“This Isn’t Happening, Right?”: Satire, Spectacle, and Anti-Intellectualism in Don’t Look Up

ABSTRACT This contribution examines the metapolitics of the New Right as satirized in Don’t Look Up (2021). It contextualizes the film’s warning about the global climate crisis (epitomized in the arrival of a planet killer comet) in the day and age of the Trump presidency with the film’s metafictional commentary on the uses of satire to move audiences and citizens to action. In particular, the article addresses the workings of satire as a genre after the apex of news satire in the 2000s and, by means of an analysis of the film’s cinematography of governance power and satirical laughter, shows how Don’t Look Up engages the U.S. culture of anti-intellectualism and the populist politics of spectacle.