jdiiufccuskalAre We Idiocracy Yet?
I attended an audience testing screener for Idiocracy before the film's final edit. I could not believe my eyes and ears, I loved it unlike anything I'd seen before, it was the hardest US culture satire I'd seen up to that point. Then the lights came up and the audience started giving their reviews, in an open mike fashion. They all identified with the "idiots" and were indignant insulted, and angry. I remember making eye contact with Mike Judge like "WTF!" It was an early screener and I think that reaction was a surprise to the film team. I own a copy and watch it more than once a year. One of my favorite hard satires.
I feel Idiocracy is irresistible bait for 'not like the other girls'-types.
Everytime this movie comes up, droves of people mention how they get it, while others don't. It's becoming a trope in itself.
Agreed. It’s cited so often on Reddit by people who want to establish their superiority over the masses. “It’s a documentary!!” is a meme unto itself.
It’s also got a kind of weird eugenics-y vibe to it (like establishing “stupid people breeding makes stupid people” as incontrovertible fact) when you step back and examine it as a movie that’s making Serious Statements. But it isn’t. It’s not a bad movie. But it’s a comedy, the satirical elements are heavily over exaggerated by fans.
It's kind of funny when you say the movie isn't making serious statements when the highest of our publicly elected officials isn't a serious person. We elect people that are actively harmful to our well being. These people say things so incredibly stupid it can be painful. And then you wonder why people look at the movie like it's a documentary?
Trump voters identify with the idiots.
> We elect people that are actively harmful to our well being.
People choose policies that will actively harm themselves and their family/friends:
He might not present as a serious person but he is. The nativist impulses, the gutter racism, the “F you I’ve got mine” attitude, the party establishment that enabled him despite all that… these are all serious things worth serious analysis.
“Stupid people vote for stupid guy” is exactly the kind of analysis I’m critical of Idiocracy for.
This thread is a sort of extension to that, eh? Hacker News knowing the truth of a matter while observing Reddit down the barrel of a nose.
It definitely activates something within people. Maybe I'm just terminally online, but there is always _always_ someone who will say "Idiocracy isn't satire, its a documentary."
And they're mostly correct.
Not just 'other girls'. That happens, but also, it's a theme that has been around a long time. The 'Maga' movement existed before Trump. This is 1992
Was also in Snow Crash.
"All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice…With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be.
The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers.
But as long as you have that fourwheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream.
"
Snow Crash
Chapter 39 (Hiro's observation as he drives along the Alaska Highway)
Snow Crash came to mind, but so did several other Neal Stephenson books!
> The 'Maga' movement existed before Trump. This is 1992
Anti-intellectualism has a long and storied in the US (and other countries):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#In_the_Un...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism_in_Americ...
