Thoughts on Cultural Weapons and Social Responsibility
The finger Digger points with is a cold and damning one. It catches you with your pants down, laughing at the prospect of John Goodman pushing the big red button, waiting for the world to end with the same anticipation you’d give a punchline. The finger is the middle one, and it points not only at the unfeeling billionaires and the elected officials who enable them, but at us, the people who recognize the damage being done to the world and continue to enjoy the comforts that allow it to happen.
The film’s accusation is not that we’re ignorant, or even stupid. It’s that we’ve developed a kind of doublethink that allows us to condemn destruction while remaining dependent on it. We want the drilling to stop, but not if stopping it means giving anything up. We want the world saved, provided someone else saves it and we can carry on as before. And if it all falls apart, we can always laugh or cry about it later. What makes Digger so unsettling is that it understands how easily satire can become part of this arrangement. We watch the powerful behave like cartoons, laugh at their absurdity, and leave feeling that we’ve seen through them. But seeing through a system is not the same as doing something to save it. Sometimes the spectacle of its destruction is simply another comfort it provides. This movie shows a dual problem. The lack of care from people who have an unequal power and therefore a higher responsibility, and those of us who are all sharing in the lack of participation in keeping these people accountable.
SPOILERS AHEAD
There are three essential chapters this movie breaks itself into. The first part is this fake satirical play titled “Fossil Fools”. The main protagonist of this satire within the film is plainly painted by the big bombastic version of the oil driller Digger Rockwell played by Curtis Markison (Tom Cruise’s character). In the second chapter of the film, we are then pulled out of the play and told very abruptly by Digger Rockwell’s nephew, Kenny Rockwell (Jesse Plemons’ character- who is the looming true devil over this production) what his “goal” with the satire is. Finally we get to the dark, almost cynical ending where we realize that it is too late, and the ones who are left in the crumbling wreckage of ourselves, are ourselves.
The play points mainly at Rockwell as the man ignorantly destroying the world for his money, coming up with the idea of the “firewall” to manipulate the story online. The huge courtroom scene, probably the most entertaining moment of the play within the movie, seems to purposefully mimic people in power making a case for their unequal power, like Nicholson from A Few Good Men with his “Deep down you want me on that wall, you NEED me on that wall” speech or even this year’s Coyote vs Acme with Foghorn Leghorn’s southern drawl and appeal to comfort and progress. I feel this comparison to the big red chicken is especially apt as this whole play is one big cartoon. It’s a sham but an entertaining one. We know we’ve seen this before but Rockwell just kicked a lady in the face while doing it so I’m distracted by the spectacle. The play is a big distraction lost on what it is really saying to us or what is left to do.
The closest the play comes to having the same message as the real movie’s is when Ganesh, the head of environmental safety in Rockwell’s company, eats an endangered fish after Rockwell assures him of the fish’s upkeep and its personal care making Ganesh comfortable in eating it. This is probably one of the more compelling scenes in the play as it shows that even the play itself can’t help but depict the biggest proponent of climate control as a sort of hypocrite who will choose pleasure over principle. On the surface this is a damning moment where the audience kind of knows Ganesh sold his soul and deep down we pity/blame Ganesh but we also laugh it off because of his bewildered face and Rockwell’s devious tricking of Ganesh. But us enjoying this scene is not the same as us being above it. This is where the problem of satire comes in as we are just as culpable as Ganesh, but we laugh at him as a ridiculous character.
Jesse Plemons has designed this whole revival of the play and wants us to enjoy the failings and ridiculousness of the people in charge of what is our world and our lives. And when Ganesh eats the fish it’s saying that anyone can be soothed into this sort of comfort that makes them comfortable with a bad thing, while affirming that the ridiculous, rich man has the power. This is as close to the message of the movie that the message within the fictional play gets which is that we have a secret war going on between the billionaires who will blatantly misuse their power while their main tool is distraction and the promise of comfort. The other side is the many people like Ganesh who get taken in by that genuine honesty of that comfort, while subconsciously knowing they are failing a bigger societal responsibility. In the play we are shown the spectacle of court, the spectacle of ridiculous presidents, and the ease in which everything can (and has) fallen apart. This is when the movie truly reveals itself as a masterpiece through the breaking down of the play and the reveal of the looming producer Plemons and the true dissatisfaction from the actor Markison.
Digger did end up destroying the world in the movie but not in the ridiculous way that is displayed in the play. Markison (Cruise) says so himself when he finally has had enough of the charade and abruptly interrupts the whole production. Markison has studied thousands of hours of footage on Digger and knows him to be a cold and calculated man, nothing like is seen in any of the plays we just watched. This is where Plemons finally speaks up not as a nameless producer but rather as the lasting vestige of the man who destroyed the world. However he doesn’t care what Markison thinks he knows and he doesn’t even respect the director enough to remember why she got hired. Plemons in his plea to get the play back running says that all he cares about is the entertainment that the audience gets from watching his ridiculous family and his uncle Digger die. The big question the movie leaves you with and kind of hints to is why Plemons would go through all this effort to recreate his family’s biggest sin, and the suicide of his uncle Digger. Maybe it’s to downplay his family’s current complicity or to give his audience a much needed catharsis. But there’s something even darker going on that is felt by these underhanging shots of Plemons looming above us.
The play continues to the end (with a young version of Kenny Rockwell showing the importance Plemons puts on his own character), when his uncle Digger dies and the audience goes crazy cheering and crying and cursing at his death. Plemons, like Digger, knows what an audience wants, showing his deep cold understanding of the human psyche. But to what end? It is shown that the reason that the Rockwell’s are still in power is because his mom manufactured the masks that the audience needs to use in this world that has been crippled by climate change. So yes, Plemons is out for entertainment but only to keep the many compliant and happy. He shows that his one crazy uncle doesn’t speak for the rest of his family and his mom is actually the one who saved them (from themselves). True power is quiet and is slow, and meticulously destroys and sucks the blood from the world one leech at a time. We see the leeches, we want to run, but people like Kenny Rockwell keep us in, reminding us we love swimming.
Digger is a rare case in movies where it shuns you for being enjoyed by it. Satire offers catharsis by allowing us to recognize what is wrong, condemn the people responsible, and leave feeling that our recognition was itself a form of resistance. We emerge morally satisfied, having mistaken the ability to identify a problem for the willingness to confront it. By the time the intercom tells us to put on our masks, the joke has outlived its punchline. Digger is dead, the audience has cheered, and Kenny Rockwell remains. The tragedy is not simply that the world can be destroyed by people who profit from its destruction. It’s that the people who survive may be offered a comfortable way to live with the consequences, and that they may gladly accept it. We see the leeches and want to get out of the water. But the water is warm, the swimming is pleasant, and Kenny Rockwell has assured us that everything is under control. And so, we stay. Because we love swimming.
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