Idiocracy

“So you’re supposed to be really smart? I thought your head would be bigger…”

Imagine, if you will, a world of the future built on the foundation of a civilization in which man’s intelligence was disincentivized while his stupidity was nurtured and rewarded with reckless abandon. This is not The Twilight Zone. This is not the United States in the 2020s. This is the 2006 satirical comedy film known as Idiocracy.

The premise is appropriately simple. During the 21st Century, mankind experienced a gradual shift: While people of intelligence became more discerning and cautious when picking partners and forming families, dumb people began breeding like rabbits, eventually far outpacing the smarter gene pools.

The end result of this phenomena is discovered by Joe (Luke Wilson) and Rita (Maya Rudolph), two subjects in a secret government experiment intended to test cryogenic stasis on humans. Joe is a hapless army librarian, and Rita is a hooker (though she tells Joe she’s a painter), both chosen for the experiment due to having no family and the fact that they are both very average people. They get successfully frozen, the government scraps the project, and they are lost in time. Over 500 years passes, and a mountainous trash heap collapses in an avalanche that ends up triggering Joe and Rita’s awakening. Only to find the world has become the titular Idiocracy.

Everything stupid or ridiculous about American society has all gotten cartoonishly worse. The President of the United States is a world famous porn star who likes to punctuate his WWE-style speeches with machine-gun fire. An energy drink (Brawndo, The Thirst Mutilator!) essentially replaces water after the company that owns it bought the FDA and FCC. One of the most popular shows on TV is just a guy getting hit in the balls, and another is centered around masturbation. Most big name businesses (Starbucks, H and R Block, etc.) have started offering sex services. Instead of a friendly wave or other greeting, people just sneer and give each other the finger. And “the English language had deteriorated into a hybrid of hillbilly, valley girl, inner city slang and various grunts.”

The plot really gets going when Joe (misnamed as “Not Sure” by the government’s faulty I.D. system) is discovered to have the highest I.Q. of anyone on Earth and is promptly given a position in the Presidential Cabinet. They manage to get a lot of comedy out of an average, not-that-smart guy from our time being considered a genius who can solve all the world’s problems; Luke Wilson was perfect casting, by the way. Meanwhile, Rita finds life a lot easier now that unregulated prostitution essentially operates like those Nigerian prince email scams.

This is a movie I used to see playing on Comedy Central a lot back in the day, and would often see people mentioning or recommending it. Much like Mike Judge’s other really popular movie, Office Space, I ignored the modest hype around Idiocracy for a long time. You see, Mike Judge is a creator I didn't fully appreciate it until I was a little older. I was introduced to him via Beavis and Butthead as a kid, and the lowbrow humor was my main takeaway from that at the time. I was too young and not intelligent enough to get most of the real satirical humor behind that or King of the Hill. So when I matured along with my tastes, I guess I associated Judge with cheap low-brow humor. And as I later discovered with Office Space and my occasional returns to King of the Hill, that was a mistake. Judge is a guy who has had his finger on the pulse of a lot of American culture for a long time now. And its relevance hits close to home now more than ever.

Idiocracy might be his most outlandish work yet, but even more outlandish than the movie itself is how damn prescient it feels to the reality we currently live in.

Perhaps every generation must eventually reckon with the sheer weight of human idiocy that holds us back as a species. In this year alone, we have experienced enough wanton stupidity and self-destruction from our fellow man that many people living in supposed first world countries are too stressed and anxious to enjoy seasonal holiday traditions. It’s an instinctive reflex to see our dismal surroundings and assume that people must be getting dumber, that this is a new development and life wasn’t always like this. A movie like Idiocracy acts as a sobering reminder to us all that people have always been disastrously stupid. And will likely continue to be so long as we exist.

Fear not, though. The movie itself is a fairly lighthearted comedy, and offers a kernel of hope for the galling scenario it presents. Which is that people, even people who don’t think very highly of themselves like Joe and Rita, can steer things in the right direction if they speak up and act for the good of their fellow man. Maybe it’s as simple as that, looking at the world for what it is and refusing to accept that there’s no better way.

