Don’t Look Up: Hyperobjects and Bland Branding

Popular reviews of Don’t Look Up have been polarised, ranged from admiring to dismissive. This Netflix comedy satirises the difficulty of compelling the uninterested to care and the failure of government to tackle our imminent extinction. As such, we are left with the question as to whether it is still possible, in 2022, to find humour in a film about the end of the world? Ultimately, the film is the product of the discourse it satirises; the star-studded cast and their activist message is lost in a failure to hold to account those most responsible for global warming by focusing not on the systemic but the individual. In looking towards object-oriented ontology, this review attempts to unpack the politics of care-lessness which envelops the hyperobject of global warming and the political systems of profitisation and branding which surround it.