Idiocracy - Criticizing Society

In the film, Idiocracy, current society is satirized through the depiction of a future society which displays an extreme downward trend in educational and technological advancements. The movie follows Joe Bauers, a private in the army. Joe becomes part of a secret military experiment in which he and a woman named Rita are frozen, to test whether or not the long term freezing and storing humans is plausible. They are forgotten and are unfrozen in the year 2505 to find that humanity has undergone the mass reproduction of society’s least intelligent members. Joe and Rita find themselves saving the human race of the future from inevitable collapse. Through the future society the movie satirizes current methods of advertising, the legal and political systems, as well as exploring the values and consequences of modern society on the future of humanity.

It is not uncommon to see advertising almost everywhere in our day to day lives; Idiocracy takes this to the extreme. In the society of the future, clothing can be pulled from a box, like a tissue, and is emblazoned with company names and logos. There are advertisements on the sides of buildings, water fountains, cars, and any other viable surface. Amusingly, this is very similar to our current society. Television programming is constantly interrupted with commercials for new goods, buildings and billboards are plastered with advertisements for this service or that store, the clothing and gear of professional athletes really is covered in corporate sponsors and logos. I believe that these parallels are meant to show the similarities between the current society and the “future” society, in order to warn people about succumbing to advertising and materialism.

The legal system and political system in Idiocracy are both ridiculous caricatures of the worst aspects of today’s system. The courtroom is ruled by popular opinion and the defense, prosecutor, and judge are incompetent and uninformed on the matter of correct legal proceedings. At one point Joe’s court appointed attorney turns around and begins telling the courtroom of all the bad things Joe has done and why he deserves to go to jail. The people in the courtroom are thrilled to see someone sentenced to time in jail and they yell at Joe, ignoring the intelligent points he makes. This not only draws attention to faults in our court system and the frequency with which mistakes and questionable decisions are made, it also satirizes the way people react to sensationalized court cases. The political system in Idiocracy is just as damaged as the court system. The President is not only intellectually incompetent, but he really serves no actual purpose. He does not do any of the things that one would expect. He does not help the economy, or agriculture, or make informed decisions for the good of the people. Instead President Camacho gives obscure speeches, sings, and promises the people that someone else will fix all of their problems. While this does not necessarily reflect the presidency itself, it does reflect and satirize the way which people approach it. Society is obsessed with the scandals of the presidency and the “viral video worthy” moments in a president’s career than what they are actually doing for the country. People only seem to care about the president’s true purpose when they have an excuse to complain about him.

While Idiocracy may appear to be no more than an ordinary comedy film, the sole purpose of which is simply to make people laugh, it is really a commentary on modern society and a warning about what is to come if the people in our society do not reevaluate their morals and values. If people continue to put their desire for fun and leisure before learning and self-improvement, then society really will begin to generate less intelligent generations with no willingness to do anything. Sex is even portrayed as the pastime of the less intelligent, as it is the people who have been having partaking in sex the most who reproduce the most (i.e. the dumb people). This movie even addresses the implications and limitations of intelligence. While Joe was the smartest person in the future society, he never caught onto the fact that Rita had been a prostitute, proving that even the most intelligent people can be naïve on some matters. Almost every laughable moment in this film ridicules an aspect of society that must be changed in order to avoid ruining the world for future generations.