Happy almost weekend, friends!
I laugh, but this might not be *that* far away…
As we’re approaching the end of summer movie season (?!?), you’ve probably picked up on the fact that a number of films seemed to possess an eerie prescience about the pandemic era in which they’d be released. Over at Vox, Alissa Wilkinson breaks down why that might be.
Speaking of movies, I personally think five years is too soon for the gritty modern reboot of The Big Short, but it appears we might be getting just that IRL per The New York Times. This time? It’s about malls.
On a brighter note, I think we can all agree that Jamie Lee Curtis:
Now, what you came for…
DAY 168: Idiocracy (available on HBO Max)
Imagine looking around and seeing a society wrecked by consumerism, anti-intellectualism and toxic masculinity. Imagine having the brightest minds in science shying away from tackling some of the world’s most pressing problems and instead focusing on hedonistic distractions. Imagine people around you buying into unserious miracle cures to public health crises that benefit corporations rather than people. Imagine a government populated by unserious clowns who cannot even comprehend the function of the roles they hold and view politics as a literal bloodsport…
Yeah, it must be pretty tough being Joe Bauers, the protagonist of Idiocracy. The military chose him for an experiment in cryogenic freezing because he quite literally represented the most average person among their ranks. He and a prostitute, Maya Rudolph’s Rita, are only supposed to remain frozen for a short period … but instead wake up in the year 2505 after the government forgets them. Funny what five hundred years will do — in this world, the world’s intelligence has deteriorated so rapidly and thoroughly that people come to view him as the second coming of Einstein.
This satire by Mike Judge, the comic mind behind Office Space and TV’s Silicon Valley, played as ridiculous when it was released in 2006. Its studio, 20th Century Fox, regarded it as such and unceremoniously dumped it in theaters with no fanfare. Wild how time can reveal the value of art that saw past the moment of its release.
To say too much about how Idiocracy hits the nail on the head would only ruin its considerable pleasures for those yet to experience the film. Judge remarkably shied away from the easy targets of the time, choosing to satirize some less obvious culprits in the dumbing down of the country. He digs into demographic trends in population and education level to find the fault lines in society. He examines the cumulative effect of the "infotainment" dominating the news media. He takes corporate influence over the government to its logical extreme.
If there’s anything wrong with the film, it’s that there are almost too many ideas packed into the running time of Idiocracy. Judge pours out seemingly every thought he’s ever had about America into the film, making it so that each issue gets a slightly cursory examination. A rewatch of Idiocracy, which I first saw and wrote about in 2016, revealed both more of the film’s ineloquent presentation — and its sly genius. If only Judge had the budget or the time of, say, a miniseries to really unpack his social critique. (Sequel, anyone?)
Be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall