Adam McKay and an Affect of Blame

In Steven Shaviro’s “Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales” (2010), he argues that “Films and music videos…are best regarded as affective maps, which  do  not  just  passively  trace  or  represent,  but  actively  construct  and perform,  the  social  relations,  flows  and  feelings  that  they  are  ostensibly ‘about’” (Shaviro 2010). A notable filmmaker to harness a variety of post-cinematic techniques to create films with a particular 21^st-century affect is Adam McKay, whose three most recent films, The Big Short (2015), Vice (2018), and Don’t Look Up (2021), all target timely issues about money, government, and catastrophe. 

At their core, McKay’s recent films have been about the question of who is to blame, and for each, the answer has shifted closer and closer to the conclusion that who is to blame is a disembodied “us,” casting the net wider with each subsequent film. The Big Short said that the problem was the big banks and the Wall Street elite, though the film’s framing had us sympathize with a select few in order to ease us into the financial world that most people don’t have any tangible connection to. Vice said that the problem was the government, but concludes with the titular Vice President Cheney addressing the audience and telling us that we are also part of the problem for allowing him to capture the power that he has. Don’t Look Up is even more explicit, if possible, with Jennifer Lawrence’s scientist character screaming at the audience to pay attention to the thinly veiled environmental catastrophe that’s about to take place.  

We are both implicated by the films and absolved by them for being able to ‘dissect’ them, despite the straightforward nature of each film literally providing us with definitions and video footage that aim to uncomplicate the complicated. His rapid editing choices, fourth-wall-breaking explanations, and overlapping dialogue create an affect of chaos, confusion, and nonsense, giving the viewer less of a complete understanding of all the intricacies of the world that they’re watching unfold and more of a particular sense of feeling. But each time, the sense of feeling is devoid of beauty or love, instead constructing a general unease that every single time, we are ignoring the people who hold the answers to our problems. The fault, then, lies on everyone and no one, leaving the guilt suspended in the air for the viewer to take nowhere. Adam McKay’s brand of cinematic pessimism constructs an affect that assumes apathy of everyone but a select few, but at the same time, extends a hand to the audience that if they buy into it, they, too, can harness their guilt into disappointment, scoffing at those who don’t “get it.” 

by grace munson

Shaviro, S. (2010). Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales. Film-Philosophy [online], 14(1), 1-102. Available from: https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2010.0001 [accessed 31 October 2022].