Idiocracy is a cruel movie ...

[marriedfilingjoint]

paleofuture.gizmodo.com/idiocracy-is-a-cruel-movie-and-you-should-be-ashamed-fo-1553344189?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Remember that 2006 movie Idiocracy? The one where Luke Wilson plays an average underachiever who wakes up 500 years in the future, only to realize that he's now the smartest person on Earth? And everyone else is dumb — like, really dumb? Well, that movie is cruel and terrible and you should be ashamed for liking it. Seriously.

Idiocracy is the new cultural touchstone for discussing America's cultural and educational decline. I see references to the film in my social media streams nearly every day. Do a quick search, and you'll see people are referencing the film in some capacity about 5-10 times an hour on social media. "I hate that Idiocracy is basically a documentary," writes one distraught tweeter in what's now a common complaint when talking about anything from politics to sports to entertainment.

We use pop culture as a shorthand to talk about the way we see the future of society and ourselves. Sometimes we use Star Trek to talk about communication technologies; other times we reference Minority Report when we're talking about innovative UI experiences; and we use The Jetsons for everything from flying cars to robot maids to just a general sense of future-ness. It's been over half a century since it debuted, and we're still using The Jetsons.


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But Idiocracy is now our point of reference for the dumbing down of society. Whereas previous generations had movies like Network (1976) that challenged our understanding of possible media-driven futures, millennials have Idiocracy. And while the film expresses an arguably legitimate frustration with our current cultural landscape, it also leads us down a strange and illogical path for creating a better future.

In the movie, a nation of imbeciles sit around watching the fictional TV show "Ow My Balls," while furiously masturbating and eating garbage food. People have become completely dependent upon automation (including robo-medicine) and are too dumb to fix anything. Is this funny? Sure. As an over-the-top comedic dystopia, the movie is actually enjoyable. But the movie's introduction makes it an unnerving reference to toss around as our go-to insult.

From the opening narration of the movie:

As the twenty-first century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits.

Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction — a dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.
What's so wrong with this thinking? Unlike other films that satirize the media and the soul-crushing consequences of sensationalized entertainment (my personal favorite being 1951's Ace in the Hole), Idiocracy lays the blame at the feet of an undeserved target (the poor) while implicitly advocating a terrible solution (eugenics). The movie's underlying premise is a fundamentally dangerous and backwards way to understand the world.



The origin story for Idiocracy's future world of half-wits is that uneducated people in the early 2000s are having kids and smart people don't reproduce enough. It's clear from the film that the intelligent people are wealthy, while the uneducated people are poor. So we're starting from a position of believing that wealthy people are inherently more intelligent and, by extension, deserve their wealth. This link between intelligence and wealth is perhaps the most dangerous idea of the film and pretty quickly slips into advocating for some form of soft eugenics to build a better world.

If only we could get rid of the uneducated Americans (read: redneck poors) and we'll have the opportunity to live in a utopian world filled with smart and civilized people. Of course, everyone here in 2014 making a reference to Idiocracy as a pseudo-documentary identifies with the soon-to-be-extinct intelligent class. They believe it's the "others" — the dumb, impoverished people — that are ruining America with their binging on crap TV and crap internet and crap food.



We hear it every day: Buzzfeed listicles, cute animal slideshows, and reality TV are destroying America. But in some form or another, they always have been. Or at least that's what we've told ourselves. We romanticize the past, and think that everybody used to sit around spending their leisure time reading dense literature and debating philosophy or something. But guess what? We've always seen ourselves as vapid and terrible.

Take, for instance, just one example from the November 9, 1954 Mason City Globe-Gazette in Iowa:

Some Americans were more interested in Little Abner than they were in their own interests at stake in the election.
Li'l Abner was a daily newspaper comic strip that ran for over 40 years. Created by Al Capp, it ran from 1934 until 1977 in newspapers throughout America. Everybody loved Li'l Abner. But back in the 1950s people were reading a comic strip rather than tracking the latest poll results, and that was supposedly destroying America.

Idiocracy continues the great American tradition of producing media that bemoans the terrible state of America's collective intelligence. But as a piece of historical futurism (yes, it really has been nearly a decade since this movie was produced) it has a worrisome message.

