moeller is putting forward.
It's very interesting to see this channel evolve alongside my own studies and then viewing the parallel ideas. I did my MA in philosophy which I produced a paper reconciling Sartre's existential phenomenology and Charles Taylor's ethic of authenticity. Now I'm doing my PhD in Geography working in a systems theoretic space... I have a few questions. 1. Do you think a systems theoretic lens can be taught en masse to provide clarity for everyone? It seems this is at least part of what many of the German Idealists forwarded as a new educational theory: I.e. von Humboldt's holistic view of education, bildung, etc. 2. What do you think philosophy's role in the climate crisis is? Of course your video in the purpose of philosophy can at least provide me with a preliminary answer to criticize the religious and pseudo-religious attitude that emerge. But can philosophy assert a way of knowing, or even a way of feeling, perhaps that can galvanize legitimate action? Here I'm thinking of a shift to Marx's idiom to change the world with philosophy, not to understand it. On the other hand, contemporary climate ethics literature seeks to criticize and adapt classic ethics to retool them for the larger systemic challenges we face in the real world. Thanks for your videos, they keep me thinking philosophically about our world while I'm increasingly turning into a scientist.
14:19 - I think this comment demonstrates that there isn't necessarily a contradiction in the movie. I think that given the systems theory reading of the movie it could be claimed that the movie makes two claims: (1) as a matter of fact the society currently functions as you describe in the first part of the movie, (2) but it would be preferable if it functioned according to the rational self-control model you describe. In this way there would be no contradiction since one is a is-statement and the other is a ought-statement.
I think the point the prof is making is that you cannot expect to control society according to the rational model, there are too many actors, too much complexity, and no completely objective view exists. This is the fiction the movie conveys, when in reality a response to climate change will be inherently political, it cannot be purely scientific / technocratic.
@@CaptaineBluntschli the problem is that there isn't really an alternative. Loosely invoking "complex" or "systems" modelling as solutions does not really progress the discussion
From my perspective, not only does the movie acknowledge the autopoiesis and symbiosis of the social systems, it suggests that the systems have become such "selfish omnivores" that their symbiosis with other systems (particularly and especially with Science), which they ignore in doing, so has made it so that these systems paradoxically sow their own destruction; because the Media, Economic, and Political systems are neglecting Science for their own self-preservation (which, especially in the Political system, has become standard in the "Post-Truth" age we seem to be in), they actually work against themselves by ensuring that these systems will be destroyed by that which the ignored Science is trying to inform them about (in the movie, a meteor, in real life, the Climate Catastrophe). From this, it seems that the movie does not expect each social system to "transcend itself" as you put it, but to recognize their necessary symbiosis in order to preserve their autopoiesis.
That sounds more like an inference of an unintended message than the actual message. The movie tried to be quite on-the-nose with its message, and it did its job well enough. Heh.
To me this movie doesn't only reflect the anti science part of our political culture but the entire outlook towards where we are going as a country. This stifling mess reflects itself in domestic and foreign policies, the economy, cultural issues and in our political system itself. We are sick and this movie shows it. Rome rotted from the inside.
In your point noting that Dont look up suggest self control through science, a point to consider would be Leo's character. He was supposed to be this "pure" scientist, completely out of the loop on other things in the world, a loving father with a focus on family. Yet, even he could not withstand the "system" and eventual became part of its replication. Jenifer's character, while not becoming apart of the system did give up and disconnect. I think this could be viewed as a statement how taking control rationally as you said, is very hard if not impossible even for the most head strong opponents.
The movie's main shortcoming is in its inadvertent real-world effect: it ends up inciting reflection upon the movie itself rather than any external action. This is a failing shared by all contemporary art, which in its current form exhausts its powers as cathartic entertainment consumption, rather than being able to stimulate any subversive social force.
But what's the difference? How can art mobilize unless it motivates the symbolic understanding to transform into real world action. If you wamma say art is useless I get it, but otherwise what is your vision of an alternative motovating art?
@@battyjr hey. I'd never say Art's useless - no more or less than anything else, anyways. And I'm also prepared to admit it's also not a given that Art should have a mobilising effect; it happens to be my opinion that it's good when it does, but other views of the value of Art do exist which are also legitimate. Mine's an assessment of the current role of artistic expression which I think is pretty marginal and petty compared to other historical times. I wouldn't expect it to be any different as Art's an expression of society so at times when society was actively trying to subvert its rules, Art had the power to instigatate further subversion. Whereas in the current state of widespread hopeless and disassociated apathy, it's unrealistic to expect Art to act as any kind of effective catalyst for real change. Art is a co-evolved sub-system, is what I'm saying, can't be held solely responsible for either the problems or solutions- it's the epoch itself that's at fault. But I am pointing out there used to be days when a film, a concert, or even a play could lead to a march or a riot - this is not something Don't Look Up can hope to achieve. Its effect is primarily masturbatory self-pity or distraction, which is reflective of the general societal trend.
@@Anatolij86 I totally agree if that is the goal of the movie, but I felt like the movie was itself stating that it couldn't motivate any amount of change- so I'm not sure that was a goal of its makers. I think it's more of a description than anything else. If it has any goals to motivate, my guess is that it's through the mass recognition of the state we're in- since it is hard to change things you don't see as problems. Like how alcoholics have to admit they have a problem. Admitting it doesn't mean they'll change, but it is a prerequisite- and I think by that standard, the movie was a success.
I love the ending of this video. Bertolt Brecht wrote a great poem called "legend of the origin of the book tao-te-ching..." or "Legende von der Entstehung des Buches Taoteking auf dem Weg des Laotse in die Emigration". It says in the last strophe: "Aber rühmen wir nicht nur den Weisen Dessen Name auf dem Buche prangt! Denn man muß dem Weisen seine Weisheit erst entreißen. Darum sei der Zöllner auch bedankt: Er hat sie ihm abverlangt." "but the honor should not be restricted to the sage whose name is clearly writ. for a wise man's wisdom needs to be extracted. so the customs man deserves his bit. it was he who called for it." So honor to the young man asking in the end!
@@ArawnOfAnnwn the poem is about Laozi leaving the city and meeting "the customs" (Zöllner), who asks him to write down his teachings (which according to this legend is the Tao-te-Ching), because he thinks its of practical use to him. The customs provides him with food and shelter to do so. In the end of the this video there is also someone asking the Prof Moeller to clarify, who is presumebly also the one who edits the video. Without him there would be no video, like there would be no Tao-te-Ching in the legend.
The view that ecosystems are something that is intrinsically stable and self-sustainable (19th century Gumbolt's theory of Landskap) is not quite supported by the 20th century science. Yes, they are self regulating (brutally) but as soon as some "part" takes advantage it will not stop until the whole thing collapses. The idea that nature is peaceful and in harmony is quite bogous at this point.
This is a rather funny statement from someone wo basically is an intrinsically stable ecosystem himself, which takes great measures to prevent any part from taking "selfish" advantage. That principle of homeostasis is not just a feature of multi-cellular organisms, but also a characteristic of ecosystems formed by several species. And the idea that the whole biosphere of Earth also functions in this way is by no means off the table.
@@sitis999 He's agreeing with you, not arguing against you. It's seems a sensible hypothesis that collapsed ecosystems are not around to be studied and therefore add to a survivorship bias of ecological systems always being "in balance". To add another example from biology: Cancer is something that is known to occur regularly even within homeostatic, well-functioning bodies and which often doesn't stop until the entire body and its systems collapse.
Systems theory doesn't necessarily say they are intrinsically stable or indefinitely self sustainable. The point is that they are self organizing and complex so are very resilient. Even if specific ecosystems collapse the biosphere re absorbs their content and recycles it. It is precisely at the peak of instability when new forms of organizational complexity arise.
But then, how do you make a movie that will reach a broad audience without falling into the "you made this movie for the sake of money" narrative? Should we really criticize artists for monetizing their ideas and creations, using Big Evil Corporations as means to fight Big Evil Corporations? On the other hand, the Matrix is a movie I had seen as the most paradoxical movie ever - while fighting against the Spectacle, it iself had become a spectacle for making money in the bluepilled world (with the birth of the franchise and advertisement on those big billboards). I agree with Baudrillard when it comes to his own criticism of the Matrix - it represents the illusion and the real world as dual opposites (in the form of the red pill and the blue pill), while his own narrative says that they "implode" to the point where there isn't a clear line between what is real and what's an illusion. Great video on this: ua-cam.com/video/ZJmp9jfcDkw/v-deo.html&ab_channel=TheLivingPhilosophy
The answer to your question is to not to betray your principles. If you want to create a work of art that changes people's minds but is also quite successful in order to change people's minds more effectively, the key is to not betray or change your principles as to why you want to make the movie in the first place. By not sacrificing meaning for your success, you run the best chance of the movie making the most impact. Sacrificing meaning for entertainment will ultimately just lead to a watered down message, which will be less effective in the long run. It is better to push for a 'less entertaining' movie to be successful and try to make that movie as successful as possible rather than to publish something you don't believe in or will not do the job. Doing so way will just lead to nothing AND betray your values anyway. I don't know whether Don't Look Up compromised its values because I don't know the creators or the people involved,, but it is probably true that most of the people involved in the creation of that movie valued creating something entertaining, or making a fun movie, over making a serious, heavy political message (or a mixture of both of these things). That's all good and stuff but doesn't necessarily make it a movie that will have the impact that some people would want it to be.
I wonder how Matrix did that. Prof Moeller also says Matrix reflects on its own role too. I wonder where in the movie. I need to re-watch it, it's been so long
@@lbjvg Hypocrisy isn't even the correct word in the first place. Replace hypocrisy with "self-refuting" and Moeller's argument makes more sense. He's not saying "all media is bad, so using media to critique media is meaningless", he's making a much more specific argument: criticizing content that retains information relevant to societal functioning while also failing to provide such info yourself is the issue. If you implicitly internalize the same conditions of your opposition into your own critique, it falls apart like a house of cards because you re-instantiate the same conditions or habits you wish to get rid of. An Inconvenient Truth didn't have a love story or any weird shoehorned subplots and it was still a massive success of a film.
Amusingly, the latest Matrix movie is a direct reflection on the question you pose about the original Matrix - ie, it quite explicitly reflects on the original trilogy having been absorbed by the system that it criticized, and its conclusion is something akin to resistance having to continually evolve, rather than become complacent and let the system absorb it after incremental victories.
Dr. Moeller, I'd be curious of your take on how climate change (or other major problems) could be solved given the state of the world as it is. An uncharitable interpretation of your review is that since we live in a society with all these systems that only act "rationally" in a very limited, self-serving way, climate change is impossible to solve. But I'm assuming you think there must be a framework in which the systems of society can overcome their inherent design to act towards a greater good. I'd also be curious if you think any critique of capitalism / modern society is inherently hypocritical, since it's virtually impossible to share that message without somebody making money off of it. It's similar to how any critique of fossil fuel use is somewhat hypocritical, since the person making the critique likely uses fossil fuels, but it's impossible to not use fossil fuels if you live in society. As a very minor point, mushrooms aren't part of flora, as they aren't plants :)
I think that when we break outside of existing system, then "climate change" problem will seem very different as we see it now. Most likely no as important as it seems now.
Your interpretation of Moeller isn't "uncharitable" - it's accurate. He's engaging in edgelord catastrophizing as an avoidance strategy. The movie isn't complicated. It was making fun of our spectacularly bad performance at working together recently, and the rise of grifter politics. It wasn't advocating for utopia. This kind of purposefully obtuse take is pretty common among fundamentally conservative philosophers looking to disguise their unwillingness to address practical collective action issues like global warming under a thin pretense of struggling with some meaningless, hopelessly abstract philosophical contradiction.
@@drjimnielson4425 I would agree! Though Dr. Moeller seemed to hold the hypocrisy of Don't Look Up against it, which would imply it's bad in this case.
14:58 I have to slightly disagree with you here. We can sometimes say that on a given empirical question we DO have enough evidence to conclude with a high level of cogency, that a position IS correct. With creationism vs biological evolution, we CAN just “look up”. With flat earthers vs a round earth, we CAN just “look up”. This empirical relativism and ambivalence towards everything the scientific community produces is dangerous, at least just as dangerous as blindly accepting every claim made by any scientific institution.
Science is never "prescriptive", it does NOT say what we "ought" to do - even when it comes down to survival, it's not a "scientific fact" that we should choose good-to-humans things over bad-to-humans ones, that's something we derive from scientific facts but already goes well into the territory of policy and politics, you're not doing science anymore when you choose to "act on" the science. I recommend to anyone conflating scientific endeavor with policymaking to watch this video by Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder (a physicist and amazing lecturer) where she goes over this same argument of the media misrepresenting scientific studies with policy decisions as if scientific research somehow "belongs" to any given side of a policymaking debate. Here it is: ua-cam.com/video/nGVIJSW0Y3k/v-deo.html But on the examples you made, I actually agree with them - some positions have been so throughoutly experimented upon that we can safely assume them in general. But it should not be the same as considering them obvious enough to "simply look up" actually - not when we're doing science, at least. But we're not going to be so ambivalent in our daily lives, so there's actually two separate places of discourse there to be considered, where skepticism can only be "too much" in one of them.
@@mgmonteiro1 I was trying to focus strictly on empirical claims, which afaik are all descriptive. I get that policy making involves more then just assessing empirical claims.
@@mgmonteiro1 : While science doesn't specifically tell you what policies to enact, it will potentially predict the results of those policies, which... if you agree on a common goal, is very valuable information.
Very thoughtful and insightful review! I would add that the simplified picture of global warming as merely a natural catastrophe (a meteor hitting earth) obscures the more complex, _political_ catastrophe that it will most likely be. There will of course be local natural disasters as a consequence of global warming, but long before the earth has gotten so warm that it burns to a crisp, localized natural disasters will disturb and upset the global trade structures we are all heavily dependent on. What happens when 'country x' collapses due to a local change in climate and we all come to realize that this country stood for 40% of the export of some precious metal we all need for our phones? Or when the climate refugees from one country destabilizes another country that is a key manufacturer of some medicine used by millions across the globe? Global warming is not simply a natural but also a political disaster. Too often it seems like people are scared the planet will burn to death, but the current global order will have collapsed long before that becomes possible.
just finished your book: Moral Fool. Thank you very much -it was very interesting reading for me, deepened my understanding of Kant, Bentham and Daoism !
