Idiocracy/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

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== The movie asserts that "smarter" people will have less children compared to dumber people ==

* But civilization has been around for 7,000 years. Is the movie trying to tell me that the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians were so unbelievably intelligent that they make [[Watchmen|Ozymandias]] look like a Down's Syndrome patient, or is it saying that for some incomprehensible reason stupid people are ''now'' deciding to screw like bunnies? And speaking of which, the author misinterpreted a piece of [[Truth in Television]]: That people with less income and education tend to have more children than everyone else. But "uneducated" =/= "stupid". There's probably a slight correlation, but it's possible to be bright yet dirt-poor and uneducated, just like it's possible to have a PhD and the wits of a lightly sautéed tomato. See the [[Country Mouse]] and [[Absent Minded Professor]] tropes.

* But civilization has been around for 7,000 years. Is the movie trying to tell me that the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians were so unbelievably intelligent that they make [[Watchmen|Ozymandias]] look like a Down's Syndrome patient, or is it saying that for some incomprehensible reason stupid people are ''now'' deciding to screw like bunnies? And speaking of which, the author misinterpreted a piece of [[Truth in Television]]: That people with less income and education tend to have more children than everyone else. But "uneducated" =/= "stupid". There's probably a slight correlation, but it's possible to be bright yet dirt-poor and uneducated, just like it's possible to have a PhD and the wits of a lightly sautéed tomato. See the [[Country Mouse]] and [[Absent-Minded Professor]] tropes.

** The first line mentions that the turn of the 21st century was "a turning point". As in, only ''then'' did stupid people start having more kids than smart people, because being smart wasn't necessary anymore. As for the dumb vs. uneducated thing, well, it's simplified so that the plot will work.

*** Except that the poor and less educated have ALWAYS had more kids than the rich and educated. Farmers used to have tons of kids because you need a lot of help to run a farm and most of them would die anyway. The amount of dumb peasants versus educated aristocracy hasn't really changed over time. In fact, with public schooling there are probably less dumb and undereducated peasants than there have ever been. And even then, you can be poor and smart. With lack of schools it will be harder to build on our current knowledge database, but if society really does regress there's going to be someone around to start rediscovering stuff. How do you think we found all this knowledge out in the first place?

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**** The "idiocy" the movie criticizes is obviously consumerism, empty societal values, simplistic life goals and the overvaluation of money and sex. Material pursuits over intellectual ones. And this is clearly a trend in our society.

***** No, no it isn't. If that were the real message of the movie then there would be no need for all the "people are getting stupider" nonsense the movie tries to push on us. A satire of consumerism, empty societal values, simplistic life goals, and the overvaluation of money would be a very different movie (and a more interesting one in my opinion, but YMMV).

***** What it ''is'', however, is a satire of those elements of modern society Mike Judge considers stupid and idiotic. That's it. We can go back and forth on whether this society is ''actually'' coming to pass, but whether it is or not isn't really the point (or at least it isn't the ''entire'' point); the point is simply for Judge to highlight the elements of society he thinks are ridiculous, idiotic and unpleasant by blowing them up to form an entire society based around them, and the 'dumb people are outbreeding smart people' thing is simply a plot device to justify the world he's creating. It's a device that's been done in fiction since Thomas Moore wrote ''Utopia''; whether Judge ''actually'' believes that there is a potential for this to happen, I don't know (but I doubt it), but he's no more making an ''actual'' prophecy than [[Nineteen Eighty Four|George Orwell]] was ''actually'' prophecizing that by 1984 the entire world would be a totalitarian hellhole. What both are doing is just using the future settings of their works as a tool to enable their satires of contemporary society and to demonstrate on a large scale why the things they think are bad about their society are very very bad indeed, especially if they get out of control. The viewer may disagree with the things that Judge is choosing to satirize, but then, it's his satire, not theirs; if they want to satirize something else, they can write their own. As for not being true, while it might not be the case that society is trending towards getting dumber, there certainly are a lot of very stupid things and very stupid people in modern society.

***** What it ''is'', however, is a satire of those elements of modern society Mike Judge considers stupid and idiotic. That's it. We can go back and forth on whether this society is ''actually'' coming to pass, but whether it is or not isn't really the point (or at least it isn't the ''entire'' point); the point is simply for Judge to highlight the elements of society he thinks are ridiculous, idiotic and unpleasant by blowing them up to form an entire society based around them, and the 'dumb people are outbreeding smart people' thing is simply a plot device to justify the world he's creating. It's a device that's been done in fiction since Thomas Moore wrote ''Utopia''; whether Judge ''actually'' believes that there is a potential for this to happen, I don't know (but I doubt it), but he's no more making an ''actual'' prophecy than [[Nineteen Eighty-Four|George Orwell]] was ''actually'' prophecizing that by 1984 the entire world would be a totalitarian hellhole. What both are doing is just using the future settings of their works as a tool to enable their satires of contemporary society and to demonstrate on a large scale why the things they think are bad about their society are very very bad indeed, especially if they get out of control. The viewer may disagree with the things that Judge is choosing to satirize, but then, it's his satire, not theirs; if they want to satirize something else, they can write their own. As for not being true, while it might not be the case that society is trending towards getting dumber, there certainly are a lot of very stupid things and very stupid people in modern society.

** Something else to break your brain on. How the hell are they getting purified water for their toilets that Joe uses to water the plants? 2505 society sure as hell doesn't seem competent enough to realize the difference between clean(no salt) water and seawater they'd probably get it from(which considering the garbage problem, would probably be pretty nasty already)