“Don’t Look Up” Can Get You Down

Adam McKay’s hilarious and pointed satire Don’t Look Up takes aim at seemingly every ill of the modern age. From the science deniers to the political opportunists, from the massive personal overreach of tech companies to a facile public only too happy to be fed pablum, from the glibness and short attention span of the media to the insatiable material appetite of the rich: McKay takes aim at just about everything that is wrong with society these days.

The plot of Don’t Look Up revolves around the discovery of a comet heading straight to Earth, a comet so large it will cause a “planet-ending” event. The indisputable facts, of course, are immediately disputed by the government, the fickle, feel-good media, and a large segment of the American public.

Don’t Look Up features a star-studded cast, and the use of well-known actors helps to highlight the satire. Glamorous Jennifer Lawrence and suave Leonardo DiCaprio portray nerdy scientists with bad hair. Meryl Streep plays an intellectual bimbo of a president. Cate Blanchett is perfect as the “bubble-headed bleached blonde” of a Don Henley song. Tyler Perry, known for outrageous characters and broad comedy, here plays a rather bland and conventional news personality. And young heartthrob Timothee Chalamet plays a disaffected but sincere townie in East Lansing, Michigan, where it is Michigan State University astronomists who discover the comet. These actors, playing against type, serve to underscore the absurdity of the situation.

As funny and biting as the satire is, it is also terribly depressing to realize how close to reality the world-ending situation of the film is. For instance, the movie depicts the immediate sloganeering and staking out of contrary positions we have seen at least since the Trump era. When the comet becomes visible to the naked eye, people start saying, “Just look up” for confirmation that this pending catastrophe is real. The ineffectual president and her supporters immediately counter with the slogan “Don’t look up” and refer to those who believe the evidence of their own eyes as “Look Uppers.” And far from being praised for bringing the world’s attention to the advancing comet, the astronomists are vilified and portrayed on social media as mentally unbalanced. I was reminded of how infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci has been depicted by so many on the Right.

My only criticism of Don’t Look up is that there are too few genuine moments to counterbalance the absurdist humor in the film. Interestingly, the one genuine moment in the movie occurs in the midst of a sincere and heartfelt prayer around a dinner table. More moments such as this might have given the film a bit more hope in humanity. But maybe that’s the point. McKay seems to be saying we have put ourselves in a position of not being able to come together as a society and agree on the most basic of facts. Without such societal cohesion, maybe there is no hope.

I giggled at the very last moments of Don’t Look Up. The final words of the strange tech billionaire Peter Isherwell are an amusing capstone to the clever satire. But I’m not laughing about the state of our world. I can only hope that people take a good look at themselves and their complicity in the dangerously absurd world we have created – in order to change it.

Francophile

Lately I’ve been immersing myself in la vie Francaise. Whether I’m listening to a Louise Penny Quebecois mystery on audiobook or bingeing the French comedy/drama series Call My Agent, my ears and mind are becoming attuned to the language I studied in high school.

I’ve always thought French was the most beautiful-sounding language. While the other Romance languages, Spanish and Italian, have their charm, French has always been the most romantic to me. I always regretted not taking any French courses in college and over the years, I’ve lost a lot of the French vocabulary I used to know. Hearing spoken French again has me itching to continue my education in the language.

You can’t really learn a language fully unless you are so immersed in it that you begin thinking in that language. Language is so idiomatic that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to translate certain phrases and expressions. Or something is a bit lost in the translation. For example, the simple French phrase s’il vous plait basically means “please.” But if you translate the words literally, the phrase says, “if it pleases you.” This to me has a slightly different meaning and perhaps opens a window into the French way of thinking.

I’ve often heard of people learning English from watching English-language television shows and wondered how that would work. After watching Call My Agent night after night, though, I can see how listening to the language, especially with the benefit of subtitles, can help tune your ear to the grammar and vocabulary of a language. Of course, it helps that I have some knowledge of French to begin with. But I’ve noticed myself muttering, “D’accord” or “Voyons” or one of the many expressions I’ve been hearing on the French series.

Before the COVID pandemic, my sister and I had been planning a trip to Quebec to visit the sites in the Louise Penny mystery series. Another sister and I are interested in visiting the Dordogne, a rural region of France that provides the setting for the Bruno, Chief of Police mystery series. (Notice a theme here?) While these trips have been put on hold by a worldwide pandemic, there’s no reason not to start preparing by brushing up on the language endemic to these locales.

Maybe my New Years resolution will be to take an online self-directed course in French. It would be great for my brain, and it would feed the Francophile in me. Bien sur!

This Too Shall Pass

Sometimes when life seems overwhelming, I sit myself down, take a deep breath, and murmur, “This too shall pass.” Although nothing life-threatening or deeply troubling is happening in my life right now, I find myself occasionally overwhelmed by my to-do list, by the relative chaos in a household preparing to move, and especially by the little curve balls that get thrown my way.

My daughter came home from college the other day with a cough and sore throat. Cue the COVID fears. Thankfully, she has nothing more than a garden variety virus that should go away with a little R and R. Then a burner on my stove started acting hinky, so I’ve got to have that looked at amid the holiday bustle and list of moving chores. We’re doing a little sprucing up in preparation for putting our house on the market, and of course there are slow-downs and delays. All of these factors can make it hard to stop the mental wheels spinning late at night when I’m in my bed trying to fall asleep.

Deep breath. This too shall pass.

My petty problems are nothing compared to those of several people in my life, who are facing illness, financial stress, and a holiday without one of their beloved family members. I keep reminding myself of all my blessings and of the fact that the storms in our lives make the happy times that much sweeter.