You're missing something that's well explained in Fowler's Modern English Usage, 2nd Edition (Fowler, 1978, p.253) under the category of humour. Fowler has a chart. The first vertical column are the different types of humour, which he lists as: Humour, Wit, Satire, Sarcasm, Invective, Irony, Cynicism, and The Sardonic. Each of these is explained by the other columns, which are: MOTIVE/AIM, PROVINCE, METHOD/MEANS, AUDIENCE Don't Look Up is a work of Satire. Its Motive or Aim is one of Amendment, that we should live better. Its province is that of Morals and Manners. (The province of Wit is "Words and Ideas", for example). Satire's Means/Method is one of Accentuation, and its Audience are "The Self-Satisfied". Elsewhere (323) he describes Satire as that which "holds up prevailing vices and follies to ridicule". All of which "Don't Look Up" does quite well, as you yourself point out. However, your criticism of it for operating in the same world that it criticises is simply a rhetorical fallacy, the Tu Quoque Fallacy. Such criticism is simply irrelevant for a few reasons even beyond the Fallacy. For one, ANYTHING that is produced under capitalism is by definition going to act in its markets as a commodity. Even the book you quoted by Marx, Capital Vol. 1, is $9.95 on Amazon. I wouldn't call Marx or Marxists hypocritical for writing such books or buying them. Two, that's simply the contradiction built into the material conditions under which we operate, and you discount the possibility that the filmmakers are self-aware in this regard, and are using the wealth of Netflix in order to produce their Satire, which, as I noted earlier is a humour whose motive and aim is one of amendment.
0:33 if you're going to critique the movie, at the very least you should understand it first. They were going to deviate the comet and the plan did not fail. It was f*ing canceled because of big money donors.
To me, it was a quite positivistic movie. That we all perish in some kind of a instantaneous moment. When in fact, if bad gets to worse with ecology, it's more of a prolonged slower suffering over time.
@@SpirosPagiatakis A 8km meteor, even with the shit show leading up to the impact, is still one big impact, suffering ends within minutes. With ecology, the last of us will have to watch the world perish.
On top of that, ecological disasters almost never arrive conveniently one at a time. Something like a global warm period causing years of drought coupled with a very large volcanic eruption causing years of winter from ash clouds would potentially lead to slowish extinction given the wars that would also result. So yeah, I'll take the big ol asteroid, please. Tidal wave moving at the speed of sound or molten rock superheating the air in your lungs are also pretty metal ways to die.
My nerdy comparison is to Warhammer 40k. Do you want to get eaten by the Tyranids? ( Quick om-nom-nom) Or taken captive by the dark elves, tortured for energy & kept artificially alive as a sofa, hat or a cape. Then later maybe dying, if they allow it. The ecological crisis won't let's us off easy.
I was wondering how the difference between the TV show and the movie being on Netflix is negligible? The difference that the TV show in the movie was an institution that deliberately did NOT choose to showcase the serious issues at hand, while Netflix can be said to have actually gone out of their way to produce this movie, whose message is essentially anti-Netflix. Other than that, I really liked the video!
Well, it's not like netflix has a horse in this race, it's important to understand that corporations such as netflix are ultimately neutral, they are unconcerned with anything but profit. In this regard, the criticism is "you criticize those attempting to use a tragedy, misrepresent it, and make bank while doing so, as you work for a company that uses a tragedy, misrepresents it, and then makes bank while doing so", less so "you participate in capitalism so you're bad". It's a more in-depth critique, shallow as it is, who's depth is ultimately hampered by deciding to do the exact same thing it's criticizing. It's more akin to "You criticize sweatshop that exploit their workers as you order merchandise to be produced in a sweatshop that exploits their workers because it's cheaper than a local alternative".
@@battyjr no, it says, theyre are the only ones that will talk about climate change, when no one is talking about climate change, ... by NOT talking about climate change. in other words, the movie becomes the enemy from the movie.
in my opinion, the movie is less about society and more about the individuals inside our society. the movie differentiates between the mass, that in face of armageddon decides to "enjoy" life and is devoid of meaning, and our protagonists, who choose to love - which is meaning. in that sense the movie is existentialist. it critiques hedonism because it was what led to the destruction of humanity, but more importantly, a hedonistic life is meaningless. instead, we must choose love. maybe love won't save us from the meteor, but it will give our lives meaning.
I agree with your overall systems theory analysis here. Our social and political communication clearly creates an emergent complexity that is incredibly abstruse in its character and dynamic. This is at the heart of what many are calling 'the meaning crisis.' Historically, information systems and communication technology seemed much more like a top-down dissemination of knowledge. Of course, that was an illusion made possible by the monolithic structure of the system. Today, info., data, truth, identity, etc., is endlessly multivalent and coming from too many direction at once. In some ways, this multivalence is most starkly illustrated by how we process and interpret the work of scientists. Political leaders feign concern and engage in impotent measures over climate change and viral outbreaks precisely because there isn't an obvious set of solutions that will result in significant mitigation of negative outcomes. Alternative energy, weening off (or penalizing the use) of fossil fuels, less animal consumption, etc., only affects the negative outcomes of climate change slightly- and that's only according projection models. This is not a result of poor media coverage and storytelling on the part of climate scientists, institutions, etc. It's much more a function of the overall complexity of the problem.
While the critique is interesting I think the notion that the movie is referring exclusively to climate change is too narrow. It applies generally to how people today perceive reality in a polarized way, including but not limited to climate change, even though this is the more direct and easiest comparison.
This was my take as well, not that climate change isn't applicable, but rather the movie was commenting on mass denying and distrust of scientific consensus to everyone's detriment and how it can happen (see vax deniers as a current example in the media). Tbf, this video seems to hint towards this understanding as well at the beginning.
Great critique! But since we live inside contemporary capitalist society and therefore can't by definition act outside of it, is it fair to fault a piece of media for critiquing the system while being a part of it? Wouldn't that imply that any critique would be invalid?
No. I mean a bit yes because the fact that it's a big blockbuster is the reason why its brain dead. However, good movies do exist, and some of them are good critiques of the same things "Don't look up" aimed for. So yeah, it's bad because of the system, but it could have been otherwise
@@shavingriansprivates but if you want your message to reach as many people as possible, you kinda have to do a balancing act between hollywood garbage and the actual message. I'm not defending the movie I'm just trying to figure out what the alternative is.
Prof. Moeller - I know you are aware of the channel 'Jonas Čeika - CCK Philosophy', as you have referred to it in the past. I strongly suggest you watch his video 'What did Baudrillard think about The Matrix?', especially if you are thinking of doing a followup video on the original Matrix, as folks have requested. The upshot of that video is that the Matrix did not live up to its primary inspiration: Jean Baudrillard's 'Simulacra and Simulation'. Instead of making a movie characterizing modernity's state of the Hyperreal, Baudrillard argues that the movie actually degenerates back to Plato's cave because there is a very clear line in the movie between the real and the virtual hyper-reality of the matrix; in reality, there is nothing to get 'out' of, neither cave nor matrix as our current society is coextensive with itself. Baudrillard quipped that the movie the Matrix is the type of movie that a matrix would make. [As an aside for fans of the Matrix franchise, I believe the first half of Matrix 4 does a great job of grappling with Baudrillard's critique of the first movie, while the second half -- although entertaining -- again devolves back to the crisp and legible distinctions alla Plato's cave.] Given Baudrillard's critique, it is notable that your critique of 'Don't Look Up' is very similar: the movie suggests implicitly that there is a clear distinction, if only we'd 'look up'. And, although it is a fair critique, I suggest that 'Don't Look Up' does a better job than the Matrix of characterizing the Hyperreal ecosystem we currently co-create, exactly because all the protags fail to get people to see the 'truth'. Whether they -- e.g. the scientists -- have the 'T'ruth is almost irrelevant, because the point of the movie is that any meaning making that aspires to account for existential risks is currently subsumed by something akin to Mark Fisher's 'Capitalist Realism', viz. the resilient and adaptive capacity for our current 'autopoietic' society to grow regardless of any legible and communicable existential feedback. Enjoy your channel! Cheers.
I liked Jona Hill's speech at the Trump populist rally where he makes no sense, and again when they are in the control room where he can only think of material goods that they will miss. I think it exemplifies how most people are individualistic, materialistic and greedy. I loved the movie, it was a good satire of climate change.
The professor's point flew right over your head lol. It's easy to build strawmans like that. It's far more difficult to understand the complex systems understand which these things work.
@@jimmytimmy3680 tells us he liked a part of the movie Therefore Jimmy Timmy’s entire understanding of the movie is only the part of the movie he happened to tell us he liked. what a brilliant analysis. @Gufestus is so eager to tear someone down that they’ll appeal to authority to say “you’re missing the point” while simultaneously constructing the weakest of arguments to do so. 😅
I don't think the movie suggests that every environmental crisis could be averted but rather that even the avertible crisises cannot be averted because of this entanglement.
It's also important to note that the meteor is a disrete problem while global warming is a continuous one, the meteor hit or doesn't, global warming is bad at +1.1°C, worse at +1.43, even worse at +1.87... Etc and humanity as a whole is not affected in the same way or at the same speed, we try to fix discrete limits, like the Paris accord (1.5 and 2) but in the end it's arbitrary, +1.49 is not fine. That makes the choice to act a lot more difficult, it's the difference between a mugger that would say "give me all your money or I stab you to death" and "give me all your money or i will put my knife 0,1mm into your skin" In the first case, you give your money. In the second one, you migth keep your money and accept the stabbing, it's barely a scratch, then he ask the same question again for another 0.1mm depth, still it's seems a easy choice...etc At some point you get fully stabbed and die. What is the 0.1mm that make you change your decision ? In the end you will probably end up giving all your money and still have a "partial stabbing" which is worse than the first option. (This analogy doesn't take into account the group responsability and the fact that everyone in the world is getting stabbed but at different speed, and you reading this will probably be one of the lucky "slower stabbing speed" and that we all are the mugger and the mugged in different proportions, Jeff bezzos is mostly mugger, a nigerian farmer is mostly mugged)
Honestly, this channel is a diamond in the rough. At some parts I feel it gets dirty and becomes biased, only to be fooled with the occasional gleams of intentional irony meant as meta-commentary over the issues it explores. Another great video as always.
The first video from Carefree Wandering I disagree with, first the praise for the Matrix is really surprising when even Baudrillard and many other critics maintain that the movie fails spectacularly, in a truly american fashion, to illuminate any of the ideas from Simulacra and Simulation (it's coveted "inspiration" ), to pick one criticism you used against Don't look up; the illusion of control, the Matrix sins much more in this department by centring it's whole premiss on the control by the machines. For many other reasons: cheep thrills cinematic style, bad acting and bad story telling the Matrix is not a great movie and a philosophical classic if you have never read a book. As for Don't look UP while some of your points are valid the movie is much more nihilistic then you maintain, I think, just like South Park Don't look Up satirizes everything and everybody including the government's plan and even more specifically the era when big central government plans were possible and just like Tiger King there aren't many likeable or morally redeemable characters in it. My take on Don't look up is that it's main point is not even climate change but just a satirical "look how F@#$@ed everything is"
It's also funny how everybody insists that it's about trumpists while every single aspects is filled with left's politics: female president working closely with a social media CEO. It's what happens when we realise that leftist politicians having all control over culture and politics fail to deliver their promises of the utopia.
@@petergray453 The movie most definitely takes aim at populism and Trumpism and the political right with "jobs from the comet", "they want you to look up to take away your freedom" and "may jesus bless the members of my party" any many more, but there is plenty satire of the left and together with the gender reversal (of the president and the supreme court nomenie) the message, I think, is that the whole political system in the current form is F@#$ed and it's toxic elements like corruption, ignorance, power abuse, disservice to the populous etc. come in all genders, party denominations etc. Which I would think would be a reason for Carefree Wandering to like the movie since one of his main themes here is that both the right and left are dogmatic sudo religious ideologies not serving the wellbeing of humans. Also, if you missed, one of Carefree Wandering main points steaming from systems theory is that nobody has "all control" over culture, politics, media, science etc
@@guysegal8163 ha! That's a lot of words to say: "uh... We are not the baddies, right? RIGHT?". The republicans have so little power in politics and culture, TV that almost all characters are based on real figures from the left. They literally couldn't find any rightwinger in a position of power to mock them- they are all leftists.
@@petergray453 All of the real right wingers who actually have power aren't in plain sight for the most part. This is why the movie couldn't find any, because it has a shallow understanding of political power in the first place, presumably due to bad historical research and investigation (if any). It's entire political worldview is about as deep as an SNL sketch. Leftists hold all the power in culture and politics? Really? What about the Kochs, Mercers, the Ford Family, the Waltons, The Mars Family, Cargill-MacMillan family, Cox family, S.C. Johnson family, Edward Johnson family, Hearst family, Duncan family, Newhouse Family, Bush Family, Clinton Family, Lauders, Du Ponts, Hunts, Busch, Brown, Peter Thiel and others? As the popular dictum goes, follow the money. And believe me, left-wingers don't have nearly as much money as right-wingers to influence politics. To paraphrase Domhoff, the non-political institutions are where politics actually happens.
@@hazardousjazzgasm129 the rightwinger nazis are controling the world from behind the curtain, you say. That's spooky! I'm impressed by your knowing the names but calling them rightwingers is an obvious cope - they are behind the woke agenda, and Blackrock turning everything to the left. It's hard to admit that all the orgs that you supported and hoped will bring us utopia, are in fact evil.
Great review, very interesting perspective! I think my problem with the Systems Theory approach is that I think these different omnivorous systems (capital/big business, media, politics) DO work in concert -- it's just not in a way that keeps humans alive. It's optimized for short-term capital accumulation. But I'll have to actually read Luhmann before passing final judgement of course. Add that to the to-read stack.
If this indeed a philosophical review, why there are no mention about the all caps word "UP" on the title, and the theme of prayer led by the thrasher looking character, Timothee Chalamet, and no critique also about the epilogue which summarizes the representations of the comet, prayer, and the existential problematic of the script?
when this movie presents itself as a "green" movie while being a product to make a profit isn't it possible that movie itself is a product of different systems wth different goals that were involved in t's creaton?
To me the biggest conflict of the movie is that the character of Jennifer Lawrence is so annoying, yet we all have seen the leak*d pictures of her and they keep intruding our mind therefore creating that dichotomy of intellectual repulsion and animalistic attraction
@@ArawnOfAnnwn I think he's poking fun at the practice of rating movies on a numerical scale, thus removing any nuance. Delibratly using a hard to use scale. I in turn undermine these efforts by translating the value into a more typical scale.
