My friends and I aren't going to die of old age. Or maybe in 20 years once climate change hamstrings our food system there'll be some food riots and we'll get trampled in a human stampede. Sticking to the food theme, maybe all the absurd chemicals slushing around our food systems will build up a bit too much and we'll keel over like the titanic. Or just a plain old famine will get us. Or we could be one of the countless numbers killed by the weather, unforeseen floods trapping us inside our houses to slowly drown into the cold water. If we're lucky, maybe our deaths will be more dramatic, protesting and fighting against corporate bullshit or a government inching towards authoritarianism. But we're not going to die like our grandparents or great-grandparents, old, in a home, surrounded by family. That's the consensus, anyway.
Beyond that, life doesn't seem to really be all that hopeful. I really don't know if I'm going to ever buy a house. Not because I don't want to, I do, but because in my lifetime house prices have gone from huge investments into a pipe dream; only I can't afford that pipe. Or the drugs to dream. The world we were being sold growing up is not the world we woke up to. There is no Canadian, American, or Capitalist dream; it's a shitshow.
Ostensibly, this is a pretty potent time for art. That's the saying, I think-- bad times make good art. Something like that, at least. It'd be straightforward to do a story like this. Imagine:
Our main character is a middle income young adult still living at home because they can't afford to move out. Oh, and they have a secret: they're queer, and their parents can never know. They get rejected for every job they're overqualified for. Their parents keep trying to force them into a life path that doesn't seem to exist anymore-- cue anxiety, existential crisis, etc. Imagine The Graduate, but queer.
Okay-- cool. Obvious, though. And surface level-- it doesn't capture the way despair penetrates young people like an arrow shot from a cannon. In that story, the person is sad because their parents are homophobic, because they can't get a job. There are causes and effects. And more importantly, resolutions. There really isn't a resolution to something like climate despair. Nothing simple, anyway.
The story I described focuses on the material effects of what's happening; hoping to conjure up the feelings of alienation by throwing alienating situations at us. That's not really how it works for us young gen-z kids. We often feel that the world is ending. The feeling needs to be bigger, broader, because the fear we feel is multifaceted. A gibbering hydra on crack.
Luckily, its not impossible to tackle those deeper, existential emotions. It's being done in a variety of mediums by young artists all over the globe. Take this (excellent) Phoebe Bridgers song, Chinese Satellite:
Let It Be this is not. Chinese Satellite is overflowing with generalized alienation; from the opening lines describing a cycle that prevents authenticity to the titular satellite. Lets look at the moment it shows up in the song:
"Took a tour out to see the stars/but they weren't out tonight/So I wished hard on/ a Chinese satellite/I want to believe/Instead I look at the sky/ and I feel nothing"
Wishing upon a star is, in the West, a ubiquitous and romantic tradition. Everyone knows what it means. Some of the most iconic films of all time (ie. Disney's Peter Pan) incorporate it into their very identity.
Phoebe Bridgers literally cannot wish upon the stars because she cannot see them; she is literally unable to engage in this popular mythology. Wishing on the Chinese satellite is a demented, modernist parody of such a tradition. She knows it isn't going to work, but out of a desire to participate in this classic tradition she has to bend its definition. Even then, she receives no satisfaction from its performances. In this way, the song engages with a sense of the world being not as it was sold to us, of not being able to participate in these basic things.
The alienation comes to a head with the sentiment that she is waiting for a tractor beam to come take her away; alienated from the world, her hope is lost. Even making a wish, dreaming of a better world, is impossible. When she dreams of of being taken away from Earth and going home she is literalizing the alienation she is feeling, she is making herself an alien. Earth isn't home.
In 2017's First Reformed Paul Schrader, an old hand at filmmaking, conjured a special kind of youthful dread. It follows Reverend Toller, played by Ethan Hawke, a Pastor with shaky faith whose flock comes to him to ease their despair in the face of climate collapse.
I'll take a closer look at First Reformed in another post when I talk about discussing climate change on film, but suffice to say that it, much like Chinese Satellite, doesn't focus on the material happenings of these issues, but instead the emotional landscape they shape. The most provocative moments of the film are Toller alone in his room grappling with the overwhelming sense that he is a part of the problem.