Comment by linkregister | Hacker News Reader

Comment by linkregister | Hacker News Reader

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I couldn't agree more about your analysis of Idiocracy. While the movie is entertaining, I found it surprising that it ignored the developing world (where intelligence/IQ/appropriate-proxy is increasing and poverty decreasing).

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.

You're missing a big aspect of it: what about the ownership corporations have over society? That has nothing to do with "dumb rednecks", and it's certainly not subtle. From Carl's Jr. taking custody of a woman's children, many people named after brands, the diatribe on Brawndo owning the FCC and FDA, the Costco law school, language ("Listen, I supersize with you but you broke the law"), etc.

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.

An apparent life lesson for Mike Judge: if you posit a bunch of "scary" stuff and associate it to stupidity, people will feel smart about being scared of the stuff even if it's implausibly ridiculous because it's in service of a comedy film.

Thanks, I had missed that aspect of the movie in my analysis. To me the eugenics premise overshadowed the things you mention.

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.

Yeah, I agree that the beginning feels very eugenics-y, but it evolves into something that is in some ways a more crass, pessimistic version of Wall-E.

Of all the great filter scenarios, that's one of the less horrifying.

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