As the main topic of the movie is clearly social "Denialism" , I would consider it as a remake of "The Fire Raisers" ("Biedermann und die Brandstifter" in German) , a satire by Swiss author of Max Frisch: " Who fears change more than the calamity: What can they do, against the calamity?" - "... At least we can forget about the questions that bother us. - Means: We do not want answers. As we would otherwise risk to become accountable for our actions." (" Diaries 1946-1949" , - very loosely paraphrased)
A handful of other commentators have already pointed out that we need not see a "conflation" so much as a tension between the models of "rational control" and "systems theory". I raise this point because it seems to me you leave some important work unfinished -- why the model of rational control which likely has currency in the minds of many people is not as descriptively robust and, by extension, prescriptively fertile, as is the systems theoretical model. If, indeed, the rational control model fails then of course it will, like Plato's ideal community, be incapable of providing us with realizable prescriptive insights. To be fair, you make some observations in this direction but a more decisive break with the model of rational control is, I believe, justified if not necessary given your belief -- and mine as well --- that it would be misguided to believe that all we need to do is to get our media, our political system, our economy, to function rationally in order to solve for problems like global warming. Here I am reminded of just how quickly the optimism of Karl Otto-Apel and Jurgen Habermas' discourse model of democracy faded into obscurity in the face of resurgent populism in Europe and America. Although I believe we may retrieve some of his insights from "Legitimation Crisis", his later work in democratic theory and law no longer appear to have resonance with the present. Unfortunately, that some body of work fails to resonate with the present does not in itself indicate whether that work is true, sound, valid, or fruitful, let alone why it is not. Why has the rational model of control become obsolete, untenable, or otherwise sterile? Answering that question, it seems to me, would have completed the project your critique initiates. I suggest we consider a slightly different passage from the "Manifesto" that, I believe, more clearly makes your point while illuminating the problem with the rational control model: "Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells." As with your quote, Marx recognizes the extraordinary productive powers of the capitalist system to which you pointed while simultaneously alluding the inability of that same system to control those powers -- to apply the descriptively rich language Habermas used in "Legitimation Crisis" -- to exert "steering capacities" during crises. Rational control, as you observe, isn't possible over the entire range of the system precisely because each sub-system has its distinctive logics, inputs and outputs, as well as environments. And it's at this point that, I believe, you could show why rational control fails and where Habermas also failed: system integration, pace Habermas, does not require mass orientation toward the norms of intersubjective rationality precisely because that same rationality is already de-differentiated within the logics of each sub-system. Orientation toward "mutual understanding" can just as easily be redirected toward "mutual or shared misunderstanding" and there is no privileged position within the system from which the rational-agent can operate without being entangled within and oriented toward the specific interests of some body of sub-systems -- just as you cannot address an audience without also curating a profile.
Wasn't the movie criticizing the media for not emphasizing the importance of the comet rather than using it for financial gain? The scientists weren't mad that ads were being played. They were mad that it wasn't being taken seriously.
I found the movie to be a moralistic yet pessimistic simplification; "if only we were more virtuous - less dumb and selfish - in what we are doing". I think it's patronizing and naive at the same time. Predicting/understanding what affects what is harder than ever. We really lost the plot by now.
Somehow not everybody picked up on the climate change metaphor. So while it may be a simplification, you could argue that this was a deliberate decision to make the message more easily digestible to society at large.
@@SpaveFrostKing It's grist for the conspiracy theorists mill though. The more you know about the world (the complex interplay of system dynamics) the less clear cut and obvious are your (political) evaluations, views and solutions --- and vice versa.
@@battyjr if this was the point then there would have been no need to caricaturize all the actors, to paint them as ridiculously incompetent and/or selfish. The movie depicts humanity's failure as a very direct consequence of the moral/intellectual shortcomings. This is what's naive in my view. My point is that even given largely rational and moral actors, things can go terribly awry. That's what we see in reality. Climate change shows this well. As long as the systems are set up as incentivizing pollution because it's profitable and environmental degradation has no cost for the individual perpetrator nothing will change because nothing _can_ change given rational agents. It's not only rational but almost imperative to pollute purely given the systems dynamics: not polluting is simply not stable, you are quickly out-competed by those with less qualms and vanish. Better morals can't help us if they are not game theoretically stable.
@@peterp-a-n4743 the example you give is what happens in Leonardo's character. The whole movie highlights that moral actors get out competed. Leo then outcompetes himself as he too becomes immoral- because the system doesn't allow morality to thrive. The film shows that that people acting morally and rationally can't save the planet, because they those people don't form out of... whatever this is. That's what I saw in the film.
Watched the video on carefree wandering about “Don’t Look Up” and my only problem with it is his claim that the movie portrays global warming as a problem that can easily be solved if the government takes action and people listen to the scientists. I have a problem with this because near the end of the movie we find out that the Russians and Chinese (or one of them) launched nukes at the asteroid and it did absolutely nothing; that is, it is revealed that all the plans that could have been implemented to stop the asteroid would have been useless anyways regardless of when the government took action. The problem, in other words, was NOT in fact as simple as everyone made it out to be. And being familiar with physics myself, I knew that nuclear bombs would do little to nothing to effect the asteroid and in fact we were doomed no matter what…the asteroid WAS ALWAYS GOING TO HIT no matter what, and the movie points that out and thus exposes how profoundly powerless we are to these larger forces. Science, politics, media, and big tech companies are all useless In comparison to these Goliath threats. What I’m trying to say is that the movie does an amazing job at showing that everything everyone did in that movie all amounted to nothing and would have no matter when action was taken. That is, “don’t look up” because you can’t do shit about it anyways. The systems will fail no matter what, and yet they will act as though failure WONT happen anyways. The scientists thought it wouldn’t happen in that they thought they could fix it, and everyone else either ignored it would happen or believed the scientists’ claim that it could be fixed. But other than that, it was an amazing video ;)
The Matrix has inspired, as a story, a lot of conspiracy theory proponents' mindsets. I think Don't Look Up will inspire people in realizing the way we try "not to look up"; it's an efficient caricature, to play a more virtuous part in contemporary thought
The Matrix was following on from the famous conspiracy theory novel Illuminatus Trilogy. A story in which a character is initiated into a world of conspiracies and secret societies which forced consensus reality to be questioned. Maybe people talk more about "red pill" now than "illuminati" but the people who use the terms the most sideline the ironic source material that brought them into popular culture or perhaps don't even know they exist.
I disagree that you can't merge systems theory with a rational actor model. Yes CLEARY (and I cannot stress this enough) human beings are not this rational actor but it's wrong to say that anarchy is a necessary price for anarchy. Look at the body example again & compare it to the way capitalist society operates. In the body the heart doesn't say "I'm the most important so I get 90% of the nutrients", nor does any other organ. The body operates on a "to each according to their need" mindset as it were. The body has the metanarrative of keeping itself alive (homostatis). When a society has a metanarrative like that it is capable of tackling complex problems better, historically speaking.
Please Professor, don't allow yourself to become engulfed in pop culture just because you're on UA-cam. This video is fun, but don't forget what this channel should be about: extremely long analyses of Hegel and Marx.
@@walterlippmann4361 I don't, though. I'm being glib. You must be fun at parties. Edit: Used that word wrong. What I meant was flippant or joking or something along those lines
I have similar issues with the film's narrative. However, I don't believe it means to suggest a solution with the original nuking plan, but rather means to further satirize the kind of simplistic solution foisted upon society by profit regulated science faced with a last minute scenario on its hands. The reason this is not clear is down to the plan's having been scrapped in the story in the name of something more absurdly greedy, which renders the point pretty muddy. I think the main point is that the climate science has been ignored and spun by industry such that we are faced with an absurd solution, and even then it is not beyond being set aside for something even worse than that.
Idk, in the film, during the first launch, they stated something like an 85% chance of success with the nuking. That makes it kinda obvious that they’re suggesting that the threat would be eliminated if people just tried. With climate change, however, there are a lot of factors to be taken into account. Even with everyone working together, reversing or stopping the effects of climate change is still a very complex task. While converting to renewable energy is possible and would reduce C02 emissions, it’s not as simple as launching a nuke at a meteor.
@@beej1234 I agree that it's a more complex task. And, again, I think the calculation of chances for success is part of the parody that's easily lost because the film-makers didn't think through how to make that more obvious, which part of the film's failure to make its flawed analogy function. Think of it this way: nobody who's been following this topic, which includes writer/director McKay, is not aware that the warning signs of anthropogenic climate change extend back into the 1970s, and indeed have been part of more serious political discourse for all of this century. We have reached predicted tipping points already, and the question is how to avert full catastrophe. I think this is what the film is about. Not just climate change. Unfortunately they should have workshopped the script more to flesh out more nuanced details. The irony is, in Hollywood, often too much money is at stake; if you don't get it right once you go into production, editing can only fix so much. Clearly, they failed to get the point across as well as they could have.
@@dvdly so is this film sending a message that it’s been too late to stop the climate crisis? With the inclusion of the high chance to stop the meteor referring to what could have been done about climate change decades ago?
@@beej1234 More or less. Still, I think it's not a matter of nuking the meteor as having become an only option, but for the purposes of the allegory the more likely result the more immanent the disaster becomes. So even now it's not as if, best case scenario, there's nothing human civilization could possibly do to mitigate the worse of the disaster, except there are systemic, paradigmatic obstacles to it. Come to think of it, maybe the meteor would better represents those obstacles in the metaphor.
Very interesting review. I wonder wether the incompatibility of rational control and co-evolving systems could be solved with the introduction of a “religious” system that supersedes and “guides” the other systems towards an optimal state.
I totally agree with you about Don't look up, I'm sure there's more things I could criticize about it if I was forced to rewatch it. However I must say that the matrix is a superficially philosophical film and a bad one at that. All of the philosophical themes are alluded to as if they had never even read the original texts they're referencing, including some conscious willing misreadings like their reading of S&S by Beaudrillard, they don't make any effort to go into any of the themes or really do anything that hadn't been done a dozen times in foreign film by the time the matrix was conceived. they make no effort to connect or comment on any of the philosophical "themes" which function much more like props and costumes than themes. the film is just a mediocre action movie that figured out you could shoot 360 degrees and mess with it in post using a shit ton of cameras. that's all the film did. the first matrix was truly not an intelligent or even well educated film. it was a rash appropriation of anti capitalist philosophies and turned into a fucking movie franchise designed from the top down to sell god damn action figures. the matrix is terrible.
I see your point. I don't really think the movie suggests any solution, it rather just shows what's wrong. As a socialist I was really surprised how uncontroversial this movie was to me; surprised at takes like: "supporting a middle ground to combat divisiveness looks good, but is not really productive". Basically, I just laughed my ass off for 2 hours at the stupidities of capitalism. But it's very possible that because of this lack of a solution given by the movie, people will take from it what they will. I don't think any right winger (conservative or neo-liberal) can interpret this movie to fit their narrative, but a left liberal might look at this movie and think: 1. it's hopeless, 2. the different systems in society should just do their job, 3. they might even take it as a call for personal betterment (that's their go-to anyways). As a socialist, I have hope, I realize these systems ARE doing their jobs and that's the problem, and the only personal betterment we should do is stop being so unoffensive and middle-ground, and start explicitly advocating for solutions to the problem. That's also a crazy thing about liberals, you'll explain to them how a revolutionary change in the government or in business would look like and they'll say you're too extreme, but when some billionaire comes up with the idea to colonize Mars or whatever Bill Gates is gaslighting the public with, or here in the Netherlands we have had a resurgence of popularity of nuclear energy because ONE person in the media said it shouldn't be taboo anymore, and they'll love it. We should stop taking billionaires (or the media or the government) to be independent figures who can be used as an argument from authority; they have no authority on anything; they should only use the information from people with actual authority to do their job.
Thanks for the review - great analysis. I would just add that the solution to the climate crisis will have to include Marx's favorite protagonists - the working class.
You've got it completely backwards. You're framing the premise of the movie too narrowly, and the conclusion too broadly. The movie is about modern science denialism, unrestrained grifterism, and the resultant collective action failures _in general._ You may be particularly sensitive to the climate change issue and thus prone to reading that message into the movie, but there is equal evidence to suggest the movie is referring to the mishandling of the current global viral outbreak or the repeated global financial crises of the past few years. Virtually no reviewer I have encountered has failed to see this in the movie, and none have failed to mention the viral outbreak as a potential inspiration for the movie. From here, you then misinterpret the conclusion of the movie too broadly. It's not suggesting that there is some perfect solution whereby these different social systems could be marshaled into working together for the benefit of humanity. It's just saying we can do a little better than the state of absolute madness we've been experiencing recently. In the movie, China, Russia, India, France, etc. actually do manage to get their shit together and launch a rescue mission. *Do you really think that the filmmakers are actually suggesting these countries are some utopian earthly paradise where economy, politics, and the media lovingly hold hands and work for the betterment of mankind?* No dude. The movie is simply an indictment of the current dysfunctional and frankly stupid state of American politics. Not every call to do better is an exhortation towards perfection.
As someone who has followed global warming science for over a decade, I found this to be an EXCELLENT review and analysis! You point out the exact problem I had with it's narrative, even though I did enjoy the laughs I got while watching it. The only critique I would say here is that science can't tell us truths about everything.... it can only tell us half truths about a limited subset of testable hypotheses... It will never be able to explain why we have conscious experience, for example. It also will always be running up against complexity in systems where the variables can't be adequately isolated. And obviously, the meaning of life is forever out of reach. Still, this has little effect on the quality of this video. Cheers!
Nothing is forever out of reach, we just haven't thought about it. Science is just limited by our own senses and capabilities. We will figure it out eventually.
@Obscure Wondering no, but now I'm intrigued... This was just my own conclusion while getting multiple degrees in science.... With the help of some plant medicines I'm sure!
@@jimmytimmy3680 science is a very specific process that is self limiting. You have to be able to design experiments that have falsifiable hypotheses. There are processes in the world that will never fall into this category. I already named a few. Try to design an experiment about those and you will see
My take is that this movie isn't trying to say much in the way of Philosophy or Science, but rather attempting to capture the visceral feelings of those who *are* educated and informed about climate science (including literal climate scientists) and the way the world and its systems are gaslighting them every moment of every day. I think your points regarding the film's portrayal of grand social systems are valid, but very possibly not the intent of the filmmakers. The proposition "if we just made these systems better" doesn't seem to be the critique in my opinion. More so, I see this film as portraying the nihilistic and somewhat hopeless gut feeling many are left with in the face of these systems failing in this manner, rather than making any attempt at conveying some sort of solution for these issues. Regarding the allusion to the phrase "Don't Look Up" implying obvious and objective evidence about Climate Change; I again do not believe this is a statement that "everyone is just stupid" but rather an insight into the *gut feeling* of those who are informed and educated on the topic in the face of the world around us and its social systems. I don't see this movie as any sort of philosophical statement or a call to action, but rather the encapsulation of a very specific feeling that a large (but very small relative to the world population) group experience on a daily basis. I think the core of where we disagree lies in your comparison and implied correlation to the Matrix; I believe the Matrix is representative of the "Common Man" or "average" person, while "Don't Look Up" is NOT really talking about or speaking on the average person. It's a movie about those who are into science, are informed, and the dissonance they feel emotionally with the world and social systems around them.
