There’s this movie, which I think is pretty funny. I also think it stands as a worthy cautionary tale, exhibiting what might or could happen if the fight against ignorance were lost, or worse, forgotten about.
For those fans of serious–and perhaps depressing–conversations, where do you see human culture and knowledge in five centuries? Is it diluted or flourishing? What are its artifacts? Do they/we still exist?
For those not seeking to be possibly bummed out, My offering to you is the first salvo in what I hope will be a very lively Quote Fest:
Joe: “And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn’t just for fags*. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies – movies that had stories so you cared about who’s ass it was, and why it was farting…”
*term is used synonymously with idiot/moron, in a satirical…just watch the movie, and you’ll see it has nothing to do with gay-bashing.
It and similar stories like The Marching Morons strike me as basically rather disgusting class bigotry, since it’s based on the assumption that the common people are stupid. That the poor are poor because they are subhuman. At least Idiocracy doesn’t go as far as Morons and suggest genociding most of humanity as the solution. It’s also based on an error; IQ scores are rising not falling.
I expect that either we will have been replaced by superhuman artificial/enhanced beings, or that we’ll have smashed civilization, or that we’ll have created some stable dystopia based on universal mind control.
I don’t agree; Joe is the embodiment of the common man (with literal charts and graphs illustrating his unwavering average-ness), and he’s the hero who inspires the world to save itself.
Also, the exceptional people (army/scientist hotshots) are the ones who put Joe in peril, and through their selfishness (focusing on penile enhancement research, etc.) and neglect, the world descends into dystopia. I just watched the movie, which is why the details are fresh in my mind.
If it suggested such a course, I wouldn’t be quoting it on a message board, and it wouldn’t be a screwball comedy. And if the scores are indeed on a unanimous upswing, good for us.
In Idiocracy, EVERYONE is stupid except Joe and the hooker chick that were from the past. The common folk are dumb, the doctors are dumb, the president and cabinet are all dumb. It’s not about class, it’s about the decline of civilization as a whole.
I should bite my tongue and bypass this thread because I haven’t seen the movie, but it drives me nuts. The thesis of Idiocracy is snotty, self-congratulatory and obnoxious, and the way the movie is cited around here backs that up in full. (It’s also a classic example of the truism that comedy is conservative.)
People aren’t getting dumber and society isn’t getting dumber, although both are stupid a large portion of the time. Humans tend to be shortsighted and impulsive, but they have more access to information than ever. People here say “Idiocracy is true, 50 percent of Americans don’t believe in evolution!” Well, 200 years ago the theory of evolution didn’t exist at all and with the possible exception of a few scientists and monks, nobody believed any such thing.
The Straight Dope column fights a particular kind of aggressive ignorance and “common knowledge” that’s not knowledge at all. But it’s not possible to eliminate ignorance itself. Ignorance is what you have when you lack knowledge. Unless everyone is omniscient, ignorance will always exist. “Fighting stupidity” would be a little closer to what the SD column does, I think, but it’s not as good a slogan. And you can imagine what the prospects are for eliminating stupidity.
As has been pointed out above, there isn’t much hint of any real class separations in the movie. The biggest disparity is in the beginning, with the bit set in the modern day comparing the couple with the redneck. The difference here isn’t so much that of class, but of culture. The couple were likely middle class or upper middle class, given their worry over the economy before starting a family. The redneck was likely lower middle class, but his defining features are that he is (generically) Southern and a redneck.
The movie’s conceit is that if current anti-intellectual trends hold and college-educated and beyond-aged adults continue putting off having children, then those who have children as early as possible will overwhelm all other groups. The next step in the conceit is that this combination will create a new Dark Age. So, Mike Judge isn’t just extrapolating from trends in television or media alone.
I didn’t say anything about television or the media, and I’m familiar with the movie’s conceit.
How could I forget about the dreaded “current anti-intellectual trends?” That would be the anti-intellectualism that in recent decades has brought things like genetically modified food, mapping of the human genome, vaccines for once-deadly diseases, space travel, the Internet, cell phones, and ever-smaller and ever-more-powerful computers that are by now in billions of homes. I tremble at the thought of the horrors that may be visited upon our species if these trends continue!
But oh yes, some people like NASCAR, which is so uncouth compared to old-timey entertainments like gladiators and bear-baiting. And they still believe in angels, which is so ignorant compared to when they believed in angels and burned witches. Run for the hills, the drooling slobs will be coming with pitchforks and torches at any moment to kill everyone with a Master’s.
Joe has his moments of stupidity. The chief one being his believing that Frito knows what he’s really talking about when he’s asking for help in finding and utilizing a time machine. And Rita doesn’t seem to notice more than one year has gone by without Joe pointing such out to her, even with very…odd, unbelievable stuff going on.
So, the movie got its science wrong? A movie whose characters–an Army librarian and a hooker–are conscripted by a wannabe pimp scientist for a “hibernation project” designed to preserve smart people. Through heinous, unbelievable neglect, the pair are forgotten about–somehow–and despite only having enough pharmaceutical resources inducing their hibernation to last for one year (and that’s before the facility designed to monitor and maintain them was bulldozed), their preservation lasts five centuries. And when they wake up, they go on a hero’s journey to save the world from being stupid by watering plants. What a stunner. With moderated, stoically considered realism as the cornerstone–nay, the foundation–of its conflict and theme, I’m astonished the possible social reality depicted in Idiocracy was even challenged, let alone contradicted. Thank God those stick figures curbed my wild delusions with their sterling insights before my worldview became irreparably skewed.
“People” may have. I didn’t. I said it was a “pretty funny movie,” and “a cautionary tale.” What comedy can be called “true,” anyway? Most comedies live and die by their ability to provide exaggerated escapism that throws reality and society into realms of absurd relief so it can be mocked. Jesus, and here I was naive enough to hope for a quote fest.
I didn’t say you did. I was making a generalization. Hence “people.”
Not sure why you’re hanging your hat on a single word in an imaginary quote, but if you did a search of the board for “Idiocracy” you’d see the kind of uses I am talking about.
