What's up Wisecrack, Jared here, and today
we’re talking about everyone’s favorite president: Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert
Camacho. When Idiocracy was released in 2006, Fox allegedly tried to bury it. Apparently
they was worried sponsors might be upset at, say, this, "Carl's Jr. F*** you, I'm Eating."
Despite their efforts, Idiocracy has become a cult classic. People not only love the film
for it’s amazing toilet humor, but for its political prescience. Idiocracy is perhaps
less known as the story of unwitting time traveler Joe Bauers trying to get back to
2005, and more as a cultural artifact that embodies what some see as society’s gradual
degeneration. In Idiocracy’s America, a pro-wrestler becomes
president, politics has devolved into shouting matches, "I got a solution, you're a dick!"
people gamble for healthcare, corporations pretend to care about you, "Welcome to Costco,
I love you." And most tragic of all, everyone’s forgotten the word for tortillas, “We running
out of french fries and burrito coverings. Yeah.” Leading up to the 2016 election, one of the
film’s screenwriter’s, Etan Cohen, first said the film had become a documentary. Fast
Company similarly noted that President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho’s
parallels to Trump are “undeniable.” With fully automated fast food, Switzerland opening
a fellatio cafe, and “Ow my balls” being inoffensive when compared to anything Logan
Paul has done, the similarities to our world seem uncanny. But just how prescient is it? Is Idiocracy
as a lens to understand our current condition missing the mark? Or did it really all come
true? Let’s find out in this Wisecrack Edition on Idiocracy: Deep or Dumb? And, as always,
spoilers ahead. Alright guys, first, a quick recap. In 2005,
Joe Bauers is chosen for an army experiment wherein he’ll be frozen for a year with
sex worker Rita. But the officer overseeing it gets arrested for some unscrupulous behavior,
the base gets bulldozed, and Joe and Rita remain in stasis for 500 years until a garbage
avalanche unlocks their chambers. Joe discovers the utter degradation of the world, as this
once average man, "Remarkable, truly. The most average person in our entire armed forces"
is now surrounded by imbeciles. In addition to mountains of trash that nobody knows what
to do with, a sports drink called Brawndo has filled America’s water fountains and
irrigation systems, leading to a famine. Also, retail HJs, porn, balls-kicking, and
farts, seem to be the primary means of entertainment. After an IQ test, the world discovers that
Joe is the smartest man alive. So he’s appointed Secretary of Interior by President Dwayne
Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. The first order of business? Fixing all these
dying crops. When Joe suggests they water the crops with H20 instead of Brawndo, Brawndo’s
stock tanks, causing widespread unrest. Joe is sent to rehabilitation, which is just a
monster-truck execution with a few added pieces of flair. But he survives long enough for
the world see his plan succeed, become president, and live happily ever after with Rita. Like any good dystopia, Idiocracy is rooted
in the the real world in which it was written. Having been made during the Bush era, this
film is saturated with jabs at Bush’s base of supporters, especially the Southern part.
There’s this swipe at Fox News, "Fox News!" Language has become a mix of hillbilly and
a few other undesirable dialects, "The english language has deteriorated into a hybrid of
hillbilly, valley-girl, inner-city slang, and various grunts." And their clothing, saturated
with sponsors, resembles a nascar uniform. That and judges and politicians appealing
to people’s sense of folk wisdom invokes the Texas governor who, unlike his opponents,
seemed like a guy who you could have a beer with. So in the face of a president who was criticized
for getting C’s in college, our first question is, Was Mike Judge right about anti-intellectualism?
Part 1, Anti-intellectualism. Some people think Mike Judge’s vision of
a world ruled by idiots has already come true. Fake news rules social media and the US is
breaking out in diseases cured half a century ago. So is the problem that a culture hostile
to learning has ruined the world? Judge was acutely aware of the anti-intellectualism
that existed in the early-aughts, currents that still exist today. Idiocracy takes place
in a world where Joe is repeatedly called a f** for sounding smart, "I need help. There's
that fag talk we talked about." Nobody can count, "That'll be... this many dollars."
Or read, "Rehabilitation? Why do you keep trying to read that word?" The justice system is a farce based on non-sensical
appeals to common sense, "Prosecutor! Why you think he done it? Okay, number one, your
honor, just look at him." And criminal justice resembles some combination of a gladiator
fight with a monster truck rally. In other words, Judge thought a bunch of illiterate
yokels were ruining democracy and if we weren’t careful, we’d end up with this. But you could argue that illiterate yokels
ruining democracy is anything but the truth. Because today, we don’t live in an anti-intellectual
environment, but a pseudo-intellectual one. Here’s the difference. Anti-intellectualism,
as many may have personally experienced, usually involves people balking at those who read
books, appreciate art, you get it. It’s the world of Idiocracy. But psuedo-intellectualism
is different. Psuedo-intellectualism involves people gallivanting around, as if they appreciate
scholarship and information, but are largely full of shit. Let’s go to one of my favorite punching
bags: Flat Earthers. It’s not that Flat Earthers are dumb-dumbs who never passed physics.
