Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Corner: Dig deeper
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Oct. 6 marked the date of the officially finalized merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Brothers Discovery into the mass media company Skydance Corporation, now co-owned by right wing billionaire, Trump acolyte, Oracle co-founder, and number one individual donor to the genocidal Israel Defense Forces, Larry Ellison, along with his son, founder and CEO David Ellison.
This newly mutated Frankenstein of a conglomerate celebrated its unholy genesis by taking to social media with a nauseating video showcasing the eye-watering panoply of brands and companies that now fall under its control. These include:
Paramount, Warner Brothers, CBS, Nickelodeon, HBO Max, DC, CNN, Paramount+, Paramount Animation, TVLand, Skydance Animation, GolfDigest, Hogar de HGTV, TNT, Warner Brothers Animation, Discovery, Paramount Sports Entertainment, Smithsonian Channel, NickJr., SkyShowtime, HLN, Warner Brothers Television, Discovery+, Pop TV, Paramount Television Studios, Eurosport, MTV, Harry Potter, Showtime, Adult Swim, Pluto TV, HGTV, Food Network, Network 10, Comedy Central, HBO, The Cooking Channel, CNN Espanol, Alloy Entertainment, Discovery Home & Health, Country Music Television, Cartoon Network, New Line Cinema, TLC, BET, Boomerang, Animal Planet, Miramax, Channel 5, DFC, CNN All Access, Bleacher Report, DMAX, Warner Brothers Clockwork, Discovery Turbo, Ananey, Cartoonito, American Heroes Channel, and Asian Food Network.
Opposition to this merger has been fierce, with vocal critics including Hulk actor (and notably for our region, star of the 2019 film Dark Waters about the C8 crisis in Parkersburg), Mark Ruffalo. Ruffalo was, predictably, smeared as "antisemitic" for his criticisms of the Ellison family, and took to social media to respond:
"This merger has real consequences for real people, and for the entire country. Scrutinizing the Ellisons, including Oracle's business built on data, surveillance technology and government contracts, and the serious threat to editorial freedom and the loss of a livelihood for thousands of families, is fair and necessary. The $111 billion deal would hand one family control over CNN, HBO and Warner Bros., backed in part by foreign money whose influence on editorial decisions has never been fully explained to the public."
It was against this backdrop, then, that Warner Brothers released its final film before its acquisition by the Ellison family, Alejandro Inarritu's satirical black comedy film "Digger." The film, described as the "Dr. Strangelove of the climate crisis," and featuring an unforgettable lead performance from Tom Cruise, opened to catastrophic box office figures and was savaged by critics, who seemed practically delighted at the prospect of its failure.
The online reaction to the film, however, as well as that of numerous Hollywood actors and celebrities, could not be more different.
Director Guillermo Del Toro has been an eager champion of the film, tweeting shortly after its release: "BTW there is a "climate change" movie in release that Is NOT about climate change but the manipulation of narratives – and yes it is released by WB (possibly the very last movie WB as such will ever release) and has been deemed "excessive, overbearing" so – see it in a theatre..."
Singer Neil Young called it "the best film I have ever seen," while actor Ben Affleck said of the film's detractors: "It's a little bit like the high-school bullying thing, with people who hadn't even seen movies. You see it happening now, frankly, with "Digger" Everybody wants to celebrate this bomb as if it's the most exciting thing to happen."
"Digger" is a complex film with complex themes, and I would be doing you a major disservice by unraveling too many of its secrets here -- you really should see it for yourself, if you can still manage to find it playing anywhere. But in broad strokes, the movie tells the story of fictional oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, whose reckless drilling practices in the Greenland arctic unleash a larger than life environmental catastrophe upon the world, threatening millions of lives.
Speaking on the seemingly outlandish chain of events depicted in the film, director Alejandro Inarritu noted that "When we started, nine years ago, all these events were a big stretch. The disasters we were imagining were only kind of possible. Scientists measured the ice shelf detaching in Greenland -- it was possible, but a stretch. But reality changed so fast that by the time we were shooting, many of these events were already happening."
Even as the film was being pulled from theaters due to poor box office performance, scientists announced that the so-called Thwaites Doomsday Glacier was "melting more aggressively than previously projected," potentially doubling sea level rise, and President Trump made headlines by teasing an upcoming "massive" surge of oil, gas, and mineral exploration in Greenland.
There's a key scene in the film that's provoked a great deal of interesting discussion online, posted by Tom Cruise as a clip on social media and racking up over 16 million views on Twitter alone. The scene, which takes place following the devastating environmental catastrophe unleashed by Digger Rockwell, sees the swaggering Texas oil tycoon making a speech in defense of his disastrous actions in front of the European Parliament.
"And every one of you," booms Rockwell, turning the accusatory finger back around toward his audience, "no matter how conscientious you pretend to be, you want to drive around in the cheapest fuel! You want to keep your lights on, your heating and air conditioning running! You want dirt cheap tickets to Mallorca so that you can roast your pale a–es in a hammock! You want to carve into a goood steak! You want a two day delivery of s— that you don't need! You want to charge up them cell phone batteries so you can gawk at your TikTok and your YouTube! You want energy, energy so that you can ask AI to solve the very same disasters that it's fueling! You want freedom -- freedom to bask in the comfort of your unsustainable lives!"
Cruise's performance here is spectacular, and for some viewers, this speech served as a perfect encapsulation of the film's thesis: we're all responsible for climate change, and scapegoating individual bad actors like Digger simply lets the rest of us off the hook for our own irresponsible behavior.
But this is a very surface level interpretation. Digger, in his fiery speech, uses almost the exact same strategy cooked up by the PR firm Ogilvy & Mather in 2004 in defense of British Petroleum, the concept of "individual carbon footprints" used to shift the focus away from the apocalyptic willful negligence of the fossil fuel industry, and onto everyday consumers.
I wouldn't say, though, that the film absolves its audience of responsibility, either - again, I don't want to spoil too much for those who haven't seen it, but there's a moment as the credits begin to roll that seems very much designed to shake viewers out of their own complacency, and quite effectively so.
"Digger," at its core, is a story about stories.
Who are we allowing to tell the story of this extremely tumultuous moment in human history?
What story are they telling, how are they telling it, and why are they telling it in the manner that they are? Are we being strategically drip fed just enough of the truth in order to make the insidious narrative control of the ruling class go down more easily?
These are the questions we need to be constantly asking ourselves so long as the Rockwells and the Ellisons of the world are the ones dictating our sense of reality. To surrender control over these narratives is to surrender the future of the planet itself.
Aaron Dunbar is a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.