I'm not sure what most of your comment has to do with the video. The video's critiques were about implicit arguments that the movie makes, not the intent behind it. The movie can still intentionally be about a scientist's experience while still unintentionally/implicitly re-instantiating all of the problems mentioned. Exegesis and analysis doesn't necessarily become invalid or impossible just because of intent. The whole point of critique is often to point out problems that the creator did not notice or take into account - in other words, unintentional aspects. Besides, The Matrix is categorically not about the common man, at least not past the first 20 minutes, it's about a chosen hero who is literally referred to as "The One". The way the Matrix frames the reality/virtual simulacra binary isn't even accurate or relateable to real life. Baudrillard himself criticized the movie for making the difference between the two too obvious, as the entire point of his simulacra/hyperreality concept was that distinguishing between the real and the fake is becoming harder and harder.
I don't even like the movie that much, but I really hated this review. So many assumptions, like how when the movie shows some systems as broken, it must mean that it promotes an "enlightened myth of control". Or saying that the movie claims there is an easy solution to climate change, which it only does if you take the metaphor literally. If you wanted to talk about the movie from a system-theory perspective, I think you need to talk about what happens when systems short circuit, ie what happens when politics is only about elections and never about governing, or when media reports only on itself. And maybe talk about how systems can be un-broken.
I think he is missing the point. The film isnt there to tell us the answers, only to point out the problems. the film asking us to look up doesnt mean 'looking up will solve the problem', it only means that looking up makes you aware of it. yes it highlights specific elements that causes the issue, but nowhere does it claim that science is the answer, only that science is a device to get a possible answer
Change it quickly now. It is not a meteorite. It is a meteorite only when it falls on earth. Love your videos, bought You and Your Profile last week (even though it was £63)!!! Keep this up. I live on them.
10:45 lol You actually made me feel we had a moment there. Made me feel you were talking directly to me, and that we are friends. I'm getting addicted ;-) lol
The question is: do these systems have a right to continue to be as they are, to be beyond our control? If the current situation is bad for us then it should be changed so there are only systems which we can control and actually use for our own good. Current systems should be changed to be more controllable or if it's not possible they should be abolished completely, in favour of something better. And if we don't do that then maybe soon there will be no 'we' at all - and these systems in which we are trapped now will die anyway - with humanity (and social systems theory).
I do feel the film does turn it's gaze inward, but only very subtly. Especially in the scene where the show the "Just Look Up" concert, and we can see that it's being streamed on BASH services as well, with users commenting and creating traffic, generating data for BASH in the very event that is supposed to be resisting BASH and fomenting radical change--one which is, however, far too late, as the inevitable failure of the resistance is predestined at the very beginning of the second arc, and the latter half of the film is a slow, painful ineluctable journey to oblivion that models itself after the social shift from the global capitalist, Keynesian quasi-social economies of the past, that may have responded adequately to the threat, to the techno-feudalist economy of today ruled by the Isherwells of the world, a natural continuation of capitalism. That is once the film reaches the second arc, all the attempts at radical change relied on the very structures (social media) which strengthened the status quo, and had already pre-incorporated resistance into the profit-program. Although it's only faint, the film suggests the possibility of reading the film against itself in this excessive content, forcing you, only briefly, to view the film as a piece of media not unlike those it features, that was probably brought to you by the same algorithms it derides; therein lies the potential. Because we have to view Mindy's narrative as one in which, as Zizek says, "we can imagine the end of the world before we can imagine the end of capitalism", but transported into a new era where such apocalypses are turned into parodies, comedies, and media-objects that re-enforce the need to keep watching, keep streaming, keep gazing, and keep producing FOR the gaze as the only activity in the face of the inevitable collapse. In fact, by showing what happens when you feed the gaze (everything goes to hell), it is able to ask the audience to stop watching, stop gazing. Because in the end, there is a difference between telling someone to do something and actually doing something, but one cannot act within discourse, one must find a way through it.
Well ultimately I see that as critique against the other side where their protests include a lot of talking, holding hands and support, but not enough actual revolution against the established order. So it tells why the resistance is ineffective, because they're essentially trying an appeal to humanity to reach monsters that have none.
I vaguely remember the ancient movie Armageddon in which the earth is saved from certain disaster by the efforts of the Heroic Male. That movie had its cultural semiotic common to movies of Clint, Sylvester, Arnold, etc. Has life become so complex that common people can no longer accept these fantasies? Or is the Donald an extension of them?
Two questions before your profile potentially becomes so extended it may be near-impossible to expect your reply, Professor: 1) do you believe there is a way the movie could have represented co-evolving systems theory without implicitly advocating for rational control theory? 2) I appreciate you're poking fun at yourself with the "academics want fame too, please subscribe" bit, but it did tickle my curiosity; so, to the best of your self-understanding, could you tell us what you hope to achieve by expressing your views on youtube? As much as "having fun" could be an enjoyable response, it's surely not one a profound thinker such as yourself would be content hiding behind. 😉
imo. Don't look up is a great movie. Of course its made in a capitalist system so it will be monetized. But the movie is very good, and idk if its even satire at this point. Instead of global warming, replace it with how the ruling class always wants and makes the working class to argue and fight with each other instead of rightfully criticizing the ruling class, and tbh it happens a lot in real world. For example in India, the ruling class makes working class fight on religion while the whole country is going to shit. If you see the movie in that way, everything makes sense
Reminds me of the Wolf of Wall Street, another DeCaprio flick supposedly a critique of greed and finance. Only problem is the movie was funded with stolen funds from Malaysian relief organizations.
How does it spread a control narrative? I don’t see it personally. To me the movie didn’t demonstrate any narrative at all towards how to actually solve climate or any other problem. It was a reflection piece. Even the “hero” wasn’t a hero at all. He cheated on his wife and at the end decided to eat dinner and pretend nothing was wrong. It’s a pessimistic film, which doesn’t make it bad. Some people may take away a control narrative from it. But that’s not what the movie was intending to do in my opinion. I’m curious though, what about the movie gave it a control narrative in your view?
It’s interesting you say Matrix did it better when Jean Baudrillard had almost the identical criticism of it that you do with Don’t Look Up: namely, that The Matrix is precisely the type of movie the matrix would make about itself.
Finally, Zizek has some real competition in the movie review space.
Slalop Krijek does not critique movies. He invents psychoanalytical "meanings" ( whatever what that might mean to the freudian sect;)) to specific ( generally american or ..rarely european ) movies and projects them onto his twisted lense ..before he spits them( pun intended) as definitive truths
Moeller interprets the movie and gives some possible lectures, Zizek just introduces his psychoanalytical nonsense into the movie
@@eldjoudhi Zizek is not a movie analyst, he rathe tries to say something about our condition by dialectically comparing it to an interpretation of a fiction.
Yeah
@@LP-ow4hw what do you mean by dialectically comparing?
The rating part at the beginning is pure gold.
Yes! 4.5/6.3 really subverted my expectations.
@@vladcassidy8313 I give this video 3.25 stars out of 4.75 stars.
@@InternetDarkLordfor me, t'was 4 stars out of 3.14 moons
I liked it that in Jennifer Lawrence’s character’s eyes the main villain was the general that charged them for free snacks
The motivation of the general was that his time is more imiportant than theirs (as he saw it), yet they were sitting around spending an equal amount of time doing nothing. So to correct this imbalance, he initiated a financial transaction, a kind of tax or tribute.
The irony of this is the victims - DiCaprio and Lawrence, are at the the top of another hierarchy, that of Hollywood actors. Assistants to them scurry around getting them ready for their scenes, including this one, and looked on, probably with considerable bemusement, as they were "exploited".
Her and dicaprio already fought nearly to the bitter end against the selfish billionaires and the president so I thought it was just a clever hint at how those in power will make it seem like THEY are crucial to your wellbeing, when in reality it's the other way around. A company can exist without its ceo, a ceo can't exist without having a company to plot over. But hey if you were triggered by a satirical movie having a little callback, and were smart enough to notice it but not understand it, then you do you bud.
@@jaredaltair if you think a company can exist without a ceo you have no idea how business works
I don't know if I entirely agree with this. I felt like the movie was showing more of a descriptive than a prescriptive narrative. It wasn't saying that climate change is as easy to see as "looking up" at a comet in the sky (at least not at this stage of climate change). I think it was saying that by the time we can point to natural disasters and definitively and intuitively argue that they are the result of climate change, it will be too late. The meteor will be too close, and we'll rely entirely on unknown and untested technologies to fix it at that point. The movie did depict various kinds of people in more or less moral lights, but it also depicted ordinary and decent people (like Katie's boyfriend towards the end, who expresses doubt that the meteor exists) as being susceptible to the broader systemic forces that lead to the disaster in the end.
Even clever people can miss the point. You got it bang on though. This is where conversations work better than monologues. You might have stopped him in his tracks with that comment.
He also offers a prayer meaning his belief isn’t necessarily objectively based. It reminds me of some atheists who don’t understand correspondence theory.
@@rossleeson8626 the prayer could simply be a joke. One last punchline before punchlines be for good. The last ever joke.
Exactly how I felt. Wish I could put words together as well as you can.
@@Theactivepsychos yeah I think that was the writers motivation
This movie is still being "reduced" by reviewers, who usually go for the "stand up ovation since it's a satirical film on how ridiculous conservatives are when it comes to climate change" or "this movie it's objectively a bad movie since the movie is basically saying 'climate change bad'". Reviews that fall under such premises seem to be missing the whole point, the bigger picture. The movie shows a perspective that nothing, not even a enormous evident problem which can end civilization as we know it, bring "people together". It goes to a simple argument: we are not in a mental, social space which allows and prepares us to deal with our problems. Rationality doesn't work, irrationality doesn't work. Denial makes sure nothing will change. Power corrupts. Personal interest, hedonistic goals are often put first. The scientist enjoys the game. The politics bend over to capital interest since the ones in power were put there by large corporations who want nothing but control the world. Every single little person in that movie is within a system that will not be changed from the inside. Look, even the fact that reviews are either blindingly saying it's a masterpiece or saying it's liberal propaganda about only climate change, proves the point of the movie. People are either arguing about who got it worst and who knows best in a house fire or saying there's no fire. The fire being a problem, that's it. The intricate aspect of it all is that the movie shows we have problems relates to climate change, inequality, ignorance + illiteracy, governance, economic and social relations and so on. That's the movie. It's all of that...
True! It does paint such a complete picture. Perhaps too complete to grasp.
How can it make a point of "nothing brings people together" when it grossly misrepresents what would actually happen? If it were to make that point shouldnt it show what would actually happen: a lot of different countries working together to prevent it, but also general chaos from people thinking that the world will end
Now, I'd love to hear a longer review of The Matrix!
YES!
My thought precisely.
+
How long can you draw out "total garbage movie" though?
@@alexanderleuchte5132 We want Hans's review, that's the topic of this thread. And he clearly finds it interesting.
Your opinion is of no consequence.
Both critiques feel slightly empty:
For problem 1: I do not think that the film "suggests a rational self-control view". The film is about "seeing", in particular, perception by politics, media etc. It merely supposes, that there is a simple, objective reality to be seen. The film does not present an alternative way of organizing society, neither is it interested to question the premise of a simple objective truth. Of course it is valid to criticize the film if someone doesn't like this premise, but framing this as being self-contradictory as in "systemic" vs "controlled" feels kind of forced.
For problem 2: even though it is a bit of an ad-hominem, I think this is the stronger critique. The film could at least acknowledge its own hypocrisy and I think it would have been a better film if it had a bit of self-irony.
I don’t think there is a way to point out the problem with generating attention without engaging in the problem of generating attention.
This hypocrisy is acceptable.
It’s like warfare. How do you stop a violent invading army? Well, you use a violent defensive army.
Sometimes it’s best to fight fire with fire and by extension, engage in hypocrisy.
I like that the movie shows the frustration of the scientific community in a good way. But in the end it doesn't really criticize the system. Its more of a cheerleading attempt to improve our selves, our own individual attitudes. The movie never really acknowledges that the system, the very core of it, is creating this existential threat in the first place.
But the other myth is the construction of some objective “scientific community” to begin with. If we just put our trust in these well-intentioned technocrats, and organized society in relation to the quantitative mechanical outlines of efficiency and harmony that they’ve constructed for us (to desire) everything would be okay! But the idea of something like that is also what grounds a certain life-bare life distinction between quantitative efficiency and qualitative flourishing. Which is why you see the same technocratic elites make some ruthless decision like kill 5% of X population for stronger long term growth and benefits for the other 95%. As soon as the technocratic elite have determined that such a problem exists, the entire system is forced into a dualistic opposition of how best to solve the problem, all while taking for granted that X is a problem, that only X Y Z solutions are possible, and that the eventual creation of X Y Z society is the only legitimate form of social organization. It’s a lot like how foreign policy analysts will tell us everything we need to do to “fix” some foreign country like Afghanistan, have the “experts” come in and manufacture mass consent from the voting populace, all while we take for granted (us, not the elites since they themselves construct oppositional discourse to begin with) whether it actually is right, responsible, virtuous etc to engage in the technocratic reordering of that country to begin with. The other myth the movie pedalled is that science is somehow some objective identifier of “true” and morally correct knowledge above otherwise partisan systems like politics and religion. Whereas this modernist myth of the objective totalization of knowledge as an empirical study we simply need to apply to reality, with no sense of distinction between the social, moral, political, and scientific realms is the main foundational illusion of the movie to begin with. If only we “listened!” To the experts, everything would be okay! (Despite ofc these experts having been the ones who also justified the creation of the problem in the first place, especially global warming). And the only justification for trusting power and monied interests now as opposed to before relies on that enlightenment myth of progress, that somehow technocratic society is becoming mot just more knowledgeable but also more “moral”, all without any substantiation.
@@fahim-ev8qq It seems to me that people finding fault along these lines all missed that the 'scientific community' in the film was NOT virtuous and objective. The "top", Harvard and Yale scientists (whose positions were used as a cudgel against the truthtelling individual scientists the two main characters) signed on with the Silicon Valley plan that resulted in doom! The scientific community is shown to be ideological, not pure.
@@fahim-ev8qq "Which is why you see the same technocratic elites make some ruthless decision like kill 5% of X population for stronger long term growth and benefits for the other 95%." This is backwards; you're describing something less batshit than reality where the vast majority are crushed under a tiny handful of boots who now have nukes and will burn the world rather than give up control, and we all know it and are paralysed.
@@solgato5186 I’m not sure how what you’re saying is different than what I’m saying. For just one example, hasn’t the American ruling class sacrificed heartland America to focus on the expansion of coastal-urban elite influence and prosperity ? That’s what I mean, “expertise!” Is always an ideological mold, not the independent and objective source of truth.
