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Mike Judge, the Bard of Suck
- CodeWriter23 10y agoLife imitates art, which makes Mike Judge more of a perpetrator than a chronicler.
- Tloewald 10y agoOnly if you think he has in any way been causal.
- regulation_d 10y agoI never understood this, "Let's blame Nietzsche for the holocaust" mentality.
- creaghpatr 10y agoInteresting read, although it's mostly a (deserved) pat on the back kind of article. But they completely leave out King of the Hill?!?!
- brandnewlow 10y agoIt doesn't fit the article's thesis.
- BuuQu9hu 10y agoI find that it neatly fits the thesis; "King of the Hill" is a delightful satire of the inhabitants of a sleepy Texas town, and it's clearly influenced by Judge's time in Texas the same way that "Silicon Valley" was influenced by his time in the Bay, and Judge himself has confirmed this. I think that it makes coastal city folk uncomfortable to talk about and celebrate KotH because satirizing urban Texan values, beliefs, and practices is self-seen as aggrandizing city-slicker behavior.
- humanrebar 10y agoKenneth from 30 Rock doesn't make them uncomfortable. They don't get KotH because they don't get the humor. Because they don't get lower middle class red state suburban culture. They see it as an absence of culture. They'd rather move to New Zealand (another HN thread that's going on right now) than learn about domestic cultures.
- aanm1988 10y agoAs opposed to open minded people like you who just post shit like this?
- sctb 10y agoWe have to ban this account if you won't stop violating the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- wcummings 10y agoOh puh-leeeeeeeeze, KotH has a broad appeal and heaps of "city slickers" watched and enjoyed it without irony or disdain for the characters. People haven't been completely retarded by living in cities, most of the stories in the KotH are fundamentally human and very relatable.
- humanrebar 10y agoApparently Willy Staley of the New York Times missed all the satire in KotH. Someone in the critical analysis business who understood towns like Garland, TX well wouldn't dismiss the satire in KotH offhand. Shows can be relatable and funny and still be misunderstood. And I don't think cities necessarily corrupt people somehow. Obviously Garland itself is part of the DFW metroplex! It's probably more that people with a certain brand of cosmopolitan ethnocentrism end up in (or stay in) coastal cities.
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- eplanit 10y ago>If you set aside his long-running TV show “King of the Hill,” which is much too loving to be considered satire, Judge’s corpus of work cleaves neatly into two pieces. Set it aside? Having grown up in that region of Texas it certainly is (wonderfully) satirical to me. It certainly isn't a hateful satire, but "too loving to be considered satire" misses it. In an otherwise very good article I'm also surprised by such a dismissal of a huge part of hit work.
- kenamarit 10y agoAgreed! I grew up outside Fort Worth, and a lot of the jokes, characters, and scenes in King of the Hill (like Silicon Valley) hit painfully close to home
- hawkice 10y ago> a huge part of hit work Freudian slip of the most correct kind. It really was a hit, very odd to ignore it (fellow Texan here).
- pavel_lishin 10y agoIt was too accurate. Growing up in Texas, I couldn't watch it for a long time because I didn't see where the humor was - it was just a show about people who were like my neighbors.
- tomsthumb 10y agoit's funny cause it's true
- hindsightbias 10y agoYeah, I don't know how it plays to out-of-staters, but there comes a point where a weekly KotH was too much. Sorta like it is hard to rewatch Office Space or Idiocracy. Have to be in the right mood, every 4 or 5 years. OS was filmed in my neighborhood and until the credits rolled I thought Stephen Root (Milton) was a former coworker (physical doppelgänger) where we literally had a TPS form. Going out for lunch with coworkers, "I hope Judge isn't sitting behind us" became a thing people would say. Freakish accuracy.
- Pigo 10y agoI know right? People like to focus on Idiocracy because they want to segueway into their issue with modern life they find idiotic. Lapsing over a 13 season home run is just ponderous though, especially since they mentioned Milton and B&B. I suppose the guy is just so prolific many people love him for different works and different reasons. I'm a fan boy of pretty much everything he's done.
- WorldMaker 10y agoEven just the one running thread of "propane and propane accessories" through King of the Hill paints a deep satirical portrait of middle class salesmanship, an equal to (if not a successor/better) "Death of a Salesman". I'd even possible put it up against Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions for levels of grim pathos and determination despite broken systems that don't allow for advancement while claiming that they do. All of that seems like hyperbole perhaps, but it's an admirable trait to King of the Hill that it can inspire such questions and discussions... and that's just one of the many long-running satire threads in King of the Hill.
- jnicholasp 10y ago> segueway Just so you know, "segue" is pronounced "seg-way" by itself. No need to throw an additional "way" on the end.
- joshuaheard 10y agoThe article is paywalled for me, but I will note that King of the Hill dealt with conservative themes in a positive manner, while the NY Times is a liberal paper, which views conservatism with disdain.
- nerfhammer 10y ago> they completely leave out King of the Hill?!?! cause this is a PR piece for the new season of silicon valley
- DrSayre 10y agoAgreed. King of the Hill is amazing and is always underrated.
- wcummings 10y agoI fucking love Mike Judge, King of the Hill is one of the best shows of all time.
- throwaway91111 10y agