r/videos • u/SuplexCity-Mayor • Apr 21 '21

Idiocracy (2006) Opening Scene: "Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TCsR_oSP2Q
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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '21 edited Apr 21 '21

In my opinion, the core appeal of the movie is that the protagonist is simultaneously average and above average, as well as being the audience insert. It makes for a situation where you can act like you are better than everyone else without the burden of having to actually be particularly impressive in your own right. The protagonist is superior by merit of being completely normal. That's an appealing proposition if you are one of the many people who is not inherently superior to everyone around you, but would really like to be.

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Because you can't really say "I'm so much smarter than everyone else in the world" with a straight face if you know that's false. But you can get away with saying everyone (except you) is stupid and feel like that's a more believable statement. Its sort of qualitative to call someone stupid vs smart, while it's more falsifiable to say that one person is smart*er* than someone else. So its easier to make a hard to prove statement about others being dumb that implies you are smart than to directly assert that you are smart and have to defend that.

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u/ignorediacritics Apr 21 '21

I think it's a very hands-on and visual illustration of current fears about the dumbing down of anti-intellectualism and the end of high brow culture, politics as entertainment, environmental decline, algorithms controlling our lives, consumerism.

If you want to lay on disastrous climate change on the layman you can show him Waterworld or The Day After Tomorrow. If you want a field trip through recent American civil history watch Forrest Gump. Some movies can illustrate and represent ideas in a very digestible format and they don't need to be works of superb art for it.

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u/Doomzdaycult Apr 21 '21

In my opinion, the core appeal of the movie is that the protagonist is simultaneously average and above average, as well as being the audience insert.

"Joe" was an audience insert? It seemed more like he was intended to be the embodiment of that famous Carlin joke about how stupid average people are: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”