Bits and pieces:

* A key to enjoying Idiocracy is accepting that none of it makes sense. The society should be even more unstable, given the sheer level of stupid its population is suffering from. These people are still building huge machines that kinda work, as well as clothes and functioning institutions. And the most unrealistic thing about a world populated by aggressively stupid people is the idea that they would be so open to accepting help from someone smarter than them. They do, at least, often treat him like he’s the idiot even when they’re aware he’s smarter than them and that they need his help. That’s believable.

* Gotta say, Maya Rudolph is stunning in this movie. Most of her costumes (and the clothing style of the idiotic future people) have the appearance of plastic looking collages of various logos, and she makes it look positively chic.

* Rita and other characters mention her pimp, Upgrayedd, so often that I was disappointed when he never appeared as a character in the movie. Like I get that he’s supposed to have died centuries ago, but Rita’s insistence that time travel wouldn’t stop Upgrayedd from getting the money he’s owed led me to believe he’d do the impossible and follow her to the future. Which would have been hilarious. Missed opportunity is all I’m saying.

* I've never really been a fan of Dax Shepard, but he's probably never had a role that's a better fit for him than Frito Pendejo, Joe's lackadaisacal attorney.

Quotes:

Narrator: “The number one movie in the country was called 'Ass.' And that’s all it was for 90 minutes. It won eight Oscars that year, including best screenplay.”

Doctor Lexus: “Well, don’t wanna sound like a dick or nothin’ but it says on your chart that you’re fucked up. You talk like a fag, and your shit’s all retarded. What I do is just like… eh, you know, heheheh, you know what I mean? Eheheheh!”
Joe Bauers: “No, I-I’m serious here.”
Doctor Lexus: “Don’t worry, scrote! Nah, there’s plenty of ‘tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was ‘tarded. She’s a pilot now.”

Narrator: “He would soon discover that in the future, justice was not only blind, but had become rather retarded as well.”

Rita: "Joe?"
Secret Service: "That's Not Sure, ma'am. Secretary Not Sure."

Rita: “You think Einstein walked around thinking everyone was a bunch of dumb-shits?”
Joe/Not Sure: “Yeah. Hadn’t thought of that.”
Rita: “Now you know why he built that bomb.”

Costco Greeter: “Welcome to Costco, I love you. Welcome to Costco, I love you. Welcome to Costco, I love you…”

Secretary of State: “Everyone who won a contest got to be a cabinet member. I’m the Secretary of State, brought to you by Carl’s Jr."
Joe/Not Sure: “Why do you keep saying that?”
Secretary of State: “‘Cause they pay me every time I do. It’s a great way to make money. You’re so smart, how come you don’t know that?”

Attorney General: “And that’s the Secretary of Education.”
(Cut to mentally challenged guy puzzling over a snow globe)
Secretary of Defense: “He’s kinda stupid. But he’s President Camacho’s stepbrother. Still, does a pretty good job, eh?”

President Camacho: “Now I understand everyone’s shit’s emotional right now, but listen up! I got a three-point plan to fix everything! Number one, we got this guy Not Sure. Number two, he’s got a higher IQ than anyone alive! And number three, he’s gonna fix everything! I give you my word as President.”
I like that his three-point plan to fix everything is just pointing at some guy and saying he’ll fix everything.

Joe/Not Sure: “I should be honest with you, Mr. President. I don’t know how to be secretary of anything. I’ve never even voted actually. I don’t, I don’t know what the Secretary of the Interior even is.”
President Camacho: “Come on, scrote. Don’t be a pussy. Beats jail, don’t it? Besides, you do a kickass job, you get a full presidential pardon. No jail time.”
Joe/Not Sure: “Yeah?”
President Camacho: “Fuck yeah! Now gimme a beer. And get you one too.”

Joe: “Just go back. Okay? Tell people to read books. Tell people to stay in school. Tell people to just… use their brains or something.”

Three out of five ungainly mountains of garbage.

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