I normally don't do this, but I felt compelled to pen a few words on a movie I
downloaded rented recently, Mike Judge's
Idiocracy.
For those of you who are not familiar with the film, the plot basically runs like this:
- Joe (played by Luke Wilson) is pretty average... an average Joe.
- Joe gets frozen in a military experiment.
- Military experiment goes wrong and Joe is frozen for 500 years.
- While Joe is frozen, natural selection takes a turn for the worst and the most inane yet fertile (ie: the Jerry Springer crowd) reproduce at rapid rates, while the DINKs of the world fail to procreate at relatively proportional levels. Thus, ridding of the world of intelligence and culture as we know it.
- Joe awakens to a world full of imbeciles (and Carl Jr's) and is left to fend for himself as the smartest man in the world.
It's a cute premise and the treatment is smart. Take for example, the fact that the America of 2505 is running out of food because they failed to see the pitfalls of watering their crops with
Brawndo, a Gatorade-like sports beverage that centers its marketing campaign around the mantra, "Brawndo has what plants crave: Electrolytes."
So yes, I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would. And after seeing it again, I am convinced that Mike Judge knows how to make a film. Office Space was not a brilliant fluke. But something about the film left an odd taste in my mouth. But I think I finally put my finger on it.
If you watch the movie closely, you will notice that a majority of the envisioned U.S. population at 2505 are of Mexican (or generally Hispanic) descent. I didn't think much of this at first... in fact, I honestly didn't view it as an intentional artistic choice of the director. But then again, I'm no stranger to race agnosticism. I've
missed things like this before.
Yes, most of the extras are dark skinned (although there are few blacks, if I remember right). Everyone had with at least one Hispanic surname. And even the traveling announcer, who gets no face time in the film.... had ample opportunity to announce the entrance of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (himself a former extreme wrestler and porn star) while speaking in a thick Mexican-American accent, complete with a occasional "homles" thrown in.
But what is the director trying to tell us here, if anything?
To be honest, I believe Mike Judge is making a statement on immigration, independent of the general devolution theme. Of course, I didn't think of him trying to intimate that more Mexicans across the U.S. border = more idiots. But he's clearly painting a picture of an America that looks a lot different culturally than we know it.
You have to remember that
Mr. Judge was born and raised in New Mexico and is now living in Texas. You can't go for that long and in that part of America without having strong feelings about immigration, one way or another. Whether or not he is communicating an principled warning or a cultural inevitability --- I believe it's all left to personal interpretation (Read: It's late and I'm punting here). But I can definitely assert that it's all funny in the end.
(God, I love racist humor)
P.S. - I finally got a new playlist up! Have a look at it to your right. (No Marc, your
other right)
Labels: cinema, comedic-gold, dystopia
I usually don't go for this sort of stuff... top 10 lists and such are 
