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

Why You Should Reject Idiocracy

Idiocracy is a movie that people love to cite as some kind of prescient, on point satire of a current trend in American culture. However, the film’s premise should be rejected for two specific reasons:

Eugenics Theory is Evil –End Of

Eugenics theory has been discredited for decades now, and for several reasons. First of all, it’s a corruption of Darwinist theory and evolutionary science. Darwin never, ever talked about survival of the fittest in the sense of “superior” versus “inferior” genes or intended his theories to apply to human society. So, no matter how highfalutin the language or the scientific terms borrowed from the field of genetics and sociology, eugenics is quack science.

Secondly, eugenics is quack science rooted in a primal-like contempt for so-called “inferiors” that always invariably leads to the abandonment, neglect, extermination or forced sterilization of the most vulnerable members of society. Besides the fact that it’s often little more than a Trojan Horse to start eliminating so-called undesirables, it stems from a deep fear that ignorant people have of those who are challenged or come off as being “less than” for whatever reason. One of the expressions of this paranoia is a fear that their disabilities are somehow contagious like leprosy and will spread to everyone if the disability isn’t contained or eliminated somehow. For centuries, simply going the “out of sight, out of mind” route was enough–i.e., dumping them in institutions, prisons and the back alleys of skid row was enough. By the 20th century, simply allowing people like this to even exist was not enough, because we had science now. 

Given what an execrable pile of dogshit eugenics theory is, it’s the height of evil to entertain this theory on any level, even for the sake of comedy. For this alone, Idiocracy should be rejected. Forget about the classism, the bigotry, the totally unfounded pseudo-science. No work that legitimizes any form of eugenics, no matter how seemingly harmless, should be entertained, because all it does is open the door for it to be revisited.

Idiocracy is a Specious Take on a Legitimate Social Issue

Besides pushing eugenics theory, Idiocracy should be rejected for another reason. To explain why, let’s play Devil’s Advocate.

Eugenics controversy aside, there is a legitimate case to be made that if a population truly became dumbed down over time, it could never be the result of entertainment alone. Dumbed down movies and TV shows can be one of many factors, of course, but not the most contributing factor and certainly not the one worth even worrying about the most. So, what Idiocracy has in its favor is that it’s one of the few cinematic think pieces that challenges this idea that media alone could be the only or most significant contribution to a society’s mental decline–and asks the audience to open its mind to the idea that there could be other factors. 

Another thing that Idiocracy has in its favor is that given the way things have been going culturally for the past 60 some-odd years, there is definitely something about the doomsday scenario presented in Idiocracy that feels plausible, as well as prescient. It’s not too far-fetched to imagine a society in which the dumbest people are running the show in everything from politics to business. This feeling of plausibility and prescience is why people found the film so compelling and convincing; it put a finger on the pulse of something that feels as if it’s unfolding with an all too depressing reality with each passing year.

However, there’s an evil genius to all of this. Because Idiocracy does such a good job of expressing the moral panic over America’s intellectual decline, it also feels like it’s steeped in truth and insight. However, the opposite is actually the case. Instead of enlightening the audience about what could truly be contributing to the dumbing down of the country and the world, it presents a misleading picture of how and why something like this could happen.

Going back to Devil’s Advocate, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that we finally reach a time when the whole world is dumbed down, and the reason can be definitely traced to mentally retarded people outpacing intelligent people.

But remember what was said earlier about mental retardation. A lot of things can account for it, most of them non-genetic. Environmental factors can play a part. For example, lead paint is a known factor of mental retardation in children, and exposure to toxins can impair adults later in life. Pregnant mothers, exposed to terrible illnesses like Gene Tierney was, can conceive children who start out completely healthy but become afflicted in utero.

Furthermore, adults–who started out mentally sound–can develop disorders or act in ways that resembles “retardation” due to non-genetic factors, such as head trauma, substance abuse, malnutrition, mental illness and neurological disorders (such as dementia, stroke, etc.).

The point is that if there’s a legitimate case to be made that the entire world could be dumbed down as a result of “retarded” people overtaking smart people–fine. But it could never happen in the way that the movie represents. In other words, the overtaking of the “smart” could never be as simple-minded a scenario as genetically feeble people producing feeble babies unchecked. It could only really happen through a perfect storm of medical, environmental, cultural and other factors causing a population of perfectly healthy people to decline mentally. 

All of this is why Idiocracy needs to be rejected on all fronts. In its attempts to get a handle on the moral panic over the dumbing down of America, it’s the textbook definition of specious–i.e., it gives the appearance of completely nailing and giving a perfectly logical and reasonable response to this dumbing down problem, but in a way that is both superficial and misleading.

Because it’s so specious, the movie did a huge disservice in tackling this very serious issue. Instead of providing food for thought about what dumbing down is, what could be contributing to it and what can be done about it, Idiocracy left audiences with the smug sense that they not only understood all there was to know about the problem but all there needed to be said about it.

In other words, no one walked away from the movie with an immediate sense of urgency about fixing lead levels in water and paint, doing more about the drug crisis and other various medical, environmental and social issues that could be causing a collective cognitive decline in Americans. They saw the movie and thought, “Too many inbred families from the Midwest and Deep South are breeding. We need to stop this problem before it’s too late. The End.”

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