@@fahim-ev8qq Humans on the coast are getting crushed too; and it's bigger than that--eight billion people getting stomped by a few thousand billionaires. Humanity should defend itself but we're too busy blaming each other instead of eating the rich wherever they live.
Unfortunately prof. Moeller succumbed to his tendency of discussing his own ideas rather than engaging with the work that he's criticizing in a deep and fair manner. Before criticizing a film, one must first figure out what the film is trying to say.
Let's start with the point that the comet crisis is not like the global warming crisis, which I believe to be fundamentally misguided. ALL metaphors highlight some aspects of the represented phenomenon and obscure others. Before judging the accuracy of the metaphor, one must consider what the metaphor's purpose is. The metaphor of global-warming-as-comet 1) simplified the problem in question, 2) gave it more urgency and 3) made it more dangerous, *which all served to highlight the reasons why the problem is denied (ignored, belittled, psychologically repressed) by the society facing it.*
And this is what the message of the movie is about: the reasons why, as a society, we ignore an urgent, important problem. These reasons might be working more subtly for global warming (because it's a different kind of crisis), but they should be of the same kind. If these reasons were not the same, if the crisis response of the fictional society was entirely different than that of the real world one, THAT would show the inaccuracy of the metaphor WITH RESPECT TO the message of the film.
*Crucially then, the movie is not about solutions to global warming, it's about why we are not looking for solutions with the urgency that we should be looking for them! So what if the film misrepresents global warming? It's not what it's supposed to represent!*
Now for the conclusion (19:53).
Ad 1. You don't get to impose a theoretical framework on someone's work and then judge said work by how well it adheres to said framework. What if the author(s)... reject this framework in the first place? Don't think in these terms? What if the contradiction you found is entirely of your own making and the author(s) aren't guilty of it at all?
Ad 2. The criticism again ignores the author(s). It's as if the production was made by an impersonal committee with absolutely no deliberate authorial thought put into it -- which is implicitly assumed here, with no support. Maybe there are people in there, trapped in these systems, commenting on the workings of these systems from the inside? Maybe we could hear them if we listened?
What's more, the criticism here has a strong whiff of "aha! you criticize society, but you participate in society yourself, you hypocrite!". Apparently Netflix is (or rather the writers and directors of Netflix are) inherently incapable of certain kinds of messaging without at the same time being hypocritical about this messaging. I don't buy it. You can always communicate yourself out of hypocrisy.
Still, there is definitely something to be said about how the serious message is made more palatable with satire and memes. The movie wouldn't be nearly as popular if it was a solemn tragedy, an approach that would perhaps be more appropriate, but paradoxically less effective. That's a clear point of similarity between the fictional world and the world that the fiction comments on and yes, the movie doesn't seem very self-aware in this respect. At least I didn't detect it.
But go beyond what the film is trying to say and you fail to adequately engage with it.
Well put, I agree with pretty much all of it, and I get the reasoning behind the first part of your conclusion, and you're right, it's a weird move to flatly impose _your_ worldview onto a movie prima facie and find it wanting for not patting you on the back. But I would say that in this case, the screenwriter, David Sirota, would actually agree with the systemic perspective that Moeller is putting forward.
It's very interesting to see this channel evolve alongside my own studies and then viewing the parallel ideas. I did my MA in philosophy which I produced a paper reconciling Sartre's existential phenomenology and Charles Taylor's ethic of authenticity. Now I'm doing my PhD in Geography working in a systems theoretic space...
I have a few questions.
1. Do you think a systems theoretic lens can be taught en masse to provide clarity for everyone? It seems this is at least part of what many of the German Idealists forwarded as a new educational theory: I.e. von Humboldt's holistic view of education, bildung, etc.
2. What do you think philosophy's role in the climate crisis is? Of course your video in the purpose of philosophy can at least provide me with a preliminary answer to criticize the religious and pseudo-religious attitude that emerge. But can philosophy assert a way of knowing, or even a way of feeling, perhaps that can galvanize legitimate action? Here I'm thinking of a shift to Marx's idiom to change the world with philosophy, not to understand it. On the other hand, contemporary climate ethics literature seeks to criticize and adapt classic ethics to retool them for the larger systemic challenges we face in the real world.
Thanks for your videos, they keep me thinking philosophically about our world while I'm increasingly turning into a scientist.
14:19 - I think this comment demonstrates that there isn't necessarily a contradiction in the movie. I think that given the systems theory reading of the movie it could be claimed that the movie makes two claims: (1) as a matter of fact the society currently functions as you describe in the first part of the movie, (2) but it would be preferable if it functioned according to the rational self-control model you describe. In this way there would be no contradiction since one is a is-statement and the other is a ought-statement.
I agree
I agree completely. I fail to see a contradiction based on this review, though admittedly I didn't see the movie.
I think the point the prof is making is that you cannot expect to control society according to the rational model, there are too many actors, too much complexity, and no completely objective view exists. This is the fiction the movie conveys, when in reality a response to climate change will be inherently political, it cannot be purely scientific / technocratic.
@@CaptaineBluntschli the problem is that there isn't really an alternative. Loosely invoking "complex" or "systems" modelling as solutions does not really progress the discussion
Rationalism is a cool religion
From my perspective, not only does the movie acknowledge the autopoiesis and symbiosis of the social systems, it suggests that the systems have become such "selfish omnivores" that their symbiosis with other systems (particularly and especially with Science), which they ignore in doing, so has made it so that these systems paradoxically sow their own destruction; because the Media, Economic, and Political systems are neglecting Science for their own self-preservation (which, especially in the Political system, has become standard in the "Post-Truth" age we seem to be in), they actually work against themselves by ensuring that these systems will be destroyed by that which the ignored Science is trying to inform them about (in the movie, a meteor, in real life, the Climate Catastrophe). From this, it seems that the movie does not expect each social system to "transcend itself" as you put it, but to recognize their necessary symbiosis in order to preserve their autopoiesis.
That sounds more like an inference of an unintended message than the actual message.
The movie tried to be quite on-the-nose with its message, and it did its job well enough. Heh.
Great point(s). Thanks
To me this movie doesn't only reflect the anti science part of our political culture but the entire outlook towards where we are going as a country. This stifling mess reflects itself in domestic and foreign policies, the economy, cultural issues and in our political system itself. We are sick and this movie shows it. Rome rotted from the inside.
In your point noting that Dont look up suggest self control through science, a point to consider would be Leo's character. He was supposed to be this "pure" scientist, completely out of the loop on other things in the world, a loving father with a focus on family. Yet, even he could not withstand the "system" and eventual became part of its replication. Jenifer's character, while not becoming apart of the system did give up and disconnect. I think this could be viewed as a statement how taking control rationally as you said, is very hard if not impossible even for the most head strong opponents.
The movie's main shortcoming is in its inadvertent real-world effect: it ends up inciting reflection upon the movie itself rather than any external action. This is a failing shared by all contemporary art, which in its current form exhausts its powers as cathartic entertainment consumption, rather than being able to stimulate any subversive social force.
But what's the difference? How can art mobilize unless it motivates the symbolic understanding to transform into real world action. If you wamma say art is useless I get it, but otherwise what is your vision of an alternative motovating art?
@@battyjr hey. I'd never say Art's useless - no more or less than anything else, anyways. And I'm also prepared to admit it's also not a given that Art should have a mobilising effect; it happens to be my opinion that it's good when it does, but other views of the value of Art do exist which are also legitimate. Mine's an assessment of the current role of artistic expression which I think is pretty marginal and petty compared to other historical times. I wouldn't expect it to be any different as Art's an expression of society so at times when society was actively trying to subvert its rules, Art had the power to instigatate further subversion. Whereas in the current state of widespread hopeless and disassociated apathy, it's unrealistic to expect Art to act as any kind of effective catalyst for real change. Art is a co-evolved sub-system, is what I'm saying, can't be held solely responsible for either the problems or solutions- it's the epoch itself that's at fault. But I am pointing out there used to be days when a film, a concert, or even a play could lead to a march or a riot - this is not something Don't Look Up can hope to achieve. Its effect is primarily masturbatory self-pity or distraction, which is reflective of the general societal trend.
@@Anatolij86 i see! It is odd to say the shortcoming is the movie's, but you clarified that it is and it isn't.
@@battyjr I'd say it's only a shortcoming under the assumption that the movie aims to stir action. What are your thoughts on the film?
@@Anatolij86 I totally agree if that is the goal of the movie, but I felt like the movie was itself stating that it couldn't motivate any amount of change- so I'm not sure that was a goal of its makers. I think it's more of a description than anything else. If it has any goals to motivate, my guess is that it's through the mass recognition of the state we're in- since it is hard to change things you don't see as problems. Like how alcoholics have to admit they have a problem. Admitting it doesn't mean they'll change, but it is a prerequisite- and I think by that standard, the movie was a success.
I love the ending of this video. Bertolt Brecht wrote a great poem called "legend of the origin of the book tao-te-ching..." or "Legende von der Entstehung des Buches Taoteking auf dem Weg des Laotse in die Emigration". It says in the last strophe:
"Aber rühmen wir nicht nur den Weisen
Dessen Name auf dem Buche prangt!
Denn man muß dem Weisen seine Weisheit erst entreißen.
Darum sei der Zöllner auch bedankt:
Er hat sie ihm abverlangt."
"but the honor should not be restricted
to the sage whose name is clearly writ.
for a wise man's wisdom needs to be extracted.
so the customs man deserves his bit.
it was he who called for it."
So honor to the young man asking in the end!
I don't get the connection. What does that have to do with this, or for that matter even with the Tao-te-Ching?
@@ArawnOfAnnwn the poem is about Laozi leaving the city and meeting "the customs" (Zöllner), who asks him to write down his teachings (which according to this legend is the Tao-te-Ching), because he thinks its of practical use to him. The customs provides him with food and shelter to do so. In the end of the this video there is also someone asking the Prof Moeller to clarify, who is presumebly also the one who edits the video. Without him there would be no video, like there would be no Tao-te-Ching in the legend.
@@genuinely_gamin Oh that's what you meant.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn yeah sorry. Didn't clarify I was talking about the ending of this video and not the movie. I edited it now.
The view that ecosystems are something that is intrinsically stable and self-sustainable (19th century Gumbolt's theory of Landskap) is not quite supported by the 20th century science. Yes, they are self regulating (brutally) but as soon as some "part" takes advantage it will not stop until the whole thing collapses. The idea that nature is peaceful and in harmony is quite bogous at this point.
This is a rather funny statement from someone wo basically is an intrinsically stable ecosystem himself, which takes great measures to prevent any part from taking "selfish" advantage. That principle of homeostasis is not just a feature of multi-cellular organisms, but also a characteristic of ecosystems formed by several species. And the idea that the whole biosphere of Earth also functions in this way is by no means off the table.
@hasslfoot That wasn't what i was arguing against. I was more concerned about the ecosystem-society parallel.
@@sitis999 He's agreeing with you, not arguing against you. It's seems a sensible hypothesis that collapsed ecosystems are not around to be studied and therefore add to a survivorship bias of ecological systems always being "in balance".
To add another example from biology: Cancer is something that is known to occur regularly even within homeostatic, well-functioning bodies and which often doesn't stop until the entire body and its systems collapse.
@@Craxxet Nah, he was talking about fossil fuels and earth's system. Which wasn't my point at all.
Systems theory doesn't necessarily say they are intrinsically stable or indefinitely self sustainable. The point is that they are self organizing and complex so are very resilient. Even if specific ecosystems collapse the biosphere re absorbs their content and recycles it. It is precisely at the peak of instability when new forms of organizational complexity arise.
But then, how do you make a movie that will reach a broad audience without falling into the "you made this movie for the sake of money" narrative? Should we really criticize artists for monetizing their ideas and creations, using Big Evil Corporations as means to fight Big Evil Corporations?
On the other hand, the Matrix is a movie I had seen as the most paradoxical movie ever - while fighting against the Spectacle, it iself had become a spectacle for making money in the bluepilled world (with the birth of the franchise and advertisement on those big billboards). I agree with Baudrillard when it comes to his own criticism of the Matrix - it represents the illusion and the real world as dual opposites (in the form of the red pill and the blue pill), while his own narrative says that they "implode" to the point where there isn't a clear line between what is real and what's an illusion. Great video on this: ua-cam.com/video/ZJmp9jfcDkw/v-deo.html&ab_channel=TheLivingPhilosophy
Hard to rage against the machine when it turns our rage into grist for the mill.
The answer to your question is to not to betray your principles. If you want to create a work of art that changes people's minds but is also quite successful in order to change people's minds more effectively, the key is to not betray or change your principles as to why you want to make the movie in the first place. By not sacrificing meaning for your success, you run the best chance of the movie making the most impact. Sacrificing meaning for entertainment will ultimately just lead to a watered down message, which will be less effective in the long run. It is better to push for a 'less entertaining' movie to be successful and try to make that movie as successful as possible rather than to publish something you don't believe in or will not do the job. Doing so way will just lead to nothing AND betray your values anyway. I don't know whether Don't Look Up compromised its values because I don't know the creators or the people involved,, but it is probably true that most of the people involved in the creation of that movie valued creating something entertaining, or making a fun movie, over making a serious, heavy political message (or a mixture of both of these things). That's all good and stuff but doesn't necessarily make it a movie that will have the impact that some people would want it to be.
I wonder how Matrix did that. Prof Moeller also says Matrix reflects on its own role too. I wonder where in the movie. I need to re-watch it, it's been so long
@@lbjvg Hypocrisy isn't even the correct word in the first place. Replace hypocrisy with "self-refuting" and Moeller's argument makes more sense. He's not saying "all media is bad, so using media to critique media is meaningless", he's making a much more specific argument: criticizing content that retains information relevant to societal functioning while also failing to provide such info yourself is the issue. If you implicitly internalize the same conditions of your opposition into your own critique, it falls apart like a house of cards because you re-instantiate the same conditions or habits you wish to get rid of. An Inconvenient Truth didn't have a love story or any weird shoehorned subplots and it was still a massive success of a film.
Amusingly, the latest Matrix movie is a direct reflection on the question you pose about the original Matrix - ie, it quite explicitly reflects on the original trilogy having been absorbed by the system that it criticized, and its conclusion is something akin to resistance having to continually evolve, rather than become complacent and let the system absorb it after incremental victories.
Dr. Moeller, I'd be curious of your take on how climate change (or other major problems) could be solved given the state of the world as it is. An uncharitable interpretation of your review is that since we live in a society with all these systems that only act "rationally" in a very limited, self-serving way, climate change is impossible to solve. But I'm assuming you think there must be a framework in which the systems of society can overcome their inherent design to act towards a greater good.
