4. The Genre
Idiocracy is the rarest of gems; a science fiction comedy. It takes a bleak, sarcastic look at a possible future timeline that at times the viewer will think could well be disgustingly possible. After all, all the signs are there. A world run by corporations? Check. An environment destroyed by same corporation? Check. A top-rated tv show that deals with a guy getting kicked in the nuts? Check. A former wrestler turned President of the United States? Check. Buying a lap dance at Starbuck's, Chec- wait, what? Science Fiction implies a certain gravitas in its subject matter. It is usually about a Utopian world where technology and humanity's quest for knowledge leads us as a species to conquer worlds, space travel and maintain a type of universal ultra-super ego. Star Trek is perhaps the most masturbatory exhibit of this type of thinking: Gene Roddenbury envisioned all that we could be and we love him for it. Mike Judge also envisions the same thing, but with much different results and so far, most of western civilization has been indifferent to his vision. In the Dystopian Science Fiction world, humans again are generally either near superhuman (ie. Equilibrium, Aeon Flux) or are cogs in a greater machine that has wiped out most of basic humanity through assimilation either technological or viral (1984, Brazil, Resident Evil) leaving mankind to either fight each other, killer robots or an emotionless system that is centered around the stripping of our basic human wants and needs. Mike Judge also tackles this vision, of a society that is stripping away the core meaning of what it is of being human and replacing it with something that again, is quite plausible yet devoid of emotion and humanity. We won't evolve into a society with a thirst for knowledge of what's beyond the stars but of a society for a thirst of a
drink that is full of electrolytes, and a society where people go to watch a movie called 'Ass,' which is just a movie of someone's ass (which went on to win Best Picture) and in a scene that didn't make the final cut was a commentary on modern sports, in which baseball has devolved into 'Extreme Baseball,' which was essentially just a bat fight. So much of Idiocracy may come to pass and that is another reason why it rings truer than films such as Terminator or Gattaca.