Idiocracy
I finally got around to renting this movie, after being urged by fellow bloggers.
It’s a science fiction comedy (I guess that’s what you’d call it). It shows the nightmare society we’ll be devolving into if we keep getting dumbed down and stupefied, generation after generation.
Two American soldiers are “volunteered” for an experiment that goes awry, and they wake up five hundred years in the future. They find themselves in a dumbed down dystopia that’s just too stupid for words.
Before the “plot” starts, a narrator is warning us about the dangers we’re all facing if stupid people keep having jillions of kids while smarter people are having fewer children or none at all. An affluent articulate couple is being interviewed, saying they want to wait a few years before bringing a child into the world. Then the camera pans to a trailer full of screaming obnoxious kids, and the toothless beer-bellied redneck husband is yelling “Shit, you’re pregnant again?!? Ain’t there some sort of, uh, pills you’re s’pposed to be takin’??”
When we get to the year 2505, the mass stupidity is overpowering, funny and nauseating at the same time. But how far-fetched is this? Today’s dumbed-down inbreds are almost as scary. If you haven’t seen this video of Sarah Palin supporters being interviewed (it‘s gone all around the intertubes), you need to torture yourself for a few minutes. Remember, if it doesn’t destroy you it’ll make you stronger.
Or what about the thousands of dumbfucks (that’s billions if you watch Fox News) that go out demonstrating and protesting and shouting on behalf of insurance company profits? They’re all riled up against those atheist treehugging commies who are trying to fix the health care crisis. Rightwing think tanks and lobbyists have actually brainwashed and mobilized a bunch of inbred retards to demonstrate against their own interests and to hate the people who are trying to help them.
As funny as the movie is — in that sick way — it might not take anywhere near five hundred years for this dumbed down dystopia to happen.
Here are some more links to Idiocracy.
Labels: Idiocracy
posted by Tom Harper @ 8:30 PM
20 Comments:
Oh God where to start!
I'll keep it short and make room for everybody else:
My Favorite Question was by the tall guy in a brown cap who asked "why we have all this oil in the ground and we pay overseas to get it?"
If only he could do some research he would not be waiting in line
Erik
Amazing how far looks can get you
I love this movie. A friend turned me on to it a couple of years ago. It's fucking prophetic. It really is. Look at our TV shows, our politicss, the dumbing-down of interpersonal communications. Wow.
I saw that movie, at the rate we are going it's a prophecy in waiting. Here is Georgia like everywhere, tax revenues are down, so budget cuts are up, and Education is taking a beating, in a State with around a 50% HS drop out rate, makes perfect sense.
Right, like I'm gonna watch lie-brul Hollywood proper gander.
On the other hand, everyone in the movie had a identifying tattoo that connects them directly to the banking system. That seems like a conservative's dream.
It's already here Tom. Just watch the latest JayWalking on Leno to see how dumb the public is at present. People with a degree that don't even know their own leaders, but they can sure tell you a lot about their favorite Hollywood star.
Never heard of this, so I am going to go down to Hollywood vid and rent it today. From the descriptions here I will probably feel the same way you guys do.
500? I give it another 5. I will have to check this out on Netflix.
Oww! My Balls!!!!
Erik: That guy you're quoting is one of the smarter people in that video. Some of those people looked like they had used their entire brain cell allotment just forming a 2-syllable word.
Carlos: Yup, we're heading in that direction and it won't take 500 years to get there.
Holte: I think there was method in their madness when they started cutting education funding in the '80s. Millions of technically educated but unthinking people -- what's not to love, if you're a CEO or a political strategist. They're putty in the hands of a demagogue.
Randal: Proper gander? Well sheeit, Jed.
Thomas: Yup, those mandatory tattoos -- what's not to love.
Demeur: I've always wondered whether that JayWalking segment was real or staged. If those are real people giving real answers, we're in deeper trouble than I thought.
Jess: I think you'll like it. It's entertaining even though it's alarming and revolting at the same time.
Ricardo: Yup, it's scary to think how dumbed down this country will be in five years.
Lew: LOL.
"When we get to the year 2505, the mass stupidity is overpowering, funny and nauseating at the same time."
Everything old is new again. That describes 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994, 2000 and 2004 perfectly. To a frightening extent, considering the rise of Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber and Glenn Beck, it describes 2008 as well.
SW: Cool. Then we don't need no steenkeeng time travel. We've already arrived.
dumb, educated people is what government run schools turn out. home schooled children learn to think for themselves and problem solve. elected servants want dumber voters so they can keep their jobs...and it seems to be working.
You say what you will about Sarah Palin, but I personally owe her a debt of gratitude. Yes I do. If not for Sarah I would never have become such a big fan of Tina Fey.
Kate -- It doesn't have to be that way. Government run schools used to be great. When we started voting in Conservatives who wanted to prove to us that the government couldn't do anything well is when the government stopped doing things well. Home schooling still depends on the teacher and what they are teaching, like any other form of school. And it's an assumption on your part that it's the elected officials who want the public dumbed down: it could just as well be the corporatists who want lots of dumb consumers who will accept their agenda of poor quality and poor wages to keep the cycle of dumb and poor going.
I have the movie on DVD, and can't finish watching it. The world of Idiocracy is already upon us; you can't miss it in our mainstream mass media, and the Millenial Generation's aimlessness and self-involvement.
I keep wanting to show it in my Comp I classes, but just can't bear to watch. Like Holte Ender, I live in Georgia, and the recession's shown that instead of education being important in our state, it's really the Almighty Dollar that we value/worship.
Kate: It wasn't always that way, as kimc says in a later comment. I don't know much about home schooling, other than all the jokes and stereotypes about it. But you're right that government officials are happy to have so many dumb voters.
Dave: I'm surprised Tina Fey isn't doing more of those Sarah Palin skits on SNL. I've never seen 30 Rock, but her SNL skits were hilarious. I was sorry she left the show.
kimc: You're absolutely right. "When we started voting in Conservatives who wanted to prove to us that the government couldn't do anything well is when the government stopped doing things well." That's conservatism in a nutshell. Dumb voters and dumb consumers -- a dream for CEOs and politicians.
Miss Kitty: You're right, that world is already here. That Idiocracy TV show "Ow! My Balls!" isn't far removed from Fear Factor and Jerry Springer and other lowest common denominator programs.
"dumb, educated people is what government run schools turn out."
That's because dumb, educated politicians make sure teachers get paid crap, and that schools are inadequately funded. Oh, and let's not forget "standardized testing" and "no child left behind," two of the most fucked up initiatives ever.
And I don't buy for a minute that home-schooled kids are any better off than gov't run kids. It all depends on who's doing the home-schooling, and from what I've seen online and in person, teachers of home-schooled kids ain't exactly cream-of-the-crop.
Where's Lisa to totally go off-tangent?
I'll have to put this one in the netflix queue:)
What Lew said!
It is a tragically prophetic little film. Might have been more of a great movie than it is, but I think it's still a goodie.
Isn't there a scene where when the guy can't get an item out of the vending machine, he is told that his kids are now in the custody of Carl's Jr.? And in the beginning, the guy watching TV looks like he is eating lard out of a bucket. Eeeek!
And as the rightwing talking points and way of thinking are driven deeper and deeper into the collective American psyche, we get closer and closer to a real idiocracy.
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