On the contrary, if you dive deep into the rabbit hole, and, I’m so sad that I have,
Flat Earther websites are full of all the makings of real arguments. They even bought
a f***ing $20,000 laser gyroscope to prove the Earth is flat. There’s evidence, complicated
formulas about how gravity works in their model, and appeals to rational logic to prove
once and for all, that the spherists are the true idiots. And for every falsehood told, it takes so
long to disprove. Where do you even start with people rolling out flight plans and invoking
the laws of special relativity. You could say the same of anti-vaxxers, who tout their
own MDs and scientific articles, even if they’ve been debunked, as proof that we, the measle-less
normies, are the true dumbasses. And as a grim warning against what America could become,
this line of thinking, especially popular on the left, of the uneducated ruining everything,
just doesn’t stack up. Even Democrats, who accused people like the
Tea-Party of being a bunch of illiterate country bumpkins, "Well I’ve never seen no plants
grow out of no toilet. Hey that’s good, you sure you a'int the smartest guy on the
world?" have to contend with the notion that, in fact, they were wealthier and more educated
than the general public. And the “woo woo” new age bullshit popular among the left is
similarly not because of a lack of education, as we’ve seen how anti-vaxxerism can spread
in hyper-educated places like Silicon Valley. Despite the fact that many claim that “Idiocracy”
has come true, our political discourse is more “lively” than ever. Sure, much of
it involves bullshit and deranged anger, but it’s not the aversion to logic and information,
it’s the embracing of a different kind. An arguably, way, way worse kind. So while
Joe may yearn for the days when people read, "And there was a time in this country, a long
time ago, when reading wasn’t just for f**s, and neither was writing!” it’s not quite
the solution. It’s not that we don’t appreciate knowledge,
we just don’t agree on how to evaluate knowledge. So on anti-intellectualism, Mike Judge’s
take is certainly funny. But it’s maybe not nearly as prophetic as some would like
to think. Which brings us to a specific brand of psuedo-science: Part 2, Too Many Babies. In Idiocracy, there’s a specific theory
on how the world got to be so messed up. Dumb, irresponsible people have tons of dumb, irresponsible
kids at rates that vastly exceeds that of your “upstanding” citizens. "There's no
way we could have a child now. Not with the market the way it is, no. That just wouldn't
make any sense." With no natural selection, the general populace will continually get
dumber until, well, this "And the number one movie in the country was called, Ass. This very idea was explored by Henry Herbert
Goddard, in his hugely influential book, The Kallikak Family. Goddard’s book studied
the family of one pseudonymously named Deborah Kallikak, and how her family begat generations
of idiots. He traced it back to one upstanding revolutionary soldier, who had a fling with
a tavern girl that resulted in the spawning of scores of moral degenerates. "I got too
many damn kids, I thought you was on the pill or some shit. Hell no!" Meanwhile, said soldier, Martin Kallikak,
went on to marry a nice Quaker girl and begat a long-line of upstanding citizens. Goddard’s
chart even resembles the family tree of Idiocracy, with the “bad” people outnumbering the
“good" people. Goddard’s work was grounded in the idea of “feeble-mindedness,” he
even coined the term “moron.” The idea was simple, feeble-mindedness was spreading
like a disease, and it needed to be stopped. "I’m gonna fuck all y’all. That’s my
boy!" Or else we might get something like this, "Was I wearing pants when we went in
there? S***, what do I look like, a pants goblin?" Goddard didn’t invent a movement, but he
certainly popularized it, it was called Eugenics. Goddard’s method was riddled with errors
and inaccuracies. He later renounced his work, but the Eugenics movement spread like wildfire
based on now debunked ideas about genetics, forced sterilization programs started popping
up across America. It even resulted in a Supreme Court case, where the court not only upheld
a sterilization law, but commented to the plaintiff that “three generations of imbeciles
are enough.” So, you know, the opposite of this, "Clevon
is lucky to be alive, he attempted to jump a jet ski from a lake into a swimming pool,
and impaled his crotch on an iron gate. But, thanks to recent advances in Stem Cell research,
and the fine work of doctors Krensky and Altshuler, Clevon should gain full reproductive function.