The skies for the past couple of days have been heavy and gray, threatening storms that never quite materialized. Last night the wind howled outside my window, and I thought of all the people who had lost homes and even lives during last week’s devastating tornados. My biggest worry was that my recycling containers might blow over in the wind. Yes, I am very lucky indeed. Today the sun is shining, and while the temperature has dropped considerably, it seems a beautiful day to be alive.

I know I’ll have my moments of being stressed out over the next few weeks. It’s part of my personality to “sweat the small stuff.” But I’ll try to remember that I have a mantra for that: This too shall pass.

To Err Is Human

Stephen Karam recently adapted his incisive, funny, and plaintive play The Humans for Showtime. This story of a family gathering at Thanksgiving in a crumbling New York City flat is about as far from a Norman Rockwell painting as you can get. Through the course of the film, the Blake family engages, withdraws, throws incendiary emotional barbs at each other, and tries against all odds to rise above their circumstances and their family dynamic to create a celebration of love and thanksgiving.

I could relate to just about every character and scene in The Humans. The father, Erik, reminded me of my own dad as he examined the myriad cracks and imperfections of the basement apartment in which his daughter Brigid was living with her significant other, Rich. Erik’s fretting about the mysterious figure hanging out in the courtyard, as well as all the mechanical problems in the apartment, reflects both a typical father’s worries for his children and Erik’s particular fears, ones that are revealed towards the end of the evening. When I was a young adult, my father’s favorite queries of me revolved around how my car was doing. He advised me on car maintenance issues and urged me never to let the gas tank dip below a quarter full, advice to which I adhere religiously to this day. I felt for Erik as he tries, but of course fails, to hold his tongue about the way his precious daughter is living.

The Blakes are an old-school Catholic family, so there is plenty of prayer and guilt thrown into the Thanksgiving Day mix. Mom Deirdre reminds Brigid numerous times that living with a man is not the same as marrying him. She also references her other daughter Aimee’s lesbianism numerous times, showing a discomfort with her daughter she can only indirectly express. Erik’s mother, who suffers from severe dementia, mostly shouts unintelligible things, but when grace is recited around the dinner table, her Catholic training kicks in and she prays the time-honored prayer perfectly.

Brigid has clearly tried to escape the parochialism of her Scranton-based family. Yet she seems to have a love-hate relationship with her parents and sister, most especially with her mother. As a mom myself, I had a hard time with some of these acerbic exchanges between Brigid and her parents. She can be cruel, but she is also incredibly sensitive to slights and insecure about what she is doing in Manhattan. She even bridles when Rich admonishes her to be nicer to her own family.

Amy Schumer is virtually unrecognizable as Aimee, Brigid’s sister. She is suffering from serious health, career and romantic problems. Her bitterness, though, is quiet and understated. She is almost like a ghost wandering through the halls of the dimly lit (and getting dimmer as lightbulbs keep burning out) apartment.

As the family’s secrets and private griefs surface during the course of the Thanksgiving party, their surroundings become darker and more ominous. By the end of the movie, we feel deeply unsettled. Like most families, the Blakes are sincerely trying to be with and for each other. But like most humans, they are insecure and imperfect and can’t help making mistakes in their interactions with one another.

“To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Let’s hope that this holiday season we can forgive the ones we love for their very human foibles and frailties – and that we can come together in a spirit of joy and hope for better days.

Head Cold

Yesterday I came down with a nasty head cold, and it surprised me. For starters, when I awoke in the wee hours of the morning and felt a tell-tale tickle in the back of my throat, I felt a mild wave of panic. In this age of COVID, a virus is never just a virus anymore. But as the day progressed, I felt only mild annoyance at the runny nose and occasional bouts of sneezing I was experiencing. Just a cold, I told myself. I’d forgotten that “just a cold” can make a person pretty miserable.

I had not gotten so much as a sniffle for years, it seemed, until this illness hit me out of the blue. Where could I have caught it? I assiduously wear my mask in all public indoor places. No one I have been close to has had a cold. I guess after a couple of years of staying away from people to avoid COVID, my immune system was a little rusty. I distinctly remember when I started my teaching career that I would catch virus after virus after stomach flu for a couple of years until my immune system started protecting me. The same was true for the early days of parenting when my kids brought home every germ known on the planet.

By evening, my sneezing and congestion made me feel as if my skull encased a bowling ball. I begged off cooking dinner and went to bed early. Throughout the night I awoke, propped up on my pillows for sinus drainage, and prayed Thor’s hammer would stop pounding inside my face. Early this morning, my body felt like a furnace, and when I took my temp, sure enough, I had a slight fever. I began to worry that perhaps this was something more than a cold. My daughter had brought home a strep infection along with her laundry over Thanksgiving. Maybe I had succumbed to it. Or could I be one of those unlucky ones who catches the coronavirus despited having been heavily vaccinated?

I made an early morning appointment at our local urgent care and got myself checked out. I was swabbed for both COVID and strep and told to go home and take drugs. Two hours later, I was relieved: no COVID, no strep. Just a dang head cold. Who knew this lowly virus could take me down so hard? I have been lolling on the couch drinking tea, reading, and napping intermittently. I guess the world of viruses was looking at my germ-free body and saying, “Your turn!”

Back in my boss younger days I would have popped a couple of Sudafed, grabbed a thermos of tea, and sashayed off to work to sneeze and cough my way through the day. No head cold was stopping me. But I guess this way is better. I have been stressing out about the holidays and our imminent move from our home where we have collected 19 years worth of stuff. Maybe this cold is nature’s way of telling me to slow down and rest.

I’m almost finished with the book I’m reading, and I see a marathon of 30 Rock episodes in my near future. I’m going to weather this head cold with panache. Excuse me while I find another box of Kleenex.