Why Is Everyone Upset About “Don’t look Up?”

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Hot Topic Du Jour: Why Is Everyone Upset About “Don’t look Up?”

Critics, audiences, and activists have both savaged and praised the movie, and the backlash has highlighted the difficulty of conveying an urgent message with comedy. Has political satire lost its power? Or has reality become so absurd that it’s now beyond parody? - The Atlantic

January 14, 2022

       2021 in review at the complete review 

       Here is the annual overview of the year that was at the site, mostly in numbers: 

       In 2020, 174 books were reviewed at the complete review, down considerably from the 198 in 2020 and the fewest in a long time. One reason was that the books were longer -- the 174 reviewed books had 51,302 pages, compared to 50,683 pages for the 198 2020 books -- with the average length of reviewed books 294.84 pages in 2021, up almost 40 pages per book over 2020 and by far the highest annual average to date; yes, I am increasingly drawn even more to long novels ..... (The median length of reviewed books -- 240.5 -- was also up 10 pages over the 2020 median.) 
       The longest book reviewed was *only* 950 pages -- not a thousand-pager in the lot -- while 21 of the books were over 500 pages (compared to 12 in 2020). (Seven books were under 100 pages in length.) 

       The average review length seems to have plateaued at a current comfort level (after steadily increasing to this point over the years), the 1545.14 words/review average in 2021 only slightly more than the 1521 in 2020. (Total review-words written -- given the fewer review -- was down considerably however, to 268,854.) 
       The median review-length was 1397 words, and the longest was 3816 words long -- which was not even that much of an outlier, with six reviews clocking in at over 3000 words (and 27 more over 2000). 

       You can find the 50 most popular reviews, 2021 here. 

       The most popular author pages were:

1. Amélie Nothomb
2. Murakami Haruki
3. Patrick White
4. Cynthia Ozick
5. Roberto Bolaño

       The most popular review-indices were for:

1. Far East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) literature
2. Mysteries and Thrillers
3. Books Written Before 1900
4. Erotic, Pornographic, and Sex-related books
5. Eastern European literature
6. French literature
7. Books from selected Imprints and Publishers
8. German literature
9. Latin and South American literature
10. Science fiction

       These were also the top ten indices last year -- albeit in different order. Last year's number one, the erotic index, has again slipped down to fourth place -- yo-yo-ing between the two positions for the past four years. 

       Disappointingly, books originally written in only 29 languages (including English) were reviewed in 2021 -- down from 38 in 2020. 
       The top ten languages were:

• 1. English 45 (25.86% of all books) (2020: 54)
• 2. French 27 (2020: 29)
• 3. Spanish 14 (13)
• 4. German 13 (11)
• 5. Japanese 12 (13)
• 6. Italian 9
• 7. Chinese 7
• 8. Arabic 5
• -. Danish 5
• -. Swedish 5

       It's more difficult to get any sort of meaningful count of countries, not least because countries change over the years (the Soviet Union, ancient Rome, etc.), but authors of reviewed books in 2021 came from roughly 51 countries, compared to 55 in 2020. The leading countries were:

• 1. US 27 (2020: 21)
• 2. France 22 (22)
• 3. Japan 12 (14)
• 4. UK 11 (23)
• 5. Italy 9 (10)

       The ratio of male-to-female authors remains consistently poor, but women writers did almost make more than a quarter of all reviewed titles: 45 books were by female authors, 25.86%. 

       Two titles received an 'A' grade -- The Membranes, by Chi Ta-wei, and Richard Zenith's biography of Pessoa. 
       Eighteen titles got a grade of 'A-', 76 'B+', 69 'B'; the lowest grade was a single 'C'. 

       Site traffic continued a longtime decline at the beginning of the year, flattened out over the summer, and increased at a good clip towards the end of the year. 
       Regionally, the biggest decline in traffic was in South America, while the lowest decline was in Africa. Among the countries providing the most traffic to the site, growth was strong in the Philippines -- but even stronger in China, where it was up over 60% over 2020, pushing it into sixth place overall (up from ninth in 2020). Meanwhile, traffic from the United States was down -- and, at 32.95% of all traffic, dipped below one-third of all traffic for the first time. 
       There were visitors from 215 countries and territories in 2020 (2020: 222). 

       The countries from which the most traffic came were:

1. United States (32.95%; 2020: 35.40%)
2. India (9.56%)
3. United Kingdom (8.92%)
4. Philippines
5. Canada
6. China
7. Australia
8. Nigeria
9. Germany
10. Netherlands

1. Figuring out how to “use AI to improve human moral judgments in bioethics” — a model from Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Duke) and Joshua August Skorburg (Guelph)
2. The Tractatus as song — sung by M.A. Numminem (via Timothy Williamson)
3. Use of psychedelic drugs causes “significant shifts away from ‘physicalist’ or ‘materialist’ views, and towards panpsychism and fatalism” — and the effects last for at least months, according to a recent study
4. “Do your own research” has become the slogan of those “skeptical” of expertise — Nathan Ballantyne (Fordham) and David Dunning (Michigan) consider how to respond to them
5. Loneliness and the need to be needed — philosophers on how to better understand, measure, and address loneliness
6. A philosophy course taught by your favorite memes of 2021 — by Ali Fitzgerald in The New Yorker
7. The first step in creating a Bernard Williams Society — is a website dedicated to the work and life of Williams, created by Paul Russell (Lund)