No, Idiocracy (2006) is Not a Documentary–It’s a Socially Irresponsible Movie

What is Eugenics Theory?

In the history of the human world (remember, recorded human history goes back 5,000 years), has there ever been a time when complete and total morons took over a country or civilization because they were allowed to breed like rabbits? Did this, for instance, happen in the days of Ancient Rome, Greece or Egypt, the medieval era, the Renaissance period, the era of colonialism or the 20th century?

No. It’s never happened because it never could happen. The reason is that the type of “stupidity” displayed in Idiocracy is what used to be called “feeble-mindedness” or mental retardation. Retardation is a very real medical condition in which someone’s mental development is severely curtailed, to the point where in the most extreme cases, they’re unable to take care of themselves as adults.

As real as the disorder is, mental feebleness is not 100% genetic. Not only that, it’s not guaranteed that someone who is mentally feeble because of a genetic condition will be popping out feeble-minded children left and right. (See this interesting Sun-Sentinel article about a woman whose mother was mentally disabled [note: article appears to be paywalled since first draft, but see if it works for you anyway.])

In cases when mental retardation isn’t caused by genetics, it can sometimes be caused by medical complications. For example, if a baby suffers severe oxygen deprivation during labor, it may suffer permanent brain damage, leading to mental retardation. If an expecting mother suffers illness herself or is exposed to something toxic (like dangerous chemicals, toxins or drugs), a perfectly healthy fetus can also become developmentally challenged. One of the most famous examples of an otherwise healthy fetus being adversely affected in utero involved the actress, Gene Tierney. Tierney became infected with German measles while pregnant, which resulted in her unborn child suffering from severe retardation.

Botton line, if mentally feeble adults breed unchecked, this doesn’t mean that all of their children will be instantly retarded, any more than two people with dwarfism will only produce dwarfs or two people with albinism will only produce albino kids. Of course, there is always the risk if one or both parents carry a gene for a particular affliction that causes developmental issues. But genetics isn’t as simple as, “Both parents are X, so their children will all be X.” Yet people in the early half of the 20th century began to believe this very thing, to where they warned everyone that allowing mentally disabled adults to reproduce freely would result in society becoming dumbed down.

Since mental retardation isn’t necessarily passed from one generation to the next by way of genetics, where on earth did people get this idea that it can, anyway? Believe it or not, this answer is surprisingly easy to answer. This paranoia is rooted in one of the most evil pseudo-sciences to ever emerge in the first half of the 20th century–eugenics.

What is eugenics? When Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, people didn’t just take it as a theory about why there are so many species in the animal kingdom. People thought that it also applied to how human society worked. What particularly interested them was this Darwinist theory known as “survival of the fittest.” This theory explains how species evolve over time. According to survival of the fittest, when certain members of a species with specific traits can no longer adapt to a changing environment, they die off, leaving behind members with traits that can best survive it.

In spite of how specific Darwinism was about what survival of the fittest meant, somehow people twisted this concept to mean that human society is filled with genetically fit and genetically unfit people and that only the most fit should survive. Before anyone knew it, Social Darwinism was born, the idea that we should use the ideas of Charles Darwin to figure out how to best improve human society. One way we could improve society, according to Social Darwinists, was to start selectively breeding out so-called “undesirables”, such as the mentally and physically disabled, as well as anyone else who was considered “less than.”

Now, how exactly can you “breed out” people? Social Darwinists proposed forced sterilization of the mentally ill and in some cases, called for abortion. However, as you can imagine, the idea of sterilizing human beings against their will or forcing them to undergo abortions wouldn’t have flown in a humane society. Because of this, a fake theory had to be concocted to convince the public to be on board with this stuff. This is when eugenics theory was born. According to eugenicists, countries had to prevent undesirables from reproducing. If they were allowed to have sex unchecked, they would outbreed everyone, taint the rest of the population with their inferior genetics and turn society into a culture of morons and degenerates within a generation or two’s time.

As unethical and completely baseless as eugenics was, the idea caught on both in America and overseas. Starting in the 1920s in the United States, mental asylums started the practice of sterilizing the feeble-minded against their will. Nazi Germany, inspired by eugenics theory, also embarked on its own plan to improve German society and took the entire concept to its most extreme with the sterilization and euthanization of the mentally ill or disabled.

Eventually, eugenics became soundly discredited and later erased from the public consciousness in the wake of The Holocaust, as well as after victims of America’s eugenics program started publicly coming out with their personal horror stories of forced sterilization–

–that is, until the movie, Idiocracy.

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