Mike Judge, the Bard of Suck
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Where is the humor in killing an ant with a magnifying glass.
I see were it was heading/went for the better but no. Don't like B&BH.
It was a non clever, be cruel but true to parady show to start IMO. It had truths but not cleverness.
But they completely leave out King of the Hill?!?!
Set it aside? Having grown up in that region of Texas it certainly is (wonderfully) satirical to me. It certainly isn't a hateful satire, but "too loving to be considered satire" misses it. In an otherwise very good article I'm also surprised by such a dismissal of a huge part of hit work.
Sorta like it is hard to rewatch Office Space or Idiocracy. Have to be in the right mood, every 4 or 5 years. OS was filmed in my neighborhood and until the credits rolled I thought Stephen Root (Milton) was a former coworker (physical doppelgänger) where we literally had a TPS form.
Going out for lunch with coworkers, "I hope Judge isn't sitting behind us" became a thing people would say. Freakish accuracy.
Instead, I consider KotH to be similar to the Cosby Show, Roseanne, or even All in the Family - a respectful look at the type of family that was not historically portrayed in TV or the movies.
Freudian slip of the most correct kind. It really was a hit, very odd to ignore it (fellow Texan here).
All of that seems like hyperbole perhaps, but it's an admirable trait to King of the Hill that it can inspire such questions and discussions... and that's just one of the many long-running satire threads in King of the Hill.
Just so you know, "segue" is pronounced "seg-way" by itself. No need to throw an additional "way" on the end.
cause this is a PR piece for the new season of silicon valley
I think that it makes coastal city folk uncomfortable to talk about and celebrate KotH because satirizing urban Texan values, beliefs, and practices is self-seen as aggrandizing city-slicker behavior.
And I don't think cities necessarily corrupt people somehow. Obviously Garland itself is part of the DFW metroplex! It's probably more that people with a certain brand of cosmopolitan ethnocentrism end up in (or stay in) coastal cities.
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...
Id imagine it would be a instant classic, hilarious hard-hitting social commentary.
If you ask me, I'd suggest he do something with Mike Mills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Judge#Early_life_and_educ...
He was lied to. What matters are skills. Schools barely teach them anymore.
If it's a "cheap way to feel smart", then perhaps those that feel smart merely by watching the movie don't realize they are part of it.
Others don't need to feel smart, and simply find it funny and disquieting. I thought it was a brilliant satire when I watched it some years ago.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-you-smarter...
It's pretty disturbing that it explicitly endorses eugenics to do that, though.
Edit: If you disagree, please explain how "the world is going to hell because stupid people are breeding too much" isn't eugenics.
The whole movie seemed to be a cheap dig on stereotypes of rural/redneck behavior rather than any meaningful look at society. The conclusion that it hand-holds the audience is that the "wrong" kind of Americans don't respect intellectuals enough and they will ruin the country. The movie literally ends by the educated savior being respected for being smart.
I don't agree with your indictment of satire in general; I consider Idiocracy to be pretty ham-fisted in that regard. Especially compared to much better Mike Judge works like Office Space and Silicon Valley.
I thought the main point of the movie was that people's intelligence deteriorated past the point to recognize that they had lost their agency. Mocking lowbrow culture was an aspect of the satire, but I didn't see it as the main point.
Indeed, the fact that the entire economy is managed by automation and is outside of the control of actual people was an interesting look at the future.
Of all the great filter scenarios, that's one of the less horrifying.
The problem with trading barbs is that it triggers worse and ends in doom. There's plenty of room for critique that doesn't destroy the threads.
It's essentially the same as putting the blame for a schoolyard fight on the person who threw the last punch rather than the one who initiated the conflict. It creates an incentive for people to talk negatively knowing that the consequences of any conflict are more likely to fall upon those who challenge the negative behavior.
You're a good moderator but I've seen you do this many times (>10) and I'd like you to think about that.
It's essentially saying if you like this movie, you are either a moron or support eugenics.
Earlier in the thread there is a post basically saying that people don't like KotH because they are arrogant coastal elitists who shit on small town culture because they don't understand it.