Don't Look Up At Munich

The other day I happened to watch a seemingly odd pairing of new movies : Munich : The Edge of War followed by Don't Look Up. Both are excellent on their own merits, but I think the combination, strange though it may seem, is even better. I will give some brief description of each but it's the linked theme of forgiveness that I most want to explore, which will necessitate some minor spoilers.

First, a reminder that I don't believe the message intended by an artist is necessarily all that important to the merits of their work. I have become quite convinced that it's the message the audience takes away that's more important and often more interesting. Whether a character's actions can be construed as good or evil is - almost - entirely in the eye of the beholder, regardless of whether the author intended any particular moral lesson or not.

Yet that's no reason to discount what the author was trying to argue either, particularly so in these cases. Munich is a conscious attempt to rehabilitate Chamberlain, often viewed by the modern British as cowardly and ineffectual. Without digging into the accuracies of the movie, as it stands, I think it largely succeeds in its goal. The pressures of movie-Chamberlain to avoid war at all costs come through very clearly, his earnest intent to save millions of lives understandable, and the viewer feels for themselves the tension, the difficulty of the choices he had to make in the face of extreme consequences.

In particular, towards the end of the film movie-Chamberlain is presented with an offer. He can either continue with the peace talks he's been working on carefully for many months, or he can accept a radically different plan, with 12 hours notice, from a complete stranger. The viewer is given the distinct impression that this plan might indeed be the better choice, but he refuses - and the film is skilled enough that you can appreciate why. Thinking it over afterward, there is no guarantee this plan would have worked anyway. The peace talks were all but guaranteed, the intervention of a stranger is a wild stab in the dark. While the viewer could certainly conclude that the movie-Chamberlain is naïve, it would be rather harder to describe him as cowardly.

Was Chamberlain right to negotiate peace with Hitler ? The movie ends by saying it bought the British time to re-arm, but equally, it must have allowed Hitler even more time to prepare. From movie-Chamberlain's perspective, it seems clear that Hitler is contemptible. But it was not at all clear that Hitler was truly monstrous. Horrible, certainly. A dangerous, fanatic absolutely, who shouldn't have been anywhere near political office. But actually evil ? There was not much at all to suggest what was going to happen next; from the movie version, at least, Chamberlain's approach is, arguably, neither cowardly nor stupid. It was a sensible approach, given the ignorance of the nature of the beast across the negotiating table.

In Don't Look Up, the twofold threats are a bit different. The main one comes from a gigantic comet that's going to cause a mass extinction six months from its discovery. This, in movie science land, is a difficult but not quite unsolvable problem. The second problem is vastly more challenging : politics. An inept US administration that's deep in the pocket of big tech, that cares more about polling than reality, a society that obsesses over happiness and washes over all unpleasantness with platitudes, a group of truth-talking scientists coming up against a crowd bent on avoiding "division" and a wider public who barely believe in the asteroid at all... remind you of anything ?

Personally I think the movie's a great piece of satire, hilarious and horrifying all at the same time. It's a very thinly-veiled attack on climate/covid/inset-crisis-here deniers, but you can also read a lot more into it than that. It's enormously pro-science and anti-fake news. You could also view it as anti-woke, determined as it is that facts are facts and that denial of them is just fucking stupid. This is a sentiment that I largely share - despite philosophical misgivings there are cases where observational reality can smack you in the face like, well, a colossal asteroid. At which point any doubt about the nature of truth is rendered pointless. Not every viewpoint has merit.

(This is not to say that how we define knowledge isn't hugely important, difficult, and interesting. It is all of those. Nevertheless, there exists a regime in which trying to avoid, rather than analyse, observational findings is a very clear sign of delusion and insanity.)

The movie gives us an all-too-accurate satire on how the various media and political organisations respond to the crisis, with a fantastically believable stream of bullshit from various quarters. As well as being frequently hilarious, it's not afraid to give numerous impassioned and deadly serious speeches, especially on the need for a common framework of knowledge. In my opinion it's a marvellous blend of emotions that's executed brilliantly. It's a shame that the people this movie is really aimed at are never going to learn anything from it, because as it quite correctly points out, these people are largely just very very stupid (and/or, more charitably led astray).

At the end of the movie the approaching comet becomes visible to the naked eye. Finally at this point the doubts begin to pass away, but by this point it's already too late.

The unifying theme between these two movies - at least the one that was triggered for me - is how we deal with monsters and idiots. As the old saying goes, the powerful and the stupid have in common that they don't alter their views to fit the facts, but alter the facts to fit their views. Chamberlain tried to appease a monster. Some of the protagonists in Don't Look Up try and avoid stoking division, even when there is only one possible outcome from the impact of a 9 km comet. Chamberlain, it could be argued, couldn't have known that appeasement wouldn't work*, but the fictional protagonists of Don't Look Up don't have that excuse.

* At least not as a long-term strategy. As a temporary, diversionary tactic it might have some success.

This is a dilemma I've raised before. Treating people like idiots is probably the surest way to drive them away, yet trying to placate them runs the risk of legitimising their stupidity. I like very much the emphasis in Don't Look Up that not everything needs to be a platitude, it's okay to disagree and have arguments. We don't all have to agree on everything. We can yell at each other and make peace afterwards.

Perhaps that's a message that hasn't been clear enough in all the discussions of filter bubbles. Perhaps they're more like blankets - when someone says a mean thing, it's all too easy to dive back under the warm snuggly covers. If you're used to everyone always telling you you're right, you won't be able to deal with a proper argument. It's not just that filter bubbles (mainstream media as well as the online kind) cause you to lack or even reject information, it's that they diminish the emotional fortitude needed to deal with disagreement. In short, you become a thin-skinned ninny, resorting to ever more desperate bullshit in attempts to avoid dealing with the real issues.

This seems a bit of a catch 22. If you tell the idiots the honest truth, they'll scurry back under their filter blankets. If you try and be nice to them, they'll think you're endorsing their stupidity. Their exists no solution, so far as I can see, besides tearing up the filter blankets, and that's easier said than done precisely because everything must be deemed to always be acceptable to everyone. 

I say no. As with vaccine mandates, it should be fine to tell people they have to do some things and can't do others. If they're don't like it, that's tough. I agree with H.G. Wells that the law should strive to avoid compulsion, but there are times when the consequences are so obvious that there really shouldn't be any need for a debate. If you refuse to wear a mask, you're saying it's fine for you to risk the health of other people - and that is contrary to the most basic principles of liberalism.

I can already hear the objections about who-gets-to-decide, and to that I say simply : sod off. Not all mandates are the same and you well know it.

I've never much believed in the old maxim that if you want peace you must prepare for war. But if people are already antagonising you, if they're talking shit to your face, sometimes the carry-a-big-stick approach is necessary. Likewise, the west's approach to Russia seems to be to completely ignore the lessons from Afghanistan - or indeed a very much longer swathe of history - and just hope that nothing much happens. Like appeasement in general, this may work for a little while, but sooner or later we're going to run out of salami. I don't know what the practical answer is to dealing with the folly of the west, but Russia is a bully, and the answer here seems an awful lot clearer.