The mainstream media has had a fundamental part in shaping the opinions of the public on issues like climate change. In the last decade, the media’s role (specifically in politics) has changed, and in the ‘Trump era’ there has been an increase in media bias and subsequently public mistrust towards mainstream media when it comes to these issues. This in turn has been explored by film and literature, especially in the Science Fiction genre. To explore the debates about the presence and influence the media has in Science Fiction films, I am using the 2021 Netflix film Don’t Look up and the 2005 Disney film Chicken Little to demonstrate the relationship between media, public opinion, and climate change, one being mainly for adults and the other aimed at children.

Don’t Look Up is a Netflix film about a comet headed for earth, where a ‘rag-tag’ team of nobodies, a professor and a PhD student, try to save humanity by warning the powers that be of the comet and the earth’s impending doom. Dr Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) are both scientists based out of Michigan State University, but their knowledge is questioned because of their university’s reputation or lack thereof seeing as it is not an ivy league school like Harvard or Yale. This fact, in the eyes of President Orlean (Meryl Streep), makes them less credible evident in how she dismisses them upon her first interaction with Dr Mindy and Dibiasky. Having failed to convince the White House about the severity of the situation Dr Mindy and Kate take to the media to warn the public of the comet.    

Chicken Little is a 2005 Disney animated children’s movie about a little chicken that much like the two in Don’t Look Up seeks to warn his fellow Oakey Oaks residents that “the sky is falling”. (Dinadal 2005) Chicken Little (Zach Braff) gets hit in the head with a piece of ‘sky’ and tries to warn that the “sky is falling” but when surrounded by the media to produce evidence for this he stutters and is unable to find the ‘piece’ of sky quickly turns on him claiming that he was hit with an acorn and that his is ‘crazy’ and ‘insane’, the reporter in declaring that it is “gibberish. Just gibberish of an insane person”. (Dinadal 2005) Though there are no explicitly malicious ‘governmental forces’, in the animated film, Mayor Turkey Lurkey (Don Knotts) acts as both the political, and literal hindrance for Little’s vindication roadblocking the crowd from discovery to pick up a coin, an apt parallel to Don’t Look Up’s influential billionaire Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) who acts as the real authority. (McKay 2021)

The lack of authority from the main characters in both films is one of the central themes, outside of the impending crisis, these unlikely sources of ‘knowing individuals’ lack the power to get anyone to listen to the very real danger. Though there are valid reasons for not believing the main characters at first, the issue arises when they are proven correct. The extreme media scrutiny of the people sounding the alarms come with headlines, successfully deflecting from crisis to ridicule. There are real efforts to besmirch and discredit these people, most notably when Dr. Mindy gets involved with one of the reporters and begins his moral decline. (McKay 2021) In Chicken Little, his outburst, leads to a movie being made of his hysterical ‘insane’ moment as the media dubs it, the movie even calling him crazy, leading him to attempt to put the incident behind him. In both of these character arcs they turn their backs on what they know to be true in order to avoid the onslaught of media misrepresentation.  (Dinadal 2005)

Though the media as represented in Don’t Look Up is more overtly representing conservative and right-wing news outlets I would argue that the media in Chicken Little also operates in the same capacity and as such in a journal article in the Nordic Journal of Media Studies titled Media and the Climate Crisis, Anna Roosvall and Risto Kunelius argue that because the media does focus on the issues a lot more now, to a point where it has become a part of everyday life “the rise of the debate about climate as a crisis is not merely a “topic” on the political and public agenda, but rather a systemic challenge that societies face – from everyday life choices to the very foundations of the economy, social interests, and power relationships.“ (1) The article goes on to say that “The right-wing populist movements decisively aligned against climate action, sometimes doubting scientific expertise, sometimes arguing against global responsibilities, and often doing both”  (2) An example of this is Jesse Watters on Fox News exclaiming that Bill Nye “doesn’t even have a PhD” after a clip of Nye talking about the ‘stupidity of climate denial’, aiming to discredit the latter. It is also glaringly obvious why Waters and by extension Fox News chose Nye as the face for climate change, among others like Greta Thunberg, namely because they do not have the ‘credentials’, though I would argue that The Science Guy and activist do have credibility in their careers in educating the public in matters like global warming and climate change.  (Fox News 2019)

The media tries to label it as ‘crazy, ‘insane’ ‘unbelievable’ and ‘unsubstantial’ but the audience knows, we see that the disaster is imminent; the audience believes our unlikely heroes, we see the comet, we see the piece of sky, so we believe,  

all hope is not lost,

but wherever you may end up, do look up because the sky may be falling.

Works Cited

Roosvall, Risto Kunelius and Anna. “Media and the Climate Crisis.” Nordic Journal of Media Studies (2021): 1-19.

Chicken Little. Dir. Mark Dinadal. Disney. 2005. Animation.

Don’t Look Up! Dir. Adam McKay. Hyperobjects. 2021. Netflix.

Fox News. Bill Nye’s fiery message on climate change captures attention. 16 May 2019. Video.