I'd also be curious if you think any critique of capitalism / modern society is inherently hypocritical, since it's virtually impossible to share that message without somebody making money off of it. It's similar to how any critique of fossil fuel use is somewhat hypocritical, since the person making the critique likely uses fossil fuels, but it's impossible to not use fossil fuels if you live in society.
As a very minor point, mushrooms aren't part of flora, as they aren't plants :)
I think that when we break outside of existing system, then "climate change" problem will seem very different as we see it now. Most likely no as important as it seems now.
Your interpretation of Moeller isn't "uncharitable" - it's accurate. He's engaging in edgelord catastrophizing as an avoidance strategy.
The movie isn't complicated. It was making fun of our spectacularly bad performance at working together recently, and the rise of grifter politics. It wasn't advocating for utopia.
This kind of purposefully obtuse take is pretty common among fundamentally conservative philosophers looking to disguise their unwillingness to address practical collective action issues like global warming under a thin pretense of struggling with some meaningless, hopelessly abstract philosophical contradiction.
Just because something is hypocritical doesn't mean it is wrong.
@@drjimnielson4425 I would agree! Though Dr. Moeller seemed to hold the hypocrisy of Don't Look Up against it, which would imply it's bad in this case.
Maybe it's not something that is meant to be solved but profited from 'solving'.
14:58 I have to slightly disagree with you here.
We can sometimes say that on a given empirical question we DO have enough evidence to conclude with a high level of cogency, that a position IS correct.
With creationism vs biological evolution, we CAN just “look up”.
With flat earthers vs a round earth, we CAN just “look up”.
This empirical relativism and ambivalence towards everything the scientific community produces is dangerous, at least just as dangerous as blindly accepting every claim made by any scientific institution.
Science is never "prescriptive", it does NOT say what we "ought" to do - even when it comes down to survival, it's not a "scientific fact" that we should choose good-to-humans things over bad-to-humans ones, that's something we derive from scientific facts but already goes well into the territory of policy and politics, you're not doing science anymore when you choose to "act on" the science.
I recommend to anyone conflating scientific endeavor with policymaking to watch this video by Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder (a physicist and amazing lecturer) where she goes over this same argument of the media misrepresenting scientific studies with policy decisions as if scientific research somehow "belongs" to any given side of a policymaking debate. Here it is: ua-cam.com/video/nGVIJSW0Y3k/v-deo.html
But on the examples you made, I actually agree with them - some positions have been so throughoutly experimented upon that we can safely assume them in general. But it should not be the same as considering them obvious enough to "simply look up" actually - not when we're doing science, at least. But we're not going to be so ambivalent in our daily lives, so there's actually two separate places of discourse there to be considered, where skepticism can only be "too much" in one of them.
@@mgmonteiro1
I was trying to focus strictly on empirical claims, which afaik are all descriptive.
I get that policy making involves more then just assessing empirical claims.
@@mgmonteiro1 : While science doesn't specifically tell you what policies to enact, it will potentially predict the results of those policies, which... if you agree on a common goal, is very valuable information.
I loved the meta commercial when you said "btw dont forget to subscribe to this channel"
Very thoughtful and insightful review! I would add that the simplified picture of global warming as merely a natural catastrophe (a meteor hitting earth) obscures the more complex, _political_ catastrophe that it will most likely be.
There will of course be local natural disasters as a consequence of global warming, but long before the earth has gotten so warm that it burns to a crisp, localized natural disasters will disturb and upset the global trade structures we are all heavily dependent on. What happens when 'country x' collapses due to a local change in climate and we all come to realize that this country stood for 40% of the export of some precious metal we all need for our phones? Or when the climate refugees from one country destabilizes another country that is a key manufacturer of some medicine used by millions across the globe?
Global warming is not simply a natural but also a political disaster. Too often it seems like people are scared the planet will burn to death, but the current global order will have collapsed long before that becomes possible.
just finished your book: Moral Fool. Thank you very much -it was very interesting reading for me, deepened my understanding of Kant, Bentham and Daoism !
But what did you think of the video you just watched, which is the comment section where you posted this?
You're missing something that's well explained in Fowler's Modern English Usage, 2nd Edition (Fowler, 1978, p.253) under the category of humour.
Fowler has a chart. The first vertical column are the different types of humour, which he lists as:
Humour, Wit, Satire, Sarcasm, Invective, Irony, Cynicism, and The Sardonic. Each of these is explained by the other columns, which are: MOTIVE/AIM, PROVINCE, METHOD/MEANS, AUDIENCE
Don't Look Up is a work of Satire. Its Motive or Aim is one of Amendment, that we should live better. Its province is that of Morals and Manners. (The province of Wit is "Words and Ideas", for example). Satire's Means/Method is one of Accentuation, and its Audience are "The Self-Satisfied". Elsewhere (323) he describes Satire as that which "holds up prevailing vices and follies to ridicule". All of which "Don't Look Up" does quite well, as you yourself point out. However, your criticism of it for operating in the same world that it criticises is simply a rhetorical fallacy, the Tu Quoque Fallacy. Such criticism is simply irrelevant for a few reasons even beyond the Fallacy. For one, ANYTHING that is produced under capitalism is by definition going to act in its markets as a commodity. Even the book you quoted by Marx, Capital Vol. 1, is $9.95 on Amazon. I wouldn't call Marx or Marxists hypocritical for writing such books or buying them. Two, that's simply the contradiction built into the material conditions under which we operate, and you discount the possibility that the filmmakers are self-aware in this regard, and are using the wealth of Netflix in order to produce their Satire, which, as I noted earlier is a humour whose motive and aim is one of amendment.
Rlly brah?
0:33 if you're going to critique the movie, at the very least you should understand it first. They were going to deviate the comet and the plan did not fail. It was f*ing canceled because of big money donors.
He's Right
To me, it was a quite positivistic movie. That we all perish in some kind of a instantaneous moment. When in fact, if bad gets to worse with ecology, it's more of a prolonged slower suffering over time.
The instantaneous moment you describe can be found only in Marvel movies. There would be prolonged suffering in the context of "Don't look up".
@@SpirosPagiatakis A 8km meteor, even with the shit show leading up to the impact, is still one big impact, suffering ends within minutes. With ecology, the last of us will have to watch the world perish.
On top of that, ecological disasters almost never arrive conveniently one at a time. Something like a global warm period causing years of drought coupled with a very large volcanic eruption causing years of winter from ash clouds would potentially lead to slowish extinction given the wars that would also result. So yeah, I'll take the big ol asteroid, please. Tidal wave moving at the speed of sound or molten rock superheating the air in your lungs are also pretty metal ways to die.
My nerdy comparison is to Warhammer 40k. Do you want to get eaten by the Tyranids? ( Quick om-nom-nom)
Or taken captive by the dark elves, tortured for energy & kept artificially alive as a sofa, hat or a cape. Then later maybe dying, if they allow it.
The ecological crisis won't let's us off easy.
I was wondering how the difference between the TV show and the movie being on Netflix is negligible? The difference that the TV show in the movie was an institution that deliberately did NOT choose to showcase the serious issues at hand, while Netflix can be said to have actually gone out of their way to produce this movie, whose message is essentially anti-Netflix. Other than that, I really liked the video!
It's also kinda like the "you criticize capitalism yet you participate in it" meme.
Well, it's not like netflix has a horse in this race, it's important to understand that corporations such as netflix are ultimately neutral, they are unconcerned with anything but profit. In this regard, the criticism is "you criticize those attempting to use a tragedy, misrepresent it, and make bank while doing so, as you work for a company that uses a tragedy, misrepresents it, and then makes bank while doing so", less so "you participate in capitalism so you're bad". It's a more in-depth critique, shallow as it is, who's depth is ultimately hampered by deciding to do the exact same thing it's criticizing. It's more akin to "You criticize sweatshop that exploit their workers as you order merchandise to be produced in a sweatshop that exploits their workers because it's cheaper than a local alternative".
no, the movie says netflix is the only solution.
@@marcus9043 how so? By emphasizing how all its users die in the end?
@@battyjr no, it says, theyre are the only ones that will talk about climate change, when no one is talking about climate change, ... by NOT talking about climate change.
in other words, the movie becomes the enemy from the movie.
in my opinion, the movie is less about society and more about the individuals inside our society. the movie differentiates between the mass, that in face of armageddon decides to "enjoy" life and is devoid of meaning, and our protagonists, who choose to love - which is meaning. in that sense the movie is existentialist. it critiques hedonism because it was what led to the destruction of humanity, but more importantly, a hedonistic life is meaningless. instead, we must choose love. maybe love won't save us from the meteor, but it will give our lives meaning.
I agree with your overall systems theory analysis here. Our social and political communication clearly creates an emergent complexity that is incredibly abstruse in its character and dynamic. This is at the heart of what many are calling 'the meaning crisis.' Historically, information systems and communication technology seemed much more like a top-down dissemination of knowledge. Of course, that was an illusion made possible by the monolithic structure of the system. Today, info., data, truth, identity, etc., is endlessly multivalent and coming from too many direction at once.
In some ways, this multivalence is most starkly illustrated by how we process and interpret the work of scientists. Political leaders feign concern and engage in impotent measures over climate change and viral outbreaks precisely because there isn't an obvious set of solutions that will result in significant mitigation of negative outcomes. Alternative energy, weening off (or penalizing the use) of fossil fuels, less animal consumption, etc., only affects the negative outcomes of climate change slightly- and that's only according projection models.
This is not a result of poor media coverage and storytelling on the part of climate scientists, institutions, etc. It's much more a function of the overall complexity of the problem.
A well written comment with keen observations and a sound overall conclusion.
I love the smile Hans gets in his face when he's about to dunk on some piece of media
While the critique is interesting I think the notion that the movie is referring exclusively to climate change is too narrow. It applies generally to how people today perceive reality in a polarized way, including but not limited to climate change, even though this is the more direct and easiest comparison.
This was my take as well, not that climate change isn't applicable, but rather the movie was commenting on mass denying and distrust of scientific consensus to everyone's detriment and how it can happen (see vax deniers as a current example in the media). Tbf, this video seems to hint towards this understanding as well at the beginning.
Excellent Review, sir! Your discussion on Systems Theory was more informative and engaging than the movie itself! 😂
U know what?
I m gonna go watch " don't look up" right away so that I can enjoy my fav professor's lecture!
So the big question professor.
When are you doing The Matrix?
Please.
Great critique! But since we live inside contemporary capitalist society and therefore can't by definition act outside of it, is it fair to fault a piece of media for critiquing the system while being a part of it? Wouldn't that imply that any critique would be invalid?
No. I mean a bit yes because the fact that it's a big blockbuster is the reason why its brain dead. However, good movies do exist, and some of them are good critiques of the same things "Don't look up" aimed for.
So yeah, it's bad because of the system, but it could have been otherwise
@@shavingriansprivates but if you want your message to reach as many people as possible, you kinda have to do a balancing act between hollywood garbage and the actual message.
I'm not defending the movie I'm just trying to figure out what the alternative is.
socialist nonsense.
Prof. Moeller - I know you are aware of the channel 'Jonas Čeika - CCK Philosophy', as you have referred to it in the past. I strongly suggest you watch his video 'What did Baudrillard think about The Matrix?', especially if you are thinking of doing a followup video on the original Matrix, as folks have requested.
The upshot of that video is that the Matrix did not live up to its primary inspiration: Jean Baudrillard's 'Simulacra and Simulation'. Instead of making a movie characterizing modernity's state of the Hyperreal, Baudrillard argues that the movie actually degenerates back to Plato's cave because there is a very clear line in the movie between the real and the virtual hyper-reality of the matrix; in reality, there is nothing to get 'out' of, neither cave nor matrix as our current society is coextensive with itself. Baudrillard quipped that the movie the Matrix is the type of movie that a matrix would make. [As an aside for fans of the Matrix franchise, I believe the first half of Matrix 4 does a great job of grappling with Baudrillard's critique of the first movie, while the second half -- although entertaining -- again devolves back to the crisp and legible distinctions alla Plato's cave.]
Given Baudrillard's critique, it is notable that your critique of 'Don't Look Up' is very similar: the movie suggests implicitly that there is a clear distinction, if only we'd 'look up'. And, although it is a fair critique, I suggest that 'Don't Look Up' does a better job than the Matrix of characterizing the Hyperreal ecosystem we currently co-create, exactly because all the protags fail to get people to see the 'truth'. Whether they -- e.g. the scientists -- have the 'T'ruth is almost irrelevant, because the point of the movie is that any meaning making that aspires to account for existential risks is currently subsumed by something akin to Mark Fisher's 'Capitalist Realism', viz. the resilient and adaptive capacity for our current 'autopoietic' society to grow regardless of any legible and communicable existential feedback.
Enjoy your channel!
Cheers.
I liked Jona Hill's speech at the Trump populist rally where he makes no sense, and again when they are in the control room where he can only think of material goods that they will miss. I think it exemplifies how most people are individualistic, materialistic and greedy. I loved the movie, it was a good satire of climate change.
The professor's point flew right over your head lol. It's easy to build strawmans like that. It's far more difficult to understand the complex systems understand which these things work.
@@gufestus4106 Wow! Who could of thought it was complex?
@@jimmytimmy3680 Not you apparently. 😂
@@gufestus4106 I know right, you must be some kind of genius. You should make videos. Nice strawman btw.
@@jimmytimmy3680 tells us he liked a part of the movie
Therefore Jimmy Timmy’s entire understanding of the movie is only the part of the movie he happened to tell us he liked.
what a brilliant analysis. @Gufestus is so eager to tear someone down that they’ll appeal to authority to say “you’re missing the point” while simultaneously constructing the weakest of arguments to do so. 😅
I don't think the movie suggests that every environmental crisis could be averted but rather that even the avertible crisises cannot be averted because of this entanglement.
It's also important to note that the meteor is a disrete problem while global warming is a continuous one, the meteor hit or doesn't, global warming is bad at +1.1°C, worse at +1.43, even worse at +1.87... Etc and humanity as a whole is not affected in the same way or at the same speed, we try to fix discrete limits, like the Paris accord (1.5 and 2) but in the end it's arbitrary, +1.49 is not fine. That makes the choice to act a lot more difficult, it's the difference between a mugger that would say "give me all your money or I stab you to death" and "give me all your money or i will put my knife 0,1mm into your skin"
In the first case, you give your money. In the second one, you migth keep your money and accept the stabbing, it's barely a scratch, then he ask the same question again for another 0.1mm depth, still it's seems a easy choice...etc
At some point you get fully stabbed and die. What is the 0.1mm that make you change your decision ? In the end you will probably end up giving all your money and still have a "partial stabbing" which is worse than the first option. (This analogy doesn't take into account the group responsability and the fact that everyone in the world is getting stabbed but at different speed, and you reading this will probably be one of the lucky "slower stabbing speed" and that we all are the mugger and the mugged in different proportions, Jeff bezzos is mostly mugger, a nigerian farmer is mostly mugged)
Also worth mentioning the way the young evangelistic christian character is woven into the narrative as one of the ‘good guys’.