Get your hands off my junk!" Mike Judge has specifically addressed this
criticism of Idiocracy, that it’s pro-eugenics, by saying this: “To me, I thought the opening
made it very clear that whatever side you take, nature and nurture are both covered
in that. That guy is clearly not a good father, I mean, there’s a kid with a motorcycle
in the front yard, and no one’s paying attention to this. He’s just irresponsibly knocking
up different woman, and proud of it. It’s not like he’s a good, upstanding role model
for the kid. So I think it’s pretty clear here that, whichever one it is, nature or
nurture, there’s some combination of both. I obviously don’t believe in eugenics.” Despite his qualification on the intro to
the movie, dumb people having kids is not making the world dumber. While Idiocracy shows
the chart of IQ scores declining, the opposite is true, IQ scores have been increasing on
average by 3 points every year. In other words, if Joe actually took an IQ test in 500 years,
he’d be dumb as shit. And so would I. And so would you. Dumbass. "For the smartest guy
in the world, you're pretty dumb sometimes." For a more asinine example of our rising standards,
consider the White House party scene. You might think that this is a sign that the White
House has deteriorated so thoroughly as to turn into a rager, but this is exactly what
happened after the first inauguration of Andrew Jackson. After a mass of 20,000 people descended
on the White House to meet the new president, they wreaked havoc inside until the staff
set up bathtubs full of booze on the White House lawn to draw people out. Overall, we
can label some of Judge’s critique as the common refrain of “cultural deterioration.”
Language is getting worse, cinema is getting worse, TV is getting worse, and it’s the
end of the world But it’s an old complaint, and one that’s
never really true. Theodor Adorno complained that Jazz was the death of good music, and
people will never, ever, stop complaining about how the youths are ruining language.
In the preface to his English dictionary in 1780, Thomas Sheridan complained that nobody
gave two s***s about how to pronounce words properly anymore. And similar complaints can
be found throughout recorded history. But, let’s not forget it’s the so-called “deterioration”
of language that makes new languages - otherwise half of Europe would still be speaking Latin,
or Proto-German, not French, English, Spanish or Italian. Still, we can all hope that Fudruckers
rebrands as “Buttfuckers”. So on the question of “will the world get
dumb?” - we got to say Judge's answer is kind of dumb. But let’s talk about what
Idiocracy might have gotten right. Part 3, Corporate Culture and Spectacle. One of Judge’s observations that is certainly
not disappearing anytime soon is the infiltration of corporate culture into our personal lives.
There’s the aforementioned "Welcome to Costco, I love you." which seems only a few degrees
separated from corporate Twitter accounts who act like real people who are prone to
depression. Characters are named after brands, like Frito, Dr. Lexus, Formica, Velveeta,
Hormel, and President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. And one must only imagine
that Beef Supreme is some unreleased taco bell masterpiece. Speaking of Taco Bell, they’ve possibly
merged with AOL and the US Government, or at least teamed up to provide long distance
phone service "Welcome to AOL, Time Warner, Taco Bell, US Government Long distance. Please
say the name of the person you wish to call." Carl’s Jr. is able to take custody of children,
"You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr." and
The House of Representin’ in sponsored by “Uhmerican EXXXPress.” Now whether that’s
a credit card company, or an HJ provider, we’ll never know. Mike Judge certainly wasn’t inventing this
out of thin air. While corporate lobbying goes back to at least the 18th century, the
election of a Vice President who was formerly CEO of an oil company brought new fears of
corporate influence on American politics. Which makes scenes like this so perfect, "I'm
the Secretary of state, brought to you by Carl’s Jr. Why do you keep saying that?
Because they pay me every time I do." This didn’t start or end with Dick Cheney. Obama’s
list of economic advisors read like a “who’s who” of Goldman Sachs alumni and more famously,
everyone’s mad at this dude from Verizon for trying to kill Net Neutrality as chair
of the FCC. Idiocracy imagines a sports drink company
buying the FDA and FCC, which allows them to push forward their agenda of watering crops
with Brawndo. This isn’t so much a prophecy as it is on-the-nose hyperbole about how politics
already works. And with the rise of branded” content, where an airline company might pay
Buzzfeed to write an article about “10 Must-See Travel Destinations” - this distinction
between public discourse and private companies is increasingly diminishing. And nobody can
escape it. This ever-decreasing gap seems to have led
to another problem: The spectacle-ization of politics. Corporations, media and government
have created a grotesque Frankenstein where only sex and violence can capture the public
imagination. And we probably don’t need to beat a dead horse to tell you this, this,
and this "I don’t know what the secretary of interior even is." is basically true. So is Idiocracy Deep or Dumb? Well, it’s
definitely a hilarious snapshot of early 2000's paranoia about where the world is headed.
But it’s paranoia that’s slightly misdirected, at least, some of the time. Regardless, it
beautifully functions as a cautionary tale of what happens when people cede their ability
to think critically and just become mindless consumers, "But Brawndo's got what plants
crave. It's got electrolytes." And for that, we will always love it. Thanks
for watching guys! Peace!
