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MEDIA 'Idiocracy' Realized: How Our Current Situation Is Worse Than the Film Predicted
By Paula Young Lee / AlterNet May 26, 2016
The 2006 cult comedy Idiocracy is having its moment in the sun. Written and directed by Mike Judge, creator of “Beavis & Butthead,” Idiocracy envisions a future corporate American wasteland where Costco is as large as a small city, the food pyramid consists entirely of fast food, and the president of the United States (Terry Crews) is a five-time "Ultimate Smackdown" professional wrestling champion and ex-porn star. “So you’re smart, huh?” President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho says to hapless time traveler Joe “Not Sure” Bauers (Luke Wilson), an Average Joe chagrined to discover he’s now the smartest man in the country. “I thought your head would be bigger,” Camacho bellows. “Looks like a peanut!”
Donald Trump's political ascendancy has made Idiocracy seem like prophecy. (Or, per a viral tweet by the film’s screenwriter, a “documentary.”) As satire, however, Idiocracy is uneven, precisely because recent events have already exceeded its most trenchant bits of lunacy. In the fictional Idiocracy future, Congress is full of idiots who do nothing but yell, “You’re a dick!” at the president. But those antics pale in comparison to stunts pulled by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trump, a billionaire real-estate developer and reality TV show star whose foreign policy proposals include telling China, Listen, you motherfuckers, we’re going to tax you 25 percent! In 2009, Trump purchased the rights to pro-wrestling show “Monday Night Raw” and then sold them back to the previous owner “for twice the price,” according to the World Wrestling Entertainment website. “Since then, the WWE Hall of Famer [has] focused on his ever-expanding real estate empire, his Emmy-nominated reality television show ‘The Apprentice’ and running for president of the United States.”
Mike Judge may be a funny guy, but his mind isn’t exactly subtle. A decade ago when Idiocracy was released, he was already treading well-worn ground by envisioning a future where being unable to pay debts is a crime (see: the return of debtor’s prison), the Violence Channel dominates the networks (see: all of cable), and a plotless film about a farting white ass wins Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards (see: Swiss Army Man, starring Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse).
To be sure, there is more than a grain of truth in Judge’s worry that educated people sound like “fags” to a population that speaks “a hybrid of hillbilly, valley girl, inner-city slang, and various grunts.” But in order to get the laughs, he went for low-hanging fruit, using eugenics as a plot device, romanticizing the effects of social engineering and coming perilously close to validating the dubious notion of IQ as a social sorting tool.
Donald Trump's political ascendancy has made Idiocracy seem like prophecy. (Or, per a viral tweet by the film’s screenwriter, a “documentary.”) As satire, however, Idiocracy is uneven, precisely because recent events have already exceeded its most trenchant bits of lunacy. In the fictional Idiocracy future, Congress is full of idiots who do nothing but yell, “You’re a dick!” at the president. But those antics pale in comparison to stunts pulled by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trump, a billionaire real-estate developer and reality TV show star whose foreign policy proposals include telling China, Listen, you motherfuckers, we’re going to tax you 25 percent! In 2009, Trump purchased the rights to pro-wrestling show “Monday Night Raw” and then sold them back to the previous owner “for twice the price,” according to the World Wrestling Entertainment website. “Since then, the WWE Hall of Famer [has] focused on his ever-expanding real estate empire, his Emmy-nominated reality television show ‘The Apprentice’ and running for president of the United States.”
Mike Judge may be a funny guy, but his mind isn’t exactly subtle. A decade ago when Idiocracy was released, he was already treading well-worn ground by envisioning a future where being unable to pay debts is a crime (see: the return of debtor’s prison), the Violence Channel dominates the networks (see: all of cable), and a plotless film about a farting white ass wins Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards (see: Swiss Army Man, starring Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse).
To be sure, there is more than a grain of truth in Judge’s worry that educated people sound like “fags” to a population that speaks “a hybrid of hillbilly, valley girl, inner-city slang, and various grunts.” But in order to get the laughs, he went for low-hanging fruit, using eugenics as a plot device, romanticizing the effects of social engineering and coming perilously close to validating the dubious notion of IQ as a social sorting tool.
Snip
http://www.alternet.org/media/corporate-trump-nation-made-america-worse-idiocracy