Honestly, this channel is a diamond in the rough. At some parts I feel it gets dirty and becomes biased, only to be fooled with the occasional gleams of intentional irony meant as meta-commentary over the issues it explores. Another great video as always.
Keep doing reviews if you can find the time! They’re both insightful and entertaining. (:
There were a lot of comparisons to the Matrix here, would you ever do a philosophical review of it?
The first video from Carefree Wandering I disagree with, first the praise for the Matrix is really surprising when even Baudrillard and many other critics maintain that the movie fails spectacularly, in a truly american fashion, to illuminate any of the ideas from Simulacra and Simulation (it's coveted "inspiration" ), to pick one criticism you used against Don't look up; the illusion of control, the Matrix sins much more in this department by centring it's whole premiss on the control by the machines. For many other reasons: cheep thrills cinematic style, bad acting and bad story telling the Matrix is not a great movie and a philosophical classic if you have never read a book.
As for Don't look UP while some of your points are valid the movie is much more nihilistic then you maintain, I think, just like South Park Don't look Up satirizes everything and everybody including the government's plan and even more specifically the era when big central government plans were possible and just like Tiger King there aren't many likeable or morally redeemable characters in it.
My take on Don't look up is that it's main point is not even climate change but just a satirical "look how F@#$@ed everything is"
It's also funny how everybody insists that it's about trumpists while every single aspects is filled with left's politics: female president working closely with a social media CEO. It's what happens when we realise that leftist politicians having all control over culture and politics fail to deliver their promises of the utopia.
@@petergray453 The movie most definitely takes aim at populism and Trumpism and the political right with "jobs from the comet", "they want you to look up to take away your freedom" and "may jesus bless the members of my party" any many more, but there is plenty satire of the left and together with the gender reversal (of the president and the supreme court nomenie) the message, I think, is that the whole political system in the current form is F@#$ed and it's toxic elements like corruption, ignorance, power abuse, disservice to the populous etc. come in all genders, party denominations etc. Which I would think would be a reason for Carefree Wandering to like the movie since one of his main themes here is that both the right and left are dogmatic sudo religious ideologies not serving the wellbeing of humans.
Also, if you missed, one of Carefree Wandering main points steaming from systems theory is that nobody has "all control" over culture, politics, media, science etc
@@guysegal8163 ha! That's a lot of words to say: "uh... We are not the baddies, right? RIGHT?". The republicans have so little power in politics and culture, TV that almost all characters are based on real figures from the left. They literally couldn't find any rightwinger in a position of power to mock them- they are all leftists.
@@petergray453 All of the real right wingers who actually have power aren't in plain sight for the most part. This is why the movie couldn't find any, because it has a shallow understanding of political power in the first place, presumably due to bad historical research and investigation (if any). It's entire political worldview is about as deep as an SNL sketch. Leftists hold all the power in culture and politics? Really? What about the Kochs, Mercers, the Ford Family, the Waltons, The Mars Family, Cargill-MacMillan family, Cox family, S.C. Johnson family, Edward Johnson family, Hearst family, Duncan family, Newhouse Family, Bush Family, Clinton Family, Lauders, Du Ponts, Hunts, Busch, Brown, Peter Thiel and others? As the popular dictum goes, follow the money. And believe me, left-wingers don't have nearly as much money as right-wingers to influence politics. To paraphrase Domhoff, the non-political institutions are where politics actually happens.
@@hazardousjazzgasm129 the rightwinger nazis are controling the world from behind the curtain, you say. That's spooky!
I'm impressed by your knowing the names but calling them rightwingers is an obvious cope - they are behind the woke agenda, and Blackrock turning everything to the left.
It's hard to admit that all the orgs that you supported and hoped will bring us utopia, are in fact evil.
6.3 star rating scale is refreshingly absurd lol
I watched the movie for the sole reason so that I can watch this video. Carefree Wandering obviously is the 5th symbiotic part of the system.
Great review, very interesting perspective! I think my problem with the Systems Theory approach is that I think these different omnivorous systems (capital/big business, media, politics) DO work in concert -- it's just not in a way that keeps humans alive. It's optimized for short-term capital accumulation. But I'll have to actually read Luhmann before passing final judgement of course. Add that to the to-read stack.
If this indeed a philosophical review, why there are no mention about the all caps word "UP" on the title, and the theme of prayer led by the thrasher looking character, Timothee Chalamet, and no critique also about the epilogue which summarizes the representations of the comet, prayer, and the existential problematic of the script?
when this movie presents itself as a "green" movie while being a product to make a profit isn't it possible that movie itself is a product of different systems wth different goals that were involved in t's creaton?
To me the biggest conflict of the movie is that the character of Jennifer Lawrence is so annoying, yet we all have seen the leak*d pictures of her and they keep intruding our mind therefore creating that dichotomy of intellectual repulsion and animalistic attraction
4.5/6.3 is roughly 7.14/10 if anyone was wondering.
Okay, but why did he put it like that? What's the significance of the 6.3 scale here?
@@ArawnOfAnnwn I think he's poking fun at the practice of rating movies on a numerical scale, thus removing any nuance. Delibratly using a hard to use scale.
I in turn undermine these efforts by translating the value into a more typical scale.
This makes me really curious about what you think of the new Matrix movie.
As the main topic of the movie is clearly social "Denialism" , I would consider it as a remake of "The Fire Raisers" ("Biedermann und die Brandstifter" in German) , a satire by Swiss author of Max Frisch: " Who fears change more than the calamity: What can they do, against the calamity?"
-
"... At least we can forget about the questions that bother us. - Means: We do not want answers. As we would otherwise risk to become accountable for our actions." (" Diaries 1946-1949" , - very loosely paraphrased)
A handful of other commentators have already pointed out that we need not see a "conflation" so much as a tension between the models of "rational control" and "systems theory". I raise this point because it seems to me you leave some important work unfinished -- why the model of rational control which likely has currency in the minds of many people is not as descriptively robust and, by extension, prescriptively fertile, as is the systems theoretical model. If, indeed, the rational control model fails then of course it will, like Plato's ideal community, be incapable of providing us with realizable prescriptive insights. To be fair, you make some observations in this direction but a more decisive break with the model of rational control is, I believe, justified if not necessary given your belief -- and mine as well --- that it would be misguided to believe that all we need to do is to get our media, our political system, our economy, to function rationally in order to solve for problems like global warming. Here I am reminded of just how quickly the optimism of Karl Otto-Apel and Jurgen Habermas' discourse model of democracy faded into obscurity in the face of resurgent populism in Europe and America. Although I believe we may retrieve some of his insights from "Legitimation Crisis", his later work in democratic theory and law no longer appear to have resonance with the present. Unfortunately, that some body of work fails to resonate with the present does not in itself indicate whether that work is true, sound, valid, or fruitful, let alone why it is not.
Why has the rational model of control become obsolete, untenable, or otherwise sterile? Answering that question, it seems to me, would have completed the project your critique initiates.
I suggest we consider a slightly different passage from the "Manifesto" that, I believe, more clearly makes your point while illuminating the problem with the rational control model: "Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells." As with your quote, Marx recognizes the extraordinary productive powers of the capitalist system to which you pointed while simultaneously alluding the inability of that same system to control those powers -- to apply the descriptively rich language Habermas used in "Legitimation Crisis" -- to exert "steering capacities" during crises.
Rational control, as you observe, isn't possible over the entire range of the system precisely because each sub-system has its distinctive logics, inputs and outputs, as well as environments. And it's at this point that, I believe, you could show why rational control fails and where Habermas also failed: system integration, pace Habermas, does not require mass orientation toward the norms of intersubjective rationality precisely because that same rationality is already de-differentiated within the logics of each sub-system. Orientation toward "mutual understanding" can just as easily be redirected toward "mutual or shared misunderstanding" and there is no privileged position within the system from which the rational-agent can operate without being entangled within and oriented toward the specific interests of some body of sub-systems -- just as you cannot address an audience without also curating a profile.
Wasn't the movie criticizing the media for not emphasizing the importance of the comet rather than using it for financial gain?
The scientists weren't mad that ads were being played. They were mad that it wasn't being taken seriously.
Awesome video, can you please review Contrapoints videos like Envy? Would love to hear your response to her interpretation of Nietzsche
I found the movie to be a moralistic yet pessimistic simplification; "if only we were more virtuous - less dumb and selfish - in what we are doing". I think it's patronizing and naive at the same time.
Predicting/understanding what affects what is harder than ever. We really lost the plot by now.
Somehow not everybody picked up on the climate change metaphor. So while it may be a simplification, you could argue that this was a deliberate decision to make the message more easily digestible to society at large.
@@SpaveFrostKing It's grist for the conspiracy theorists mill though. The more you know about the world (the complex interplay of system dynamics) the less clear cut and obvious are your (political) evaluations, views and solutions --- and vice versa.
But the point of the movie is that one CAN'T be more moralistic, because of the set up of the game. How is that naive?
@@battyjr if this was the point then there would have been no need to caricaturize all the actors, to paint them as ridiculously incompetent and/or selfish. The movie depicts humanity's failure as a very direct consequence of the moral/intellectual shortcomings. This is what's naive in my view. My point is that even given largely rational and moral actors, things can go terribly awry. That's what we see in reality.
Climate change shows this well. As long as the systems are set up as incentivizing pollution because it's profitable and environmental degradation has no cost for the individual perpetrator nothing will change because nothing _can_ change given rational agents. It's not only rational but almost imperative to pollute purely given the systems dynamics: not polluting is simply not stable, you are quickly out-competed by those with less qualms and vanish. Better morals can't help us if they are not game theoretically stable.
@@peterp-a-n4743 the example you give is what happens in Leonardo's character. The whole movie highlights that moral actors get out competed. Leo then outcompetes himself as he too becomes immoral- because the system doesn't allow morality to thrive. The film shows that that people acting morally and rationally can't save the planet, because they those people don't form out of... whatever this is. That's what I saw in the film.
Herr Moeller do you think present co2 levels in the atmosphere can be "dealt" with ?.
For anyone who is wondering, 4.5 / 6.3 is around 7.1 /10
Okay, but why did he put it like that? What's the significance of the 6.3 scale here?
Because ratings are arbitrary 😘
Watched the video on carefree wandering about “Don’t Look Up” and my only problem with it is his claim that the movie portrays global warming as a problem that can easily be solved if the government takes action and people listen to the scientists. I have a problem with this because near the end of the movie we find out that the Russians and Chinese (or one of them) launched nukes at the asteroid and it did absolutely nothing; that is, it is revealed that all the plans that could have been implemented to stop the asteroid would have been useless anyways regardless of when the government took action. The problem, in other words, was NOT in fact as simple as everyone made it out to be. And being familiar with physics myself, I knew that nuclear bombs would do little to nothing to effect the asteroid and in fact we were doomed no matter what…the asteroid WAS ALWAYS GOING TO HIT no matter what, and the movie points that out and thus exposes how profoundly powerless we are to these larger forces. Science, politics, media, and big tech companies are all useless In comparison to these Goliath threats. What I’m trying to say is that the movie does an amazing job at showing that everything everyone did in that movie all amounted to nothing and would have no matter when action was taken. That is, “don’t look up” because you can’t do shit about it anyways. The systems will fail no matter what, and yet they will act as though failure WONT happen anyways. The scientists thought it wouldn’t happen in that they thought they could fix it, and everyone else either ignored it would happen or believed the scientists’ claim that it could be fixed. But other than that, it was an amazing video ;)
On the movie it's implied that the Chinese and russian mission to nuke the meteor was sabotaged by the guru tech.
Thanks for a great video yet again, Professor, I am a fan! :)
The Matrix has inspired, as a story, a lot of conspiracy theory proponents' mindsets. I think Don't Look Up will inspire people in realizing the way we try "not to look up"; it's an efficient caricature, to play a more virtuous part in contemporary thought
The Matrix was following on from the famous conspiracy theory novel Illuminatus Trilogy. A story in which a character is initiated into a world of conspiracies and secret societies which forced consensus reality to be questioned. Maybe people talk more about "red pill" now than "illuminati" but the people who use the terms the most sideline the ironic source material that brought them into popular culture or perhaps don't even know they exist.
How similar is this movie to Dr. Strangelove?
Did I hear a prescient Freudian slip: "The system educates power"?
So, Don't Look Up happens to encapsulate both sides of the Luhmann-Habermas debate?
I would love to see a critique of Baudrillard’s own critique of the Matrix trilogy as it pertained to his theories.
ua-cam.com/video/ZJmp9jfcDkw/v-deo.html
enjoy ;)
I disagree that you can't merge systems theory with a rational actor model. Yes CLEARY (and I cannot stress this enough) human beings are not this rational actor but it's wrong to say that anarchy is a necessary price for anarchy. Look at the body example again & compare it to the way capitalist society operates. In the body the heart doesn't say "I'm the most important so I get 90% of the nutrients", nor does any other organ. The body operates on a "to each according to their need" mindset as it were. The body has the metanarrative of keeping itself alive (homostatis). When a society has a metanarrative like that it is capable of tackling complex problems better, historically speaking.
Please Professor, don't allow yourself to become engulfed in pop culture just because you're on UA-cam. This video is fun, but don't forget what this channel should be about: extremely long analyses of Hegel and Marx.
That reminds me - where's Heidegger? We don't have an extreme long analysis of Heidegger, do we? Can we get on that?
here comes the theory Andy. the purpose of analytical systems is to apply them not indulge in their exposition ad-nauseum you clown.
Heidegger is implicitly ‘present’ (Anwesend) in the background of this analysis. Especially the critique of ‘enlightenment’ views of technology. :-)
@@walterlippmann4361 I don't, though. I'm being glib. You must be fun at parties.
Edit: Used that word wrong. What I meant was flippant or joking or something along those lines
I have similar issues with the film's narrative. However, I don't believe it means to suggest a solution with the original nuking plan, but rather means to further satirize the kind of simplistic solution foisted upon society by profit regulated science faced with a last minute scenario on its hands. The reason this is not clear is down to the plan's having been scrapped in the story in the name of something more absurdly greedy, which renders the point pretty muddy. I think the main point is that the climate science has been ignored and spun by industry such that we are faced with an absurd solution, and even then it is not beyond being set aside for something even worse than that.
Idk, in the film, during the first launch, they stated something like an 85% chance of success with the nuking. That makes it kinda obvious that they’re suggesting that the threat would be eliminated if people just tried. With climate change, however, there are a lot of factors to be taken into account. Even with everyone working together, reversing or stopping the effects of climate change is still a very complex task. While converting to renewable energy is possible and would reduce C02 emissions, it’s not as simple as launching a nuke at a meteor.
