It is a bit inevitable, and perhaps also a sign of the times, that the best explanations of the present usually come in the form of satire. It is explained well to a large extent the success of ‘Don’t look up’, a sour sci-fi comedy that is the chronicle of a death -that of our planet- REQUEST ANNOUNCED. I will not elaborate much on it, because by now everyone seems to have an opinion – good or bad – about it, given the supreme speed with which we scale the peaks of the media waves. It is acidic, even if it is a bit stretched and not quite curdled.
What interests me about ‘Don’t look up’ is the capacity for satire, of satires, of portraying the moods and concerns of his time. No one has managed to explain developmentalism better than the Azcona-Berlanga duo, and the Simpsons were all glory until their social commentary became a mere compilation of jokes and pop references. Larra and Segarra, great satirists, exercised it from journalism. The Quijote’? Another one, perhaps the greatest of all, along with ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. Half Wilder is, and so is Kubrick. But it is not a simple genre: unlike other types of humor it does not resort to insult, or visual gags, but a hyperbolic realism that produces a vague sense of shame. If the parodic intention is made too explicit, the joke loses its grace, but if the resemblance is too perfect, it runs the risk of turning it into an involuntary model for what it was wanted to ridicule.
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‘Don’t look up’ does not propose the most subtle of metaphors, and its exterminating comet, ignored but exploited commercially and in the media, is an open criticism of anti-scientism in the face of climate change or covid. But no joke survives when reality itself is parody: yesterday on the internet there were those who interpreted it as a farce against “progressive scientists”. No matter how much coarse salt is added to the casserole of humor, nothing will please those who chose not to have taste buds.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com