[lbo-talk] "Idiocracy"

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Carl:

> I used part of the LBO list's downtime productively by watching  
> Mike Judge's
> "Idiocracy," a film that was long held prisoner by 20th Century Fox  
> and has
> now escaped to DVD.  This is the greatest dystopian movie since Terry
> Gilliam's "Brazil."  It makes "Mad Max" look like "Brigadoon."


[WS:] One thing that I really like about this list is the recommendations
for further reading or viewing.  I took a lot of such cues - even from
people with whom I otherwise disagree.  One benefit of such recommendations
is that they keep me reading, while the content itself would make me stop by
page 20, and discover something valuable buried in the middle.  For example,
not long ago I bought a book _Inside the Mouse_ that someone on this list
recommended, and after struggling with pages and pages of pomo hot air,
which would normally be a sufficient reason to toss the book into a recycle
bin, I discovered a decent chapter on labor relations in the Disney empire,
buried on page 100 or so.  

The same can be said about "Idiocracy."  It is unlikely that I would pick
that DVD without Carl's recommendation.  The superficial impression created
by its trailer is that of a cinematic fart joke - not exactly my cup of tea.
However, I did see the film and I quite liked it.  It is a "Dumb-and-Dumber"
style of comedy - to be sure - but with a clear cut political twist, which
makes quite an interesting mix.  Turning the idiocy of pop-culture against
itself is quite clever indeed, a sort of poetic justice if you will.  

However, the film is a bit disappointing in that it does not go beyond using
idiocy to critique idiocy and ridiculing political or cultural tropes of
today that are already ridiculous.  For example, the scene of a ridiculous
diorama in a theme park showing "historical" events is less ridiculous than
the actual reality of such dioramas and theme parks - brilliantly and much
more scathingly exposed in Umberto Eco's _Travels in Hyper-Reality."  Nor
does the film offer any clear way out of the impending idiocracy, which
perhaps is a shortcoming of the genre itself.  It is cheap laughs at cheap
laughs, and adding anything to the mix would probably spoil it.  The "happy
ending" itself is a pastiche of Hollywood - a mixture of cheap didacticism
and simplistic story lines ("read more books," "tell whose ass it is and why
it is farting," - btw, the "Ass" movie itself had a certain minimalist Andy
Warhol style in it -  or the boy getting the girl and living happily
thereafter.)

The end result is the impression that there is no escape from idiocracy -
even if you are not a literal part of it, you still use it (or need it?) to
expose and ridicule it.  But at least one can have a few good cheap laughs,
and that is perhaps all that one can do in this political reality.

Wojtek