@@beej1234 I agree that it's a more complex task. And, again, I think the calculation of chances for success is part of the parody that's easily lost because the film-makers didn't think through how to make that more obvious, which part of the film's failure to make its flawed analogy function.
Think of it this way: nobody who's been following this topic, which includes writer/director McKay, is not aware that the warning signs of anthropogenic climate change extend back into the 1970s, and indeed have been part of more serious political discourse for all of this century. We have reached predicted tipping points already, and the question is how to avert full catastrophe. I think this is what the film is about. Not just climate change. Unfortunately they should have workshopped the script more to flesh out more nuanced details. The irony is, in Hollywood, often too much money is at stake; if you don't get it right once you go into production, editing can only fix so much. Clearly, they failed to get the point across as well as they could have.
@@dvdly so is this film sending a message that it’s been too late to stop the climate crisis? With the inclusion of the high chance to stop the meteor referring to what could have been done about climate change decades ago?
@@beej1234 More or less. Still, I think it's not a matter of nuking the meteor as having become an only option, but for the purposes of the allegory the more likely result the more immanent the disaster becomes. So even now it's not as if, best case scenario, there's nothing human civilization could possibly do to mitigate the worse of the disaster, except there are systemic, paradigmatic obstacles to it. Come to think of it, maybe the meteor would better represents those obstacles in the metaphor.
Very interesting review. I wonder wether the incompatibility of rational control and co-evolving systems could be solved with the introduction of a “religious” system that supersedes and “guides” the other systems towards an optimal state.
I totally agree with you about Don't look up, I'm sure there's more things I could criticize about it if I was forced to rewatch it. However I must say that the matrix is a superficially philosophical film and a bad one at that. All of the philosophical themes are alluded to as if they had never even read the original texts they're referencing, including some conscious willing misreadings like their reading of S&S by Beaudrillard, they don't make any effort to go into any of the themes or really do anything that hadn't been done a dozen times in foreign film by the time the matrix was conceived. they make no effort to connect or comment on any of the philosophical "themes" which function much more like props and costumes than themes. the film is just a mediocre action movie that figured out you could shoot 360 degrees and mess with it in post using a shit ton of cameras. that's all the film did. the first matrix was truly not an intelligent or even well educated film. it was a rash appropriation of anti capitalist philosophies and turned into a fucking movie franchise designed from the top down to sell god damn action figures. the matrix is terrible.
Could you mention some of these foreign films? I'd be interested in watching them.
It’s ok to be wrong.
I see your point. I don't really think the movie suggests any solution, it rather just shows what's wrong. As a socialist I was really surprised how uncontroversial this movie was to me; surprised at takes like: "supporting a middle ground to combat divisiveness looks good, but is not really productive". Basically, I just laughed my ass off for 2 hours at the stupidities of capitalism. But it's very possible that because of this lack of a solution given by the movie, people will take from it what they will. I don't think any right winger (conservative or neo-liberal) can interpret this movie to fit their narrative, but a left liberal might look at this movie and think: 1. it's hopeless, 2. the different systems in society should just do their job, 3. they might even take it as a call for personal betterment (that's their go-to anyways). As a socialist, I have hope, I realize these systems ARE doing their jobs and that's the problem, and the only personal betterment we should do is stop being so unoffensive and middle-ground, and start explicitly advocating for solutions to the problem. That's also a crazy thing about liberals, you'll explain to them how a revolutionary change in the government or in business would look like and they'll say you're too extreme, but when some billionaire comes up with the idea to colonize Mars or whatever Bill Gates is gaslighting the public with, or here in the Netherlands we have had a resurgence of popularity of nuclear energy because ONE person in the media said it shouldn't be taboo anymore, and they'll love it. We should stop taking billionaires (or the media or the government) to be independent figures who can be used as an argument from authority; they have no authority on anything; they should only use the information from people with actual authority to do their job.
Surely The Big Lebowski is the great philosophical movie of our age.
Thanks for the review - great analysis. I would just add that the solution to the climate crisis will have to include Marx's favorite protagonists - the working class.
Are you aware of Bruno Latour's "we have never been modern"? It deals with similar themes
You've got it completely backwards. You're framing the premise of the movie too narrowly, and the conclusion too broadly.
The movie is about modern science denialism, unrestrained grifterism, and the resultant collective action failures _in general._
You may be particularly sensitive to the climate change issue and thus prone to reading that message into the movie, but there is equal evidence to suggest the movie is referring to the mishandling of the current global viral outbreak or the repeated global financial crises of the past few years.
Virtually no reviewer I have encountered has failed to see this in the movie, and none have failed to mention the viral outbreak as a potential inspiration for the movie.
From here, you then misinterpret the conclusion of the movie too broadly. It's not suggesting that there is some perfect solution whereby these different social systems could be marshaled into working together for the benefit of humanity.
It's just saying we can do a little better than the state of absolute madness we've been experiencing recently.
In the movie, China, Russia, India, France, etc. actually do manage to get their shit together and launch a rescue mission. *Do you really think that the filmmakers are actually suggesting these countries are some utopian earthly paradise where economy, politics, and the media lovingly hold hands and work for the betterment of mankind?*
No dude. The movie is simply an indictment of the current dysfunctional and frankly stupid state of American politics.
Not every call to do better is an exhortation towards perfection.
As someone who has followed global warming science for over a decade, I found this to be an EXCELLENT review and analysis!
You point out the exact problem I had with it's narrative, even though I did enjoy the laughs I got while watching it.
The only critique I would say here is that science can't tell us truths about everything.... it can only tell us half truths about a limited subset of testable hypotheses...
It will never be able to explain why we have conscious experience, for example.
It also will always be running up against complexity in systems where the variables can't be adequately isolated.
And obviously, the meaning of life is forever out of reach.
Still, this has little effect on the quality of this video.
Cheers!
Nothing is forever out of reach, we just haven't thought about it. Science is just limited by our own senses and capabilities. We will figure it out eventually.
@Obscure Wondering no, but now I'm intrigued...
This was just my own conclusion while getting multiple degrees in science....
With the help of some plant medicines I'm sure!
@@jimmytimmy3680 science is a very specific process that is self limiting.
You have to be able to design experiments that have falsifiable hypotheses.
There are processes in the world that will never fall into this category.
I already named a few.
Try to design an experiment about those and you will see
@@jimmytimmy3680 science is limited by only being able to test _repeatable,_ _physical_ processes.
"the meaning of life is forever out of reach" - the meaning of life might very well be a meaningless question to ask! Just ask Wittgenstein. :)
My take is that this movie isn't trying to say much in the way of Philosophy or Science, but rather attempting to capture the visceral feelings of those who *are* educated and informed about climate science (including literal climate scientists) and the way the world and its systems are gaslighting them every moment of every day. I think your points regarding the film's portrayal of grand social systems are valid, but very possibly not the intent of the filmmakers. The proposition "if we just made these systems better" doesn't seem to be the critique in my opinion. More so, I see this film as portraying the nihilistic and somewhat hopeless gut feeling many are left with in the face of these systems failing in this manner, rather than making any attempt at conveying some sort of solution for these issues.
Regarding the allusion to the phrase "Don't Look Up" implying obvious and objective evidence about Climate Change; I again do not believe this is a statement that "everyone is just stupid" but rather an insight into the *gut feeling* of those who are informed and educated on the topic in the face of the world around us and its social systems. I don't see this movie as any sort of philosophical statement or a call to action, but rather the encapsulation of a very specific feeling that a large (but very small relative to the world population) group experience on a daily basis.
I think the core of where we disagree lies in your comparison and implied correlation to the Matrix; I believe the Matrix is representative of the "Common Man" or "average" person, while "Don't Look Up" is NOT really talking about or speaking on the average person. It's a movie about those who are into science, are informed, and the dissonance they feel emotionally with the world and social systems around them.
I'm not sure what most of your comment has to do with the video. The video's critiques were about implicit arguments that the movie makes, not the intent behind it. The movie can still intentionally be about a scientist's experience while still unintentionally/implicitly re-instantiating all of the problems mentioned. Exegesis and analysis doesn't necessarily become invalid or impossible just because of intent. The whole point of critique is often to point out problems that the creator did not notice or take into account - in other words, unintentional aspects.
Besides, The Matrix is categorically not about the common man, at least not past the first 20 minutes, it's about a chosen hero who is literally referred to as "The One". The way the Matrix frames the reality/virtual simulacra binary isn't even accurate or relateable to real life. Baudrillard himself criticized the movie for making the difference between the two too obvious, as the entire point of his simulacra/hyperreality concept was that distinguishing between the real and the fake is becoming harder and harder.
I don't even like the movie that much, but I really hated this review. So many assumptions, like how when the movie shows some systems as broken, it must mean that it promotes an "enlightened myth of control". Or saying that the movie claims there is an easy solution to climate change, which it only does if you take the metaphor literally.
If you wanted to talk about the movie from a system-theory perspective, I think you need to talk about what happens when systems short circuit, ie what happens when politics is only about elections and never about governing, or when media reports only on itself. And maybe talk about how systems can be un-broken.
This whole channel sucks, but his viewers seem to eat it up since he’s an old white dude
I think he is missing the point. The film isnt there to tell us the answers, only to point out the problems. the film asking us to look up doesnt mean 'looking up will solve the problem', it only means that looking up makes you aware of it.
yes it highlights specific elements that causes the issue, but nowhere does it claim that science is the answer, only that science is a device to get a possible answer
Change it quickly now. It is not a meteorite. It is a meteorite only when it falls on earth.
Love your videos, bought You and Your Profile last week (even though it was £63)!!! Keep this up. I live on them.
10:45 lol You actually made me feel we had a moment there. Made me feel you were talking directly to me, and that we are friends. I'm getting addicted ;-) lol
10:46 "...by the way, please don't forget to subscribe." Brilliant.
The question is: do these systems have a right to continue to be as they are, to be beyond our control? If the current situation is bad for us then it should be changed so there are only systems which we can control and actually use for our own good. Current systems should be changed to be more controllable or if it's not possible they should be abolished completely, in favour of something better. And if we don't do that then maybe soon there will be no 'we' at all - and these systems in which we are trapped now will die anyway - with humanity (and social systems theory).
I do feel the film does turn it's gaze inward, but only very subtly. Especially in the scene where the show the "Just Look Up" concert, and we can see that it's being streamed on BASH services as well, with users commenting and creating traffic, generating data for BASH in the very event that is supposed to be resisting BASH and fomenting radical change--one which is, however, far too late, as the inevitable failure of the resistance is predestined at the very beginning of the second arc, and the latter half of the film is a slow, painful ineluctable journey to oblivion that models itself after the social shift from the global capitalist, Keynesian quasi-social economies of the past, that may have responded adequately to the threat, to the techno-feudalist economy of today ruled by the Isherwells of the world, a natural continuation of capitalism. That is once the film reaches the second arc, all the attempts at radical change relied on the very structures (social media) which strengthened the status quo, and had already pre-incorporated resistance into the profit-program. Although it's only faint, the film suggests the possibility of reading the film against itself in this excessive content, forcing you, only briefly, to view the film as a piece of media not unlike those it features, that was probably brought to you by the same algorithms it derides; therein lies the potential. Because we have to view Mindy's narrative as one in which, as Zizek says, "we can imagine the end of the world before we can imagine the end of capitalism", but transported into a new era where such apocalypses are turned into parodies, comedies, and media-objects that re-enforce the need to keep watching, keep streaming, keep gazing, and keep producing FOR the gaze as the only activity in the face of the inevitable collapse. In fact, by showing what happens when you feed the gaze (everything goes to hell), it is able to ask the audience to stop watching, stop gazing. Because in the end, there is a difference between telling someone to do something and actually doing something, but one cannot act within discourse, one must find a way through it.
Well ultimately I see that as critique against the other side where their protests include a lot of talking, holding hands and support, but not enough actual revolution against the established order. So it tells why the resistance is ineffective, because they're essentially trying an appeal to humanity to reach monsters that have none.
I vaguely remember the ancient movie Armageddon in which the earth is saved from certain disaster by the efforts of the Heroic Male. That movie had its cultural semiotic common to movies of Clint, Sylvester, Arnold, etc. Has life become so complex that common people can no longer accept these fantasies? Or is the Donald an extension of them?
15:28 ↗
Did Professor Moeller read the japanese manga "BLAME!" ? 😏
Two questions before your profile potentially becomes so extended it may be near-impossible to expect your reply, Professor:
1) do you believe there is a way the movie could have represented co-evolving systems theory without implicitly advocating for rational control theory?
2) I appreciate you're poking fun at yourself with the "academics want fame too, please subscribe" bit, but it did tickle my curiosity; so, to the best of your self-understanding, could you tell us what you hope to achieve by expressing your views on youtube? As much as "having fun" could be an enjoyable response, it's surely not one a profound thinker such as yourself would be content hiding behind. 😉
What we would give for a review/analysis of DARK
imo. Don't look up is a great movie. Of course its made in a capitalist system so it will be monetized. But the movie is very good, and idk if its even satire at this point. Instead of global warming, replace it with how the ruling class always wants and makes the working class to argue and fight with each other instead of rightfully criticizing the ruling class, and tbh it happens a lot in real world. For example in India, the ruling class makes working class fight on religion while the whole country is going to shit. If you see the movie in that way, everything makes sense
Very cool video. I liked the movie but I can understand your critique.
Now we need a video about Matrix (the first one or Resurrections)
Finally, another episode of some pure joy has arrived
We should use that rating system for all movies.
6.3?
You should do a philosophical review of The Truman Show, another movie about virtual modern society, and still relevant and thought-provoking today.
Reminds me of the Wolf of Wall Street, another DeCaprio flick supposedly a critique of greed and finance. Only problem is the movie was funded with stolen funds from Malaysian relief organizations.
How does it spread a control narrative? I don’t see it personally. To me the movie didn’t demonstrate any narrative at all towards how to actually solve climate or any other problem. It was a reflection piece. Even the “hero” wasn’t a hero at all. He cheated on his wife and at the end decided to eat dinner and pretend nothing was wrong. It’s a pessimistic film, which doesn’t make it bad. Some people may take away a control narrative from it. But that’s not what the movie was intending to do in my opinion. I’m curious though, what about the movie gave it a control narrative in your view?
It’s interesting you say Matrix did it better when Jean Baudrillard had almost the identical criticism of it that you do with Don’t Look Up: namely, that The Matrix is precisely the type of movie the matrix would make about itself.
In the body the nervous and hormonal system centrally and locally coordinates other systems.
Those two forms of systems is super interesting and its cool that they both seem to operate simualtaneously