Lighten up the satire? That’s a tall order when life is out-crazying the most vivid fiction | Catherine Bennett
In 1944, George Orwell got a letter from TS Eliot, a director at Faber, rejecting his political satire, Animal Farm. There were several reasons. First, it was not the right time. Also, said the creator of The Waste Land, the effect is simply one of negation". The poet took issue, too, with the wholesale disrespecting of pigs, since they were logically the best qualified to run the farm", being the cleverest. What was needed (someone might argue) was not more communism but more public spirited pigs."
So, if some leading film critics watching Adam McKay's Don't Look Up (currently most-watched on Netflix) have hankered for a less satirical kind of satire, they are in distinguished company. TS Eliot might well have agreed with these reviewers that McKay's savaging of a society too corrupt and deluded to save itself from an urgent threat to life on Earth, in the film's case, a comet, could have been more cheerfully done. For instance, echoing Eliot on pigs, some of the more cartoonish leads could have been made more relatable. How about humanising lead villain Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance being mesmerising), a creepy tech billionaire who, absurdly, intends to live forever? Meanwhile, McKay's US president, the preposterous Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) has appointed her dreadful son chief of staff. Why can't these grievous weirdos with their silly dialogue be more like, say, Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk?
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