this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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It's quite easy to come away from the film with the idea that a general "stupidity" of predominantly poor people is to blame for most of society's problems. The film even starts by heavily implying poor people breed too much and are stupid, while smart, educated, wealthy people are too smart to have kids because they've rationally determined it's a bad decision in the economy. It then goes on to outright claim this will make humanity, on average, "stupider".
This is very, very close to eugenecist rhetoric. Eugenecists are all about weeding out "inferior genes" from humanity to increase our iverall "fitness". So tbh, I may have overstated. If you think the film suggests we need to limit dumb or poor people's breeding, then you might actually be reading the film right.
What I should really say is I just hate the film's overall message, whether it's intentional or not. Which is a shame, because I otherwise like the film and find it quite funny.
The point seemed to be that society was deliberately creating a large population of low income, poorly educated people being fed the cheapest slop by companies for short term gain, and that society then reaped what it sowed. The population of Idiocracy aren't the ones being blamed, they're a result of their environment that was created around them.
I don't see the film pointing fingers at capital or the state. It's even stated that research continued, but only to cater to the wants of dumb people.
Poor?
In idiocracy, it's portrayed as stupid people out breeding the smart. And implication of them being poor is you own bias. Trashy, yes. Stupid, yes. Poor? That's on you champ.
I'm sorry that you tainted your own experience of the movie in this way and that you think that the commentary has anything to do with anything other than intelligence. I'm sorry that gave you a very negative outlook on the film.
Sure, call it "my own bias" if you want. It's called coding. Characters can be coded poor, by giving them accents conventional of poor people, situating them in houses common of poor people, dressing them in ways that stand out as stereotypically poor, etc. And like I said, it might not even be intentional. But coding can happen even unintentionally.
I understand where you get the bias from, don't get me wrong.
There's "coding" (as you put it) in media and TV that people who are stupid, are lower stationed economically, working dead end jobs, living in squalor, etc. The stereotypical image of the idiot during the first section of the film loosely fits a number of those stereotypes, like living in a trailer.
Media and TV have made intelligence almost synonymous with success and financial gains. Certainly that sequence doesn't help. The two "intelligent" people examples are all put together in their upper-middle, or upper-class home and apparel, speaking of their careers and "the market" or whatever. Here are the smart people being very closely aligned with two successful professionals, with plenty of money to live on the more luxurious side of life....
That portrayal is a strong example of the point, whether you want to call it bias or coding or whatever, either the people who created the scene, or the audience watching the scene, have conflated the idiot, with someone who is poor, and intelligent people with those that are wealthy.
But the way it's portrayed, and what you may think it's trying to portray, isn't what the focus is for that scene. If you listen to the narrator, and focus on the literal story telling provided, while the idiot may look "poor" to you, they're not set as an example of someone who is poor, but as someone who is stupid.
Could they have done a better job to ensure the audience doesn't conflate stupid with poor? Probably.
I would argue that if your main take away from the first act of idiocracy, is that it's not about the idiots, but rather has some connotations about the poor, then the idiot in that scene is the observer.
You still haven't explained what bias you believe I had. Or acknowledged that I've already mentioned they probably didn't do it on purpose. Or that I generally actually like the film and that these little points don't get in the way of that.
It seems like you have some sort of idea in your head about what I must be, and are ignoring evidence to the contrary. That you perhaps... have a bias. Unlike you I'll be specific. A bias against acknowledgements that otherwise good media can, intentionally or not, express harmful ideas. A bias against recognising prejudices, about being... awakened to discrimination. A bias against being... "woke", if you will.
I will fully admit I had to stretch for that, but I'm still confident in it.