We're frustrated by the world, believing that encouraging smarter people to breed would somehow fix our problems. But it simply isn't so. It's a distraction from the institutional problems of our society. The problem isn't that stupid people (again, read: poor) are having too many children. The problem is that we aren't living up to the ideals and promises we've given to each generation of Americans that have come before us. A livable wage, paid maternity leave, proper funding of scientific research — these are the things a functional, civilized society are built upon; the ways that we can improve our world. We don't build a better society by getting more smart people to fuck each other.


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I'm not arguing that the world hasn't changed in some ways for the worse since the Before Times™ — that magic period of enlightenment that existed before you were born. Nor am I arguing that the media we consume doesn't matter. It does, insofar as it can influence the way that we see the world.

But the great irony of a film like Idiocracy is that when we take the film to its logical conclusion, 99 percent of Americans should be sterilized. And if you spent 90 minutes watching a movie instead of studying quantum mechanics or something, that probably includes you.

Update: Here's the first two minutes of the movie, if you haven't seen it:



Images: Screenshots from the 2006 film Idiocracy

[IIOY]

I don't understand the general love for this movie. I lasted 20 minutes and put it back in the Netflix envelope.

[Deleted]

I have never seen this movie sober. I guess add me to the sterilization queue.

[escrow]

I love this movie. Maya Rudolph is in it!

[heyjude]

I have never seen this movie!

I also tend not to take "but it's the decline if civilization as we know it" arguments too seriously. They are always made by people who never lived in the past and only know this moment in time (duh!). And in fact if you look at the human experience as a whole from the beginning to now, humanity has shown marked improvement. We are far far far from perfect but I have no reason to believe that this upward trajectory won't continue.

Ironically this movie sounds like it is dumbing down the discourse.

[Vespasia]

Whatever, I love this movie. I can't hear the words upgrade or electrolytes without laughing because of Idiocracy.

I think they're reaching when they try to say the movie favors eugenics.

[heyjude]

"It's clear from the film that the intelligent people are wealthy, while the uneducated people are poor. So we're starting from a position of believing that wealthy people are inherently more intelligent and, by extension, deserve their wealth."

Well this is just straight out the Romney playbook! And this movie is popular because...?

No wonder my parents hated it. We grew up poor and they only had a high school diploma but somehow produced a lawyer and a neuroscientist plus another college educated child to boot.

[josieposy]

Never seen it.

[heyjude]

Anyway isn't it pretty well understood that Mike Judge is a libertarian con?

[ttt]

Aug 1, 2014 8:01:25 GMT -5 Vespasia said:

Whatever, I love this movie. I can't hear the words upgrade or electrolytes without laughing because of Idiocracy.

I think they're reaching when they try to say the movie favors eugenics.

Whenever I hear people talk about alkaline water or whatever the latest bogus health fad is (like that video of people who don't eat gluten unable to actually say what gluten is), I always think "but it's got what plants crave!"

[Vespasia]

Aug 1, 2014 8:06:17 GMT -5 heyjude said:

"It's clear from the film that the intelligent people are wealthy, while the uneducated people are poor. So we're starting from a position of believing that wealthy people are inherently more intelligent and, by extension, deserve their wealth."

Well this is just straight out the Romney playbook! And this movie is popular because...?

No wonder my parents hated it. We grew up poor and they only had a high school diploma but somehow produced a lawyer and a neuroscientist plus another college educated child to boot.

They're basing this entire argument on two people used as examples at the start of the movie. Both of whom are supposed to be total clichés.

[kapoentje]

This movie was filmed across the street from where I was living in Austin at the time.

#substantialcontribution

[debatethis]

Aug 1, 2014 8:46:28 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Aug 1, 2014 5:45:37 GMT -5 IIOY said:

I don't understand the general love for this movie. I lasted 20 minutes and put it back in the Netflix envelope.

The movie is supposed to be funny because it's true. But it's actually NOT funny because it's true. And then it's funny in retrospect when you see parts of it play out. Also, this guy is wrong that the movie makes fun of the poors. It makes fun of the government, the judicial process, big business, decaying infrastructure and ultimately our attitudes about the poors, like when the Carl's Jr. machine tells the woman who can't afford a burger that she is a bad mother. I love that movie. Every time I watch it, I see something else that is horrifyingly prophetic.

Being able to buy a law degree at Costco and Starbucks selling blow jobs were pretty awesome, too.

