A clip that cuts between a scene from Don’t Look Up and a recent interview from a UK news program has gone viral on Twitter. Ultimately, the clip shows that fictional films and shows aren’t an escape from reality anymore. But before we dig deeper: here’s a little context.
For literal aeons, man has created fictional stories to make dealing with reality that little bit easier. Spoken stories turned into books which eventually turned into movies and television.
Think about the height of the pandemic; many of us went through an extremely tough time during COVID-19 and I’d argue most of us dealt with it by turning to shows and films that had nothing to do with pandemics or sickness; we escaped into a different and exciting (but fictional) reality.
But those days of escaping reality may be behind us; take the 2021 Netflix film Don’t Look Up, for instance. The entire film is an allegory for climate change and how we, as a society, aren’t taking the threat seriously enough.
The film is extreme in its portrayal of the US President and journalists who are overly ignorant and frustratingly blase about the world’s impending doom (in the film, a meteor is going to hit Earth and kill all living beings). And sure, it’s nothing new that movies and shows use not-so-subtle metaphors to urge viewers to care more about a real-world problem.
But what is new is that the film’s extreme portrayals actually aren’t that extreme anymore when compared to real life; proven by a recent clip that’s gone viral on Twitter. The clip shows a scene from Don’t Look Up, where Jennifer Lawrence’s character gets very upset that the anchors of a news show want to “keep the bad news light.”
WATCH: ‘Don’t Look Up’ eerily reflected in real life…
It then cuts to a real-life interview that occurred just a few days ago between the anchors of GB News – a United Kingdom news channel – and meteorologist John Hammond.
Hammond is there to discuss the heatwave that the UK is currently experiencing and warns the anchors and viewers that the heatwave is dangerous and will most likely result in many deaths. Hammond said, “This will be potentially lethal weather for a couple of days. It’ll be brief, but it’ll be brutal.”
At this point, anchor Bev Turner interrupts Hammond and says, “So, John, I want us to be happy about the weather… I don’t know whether something’s happened to meteorologists to make you all a little bit fatalistic and harbingers of doom.”
Turner’s comments and attitude are scarily similar to that of Cate Blanchett’s Don’t Look Up character. Hopefully, the world realises that we should take scientists, who have done the research and know the facts (no matter how scary or unpleasant), seriously.
That way Hollywood can return to making works of fiction that are utopias (or dystopias; whatever your poison) that are nothing like real life and we can escape into them once more. And in the meantime, you can watch the entire viral clip above.
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