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Idiocracy is a funny movie that I enjoy. However I'm disturbed by the number of people who say it's a documentary, or a warning. That's because the central premise of the movie (that humans breed wrong and if nothing is done, we'll devolve and society will collapse) also happens to be the central premise of Eugenics.
Hey, at least in Idiocracy, once they determined the guy to be smarter than everyone else, at least they put him in charge of things..
They did try to kill him first. Several times...
Honestly, I'm kind of put off watching the movie due to those weird eugenicsy undertones... Feels like one of those "i am very smart" Reddit people looking down on the "lesser masses" and saying they shouldn't reproduce.
I don't think the movie in any way calls for eugenics.
If anything it called out how toxic ignorance and stupidity can be in the presence of someone who just wants to do the right thing. It shows how corporate greed and capitalism encourages stupidity to further it's goals of creating basic labor for the corporate machines owned by billionaires to exploit.
But hey, that's just like, my opinion man.
My spouses family is dysfunctional with many many kids and more on the way.
She's the only functional one and its unlikely we will have kods of our own.
The premise tracks.
Agreed. As iconic as that eugenicist prologue might be, it harms humanity and doesn't really serve the plot.
Not at all how I see it. It's not eugenics its education, well the lack there of, that made the world in idiocracy.
The movie maybe. But that intro was basically divorced from the rest of the movie.
The intro suggested that stupid people having kids was the reason humanity started evolving backward. It invoked natural selection and "survival of the fittest."
The intro even labeled the low birth rate couple and high birthrate couple with IQ scores to illustrate this point.
You argue that that the movie attributes the stupidity of its world to societal shifts. It does. It does a great job laying out a progression from late stage capitalism to idiocracy.
But that just further highlights how unnecessary that intro was. The intro attributed the stupidity to something entirely different.
Just watched the intro. I'm not really on board with the eugenics angle even after watching it. It's more social darwinism than eugenics.
Eugenicists as ive always thought of it is an intended or active pursuit of creating "better" humans(or whatever species).
One factor I see being a difference between natural selection and unnatural selection. Unnatural selection being eugenics, and natural selection being what a result of an environment having an effect on the evolution of a species.
The intro Primarily sets a path of one group having more children than the other group and i will concede ~~it~~ the intelligent couple having problems having kids misrepresents the rest of the movie while still giving the audience a vehicle to how the future they wanted to craft could happen. And it also is meant to be entertainment not just exposition.
Would be very interested in an in depth response from Mike Judge and the rest of the filmakers. Would be an interesting use of AI/Deepfake to redo the intro if it actually wasnt intended to invoke a eugenic view of the future