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What comedy movies aged like fine wine? (piefed.social)
submitted 3 months ago by [M] to c/movies@piefed.social
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[–] 64 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Idiocracy. started as a comedy, evolved through time in a documentary.

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  • [–] 22 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    In Idiocracy, people take a crisis seriously, the state is actively looking for experts to solve the crisis, and defers to them quickly, and when evidence appears people change their minds. Finally they elect the person with the actual best plan for the future.

    Idiocracy fundamentally has a wrong view of American stupidity. Idiocracy treats Americans as well-meaning but too complacent to care about the long-term consequences. It declares that society's problems are from a (genetic) lack of useful effort.

    But, as the past 10 years have made increasingly hard to deny, American "stupid people" are actively hostile to reckoning with the long-term consequences of their actions. Ignorance was only ever an excuse. It's entitlement rather than complacency, and society's problems come from ('genetically smart') people deliberately bending useful effort towards societal harm for personal gain.

    But while it may not have been quite as grating, Idiocracy was already wrong when it came out. Civil rights were suppressed with "ignorant" excuses that were a fig leaf on the desire to do harm. The eugenics the movie takes as a premise - that "smart people" breeding leads to a smart world and inversely for "stupid people" - is itself a form of "ignorance" about genetics that was actively being used as a fig leaf for genocide in the US in the century before.

    But no, I'm sure you "just don't get" how Idiocracy is endorsing a genocidal view eugenics. It's easier to "believe" brawndo makes the plants grow.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago*

    While you’re correct that the movie highlights a leader searching for a solution to a problem, you overlook the unspoken criticism of society within the movie: the plainly evident results of generations of stupid Americans who were too complacent, and actively hostile, to reckoning with the long-term consequences of their actions.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    While the movie is funny you should know the basic premise is eugenics. Which might not be something to cheer on, given the current history repeating trend.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I don't think enjoying the movie somehow supports eugenics. The premise is about the correlation between education level and demographic trends, which is a real thing. The reproduction rate is well-known to be correlated with women's education specifically. Regarding eugenics, historically, the issue there was forced eugenics. That's a much different thing.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago

    Yeah, the eugenics thing is frequently repeated here. I guess the point is also that the premise rests on dumb people outbreeding smart ones, and dumb people are poor. But I always saw that as not being the message of the film.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    I disagree, the issue with eugenics is that it's absolute bullshit. Made up by racists and fascists to justify their views.

    Genes simply don't work like that, each person doesn't just get the genes from their parents, but from the entire bloodline of each parent. Which means we get a huge mix of stuff, some of which will be expressed and a lot of it won't be. This means children might be similar to parents (but also might not be), but after a few generations it's very hard to track any kind of complex trait.

    Most people are about as smart as one another, given the chance to develop and grow. Differences in perceived intelligence are often much more a product of the environment, than anything related to genes. Rich families paid for their kids to go to the best schools, thus their offspring is perceived as more intelligent.

    So no the issue isn't just forced eugenics, the issue is eugenics period. Genes do not make one person superior to another and there is no such thing as an Ubermensch or master race.

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