[heyjude]

Aug 1, 2014 9:04:17 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Aug 1, 2014 8:46:28 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

The movie is supposed to be funny because it's true. But it's actually NOT funny because it's true. And then it's funny in retrospect when you see parts of it play out. Also, this guy is wrong that the movie makes fun of the poors. It makes fun of the government, the judicial process, big business, decaying infrastructure and ultimately our attitudes about the poors, like when the Carl's Jr. machine tells the woman who can't afford a burger that she is a bad mother. I love that movie. Every time I watch it, I see something else that is horrifyingly prophetic.

Incidentally, it also makes fun of the intellectual elite and it does that in the opening sequence.  They're so neurotic and self-absorbed that they put off having children until she's infertile and he's dead.

And THEN they make fun of those who make fun of the intellectual elite with all the stuff of "Not Sure, he talks like a fag..."

No, that movie doesn't target poor people.  It targets EVERYONE.

So it's "fair and balanced."

[racegrrl714]

Aug 1, 2014 8:46:28 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Aug 1, 2014 5:45:37 GMT -5 IIOY said:

I don't understand the general love for this movie. I lasted 20 minutes and put it back in the Netflix envelope.

The movie is supposed to be funny because it's true. But it's actually NOT funny because it's true. And then it's funny in retrospect when you see parts of it play out. Also, this guy is wrong that the movie makes fun of the poors. It makes fun of the government, the judicial process, big business, decaying infrastructure and ultimately our attitudes about the poors, like when the Carl's Jr. machine tells the woman who can't afford a burger that she is a bad mother. I love that movie. Every time I watch it, I see something else that is horrifyingly prophetic.

YES! Everything she said.

[pixy0stix]

I'd just like to throw in that some of the movie is based on some facts. Education and income levels do have an impact on how many children people have. www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/fertility/cb11-83.html

Yeah, it sounds bigoted when put into a movie, but... there you go.

[meshaliuknits]

Aug 1, 2014 9:35:01 GMT -5 @jezebel said:

Every time "Wipeout" is on, I think about"Ouch, My Balls!"

That's a pretty accurate summary of Wipeout.

[Vespasia]

[sushi]

It's just such a quotable movie. We can't help but go to Costco and say I love you.

And if you go down the water aisle most of it is trying to sell some electrolyte mixture.

Ouch my balls is very close to summer TV programming.

Is it high brow humor? Not in the least. But neither is the bean, fart scene in blazing saddles, and I still giggle uncontrollably at that.

[meshaliuknits]

Aug 1, 2014 10:16:35 GMT -5 @majorwife said:

i havent seen part the part where fudruckers becomes buttfuckers, but i love Wipeout and the original MXC.

i am white trash, though, so its genetic

MXC was awesome. I loved it so.

[meshaliuknits]

Aug 1, 2014 11:24:12 GMT -5 @dontcallmeshirley1 said:

I think the jokes in Idiocracy are hilarious. I'm sorry, President Macho Camacho? How is this not funny?

Right?

[Deleted]

Terry Crews may be one of the funniest people on the planet.

And I say this all the time:


It's what plants crave

[pixy0stix]

This is how my online experience has become:

[sushi]

You like money? I like money, too.


Yet another line h and I say to each other regularly.

[Vespasia]

Personally I think Obama should travel around like this

[sunny]

You drink toilet water?

I always think that when ppl dislike tap water.

[phunluvin82]

"...when we take the film to its logical conclusion, 99 percent of Americans should be sterilized. And if you spent 90 minutes watching a movie instead of studying quantum mechanics or something, that probably includes you"

...JFC, dramatic much?

This person has too much time on his hands and is reading way too much into a silly comedy movie...just as he's reading way too much into the variations on: 'Zomg guys, Idiocracy is a documentary!' comments, IMO.

P.S... "Welcome to AOL Time Warner Taco Bell US Government Long Distance...please say the name of the person you wish to call" 

[Deleted]

Its a funny movie and a good comedy, because like all good comedy, it touches a nerve while making you laugh.

[msgeeksout]

My husband loved the movie. So for our first Christmas together he gave it to me on DVD. The next year I gave it back to him! And ever since we have given each other the same DVD for Christmas. He looks forward to it.

We spend an inordinate amount of time quoting this movie. Heck when we want the other to leave us alone (or just giving each other a hard time) we yell out "go away I'm bating". It doesn't matter what we are doing.

And I accidentally slipped and called Fuddruckers Buttfuckers at work. Oh my, the explanation I had to give to my co-workers. Oops.

Yes, this movies makes fun of everyone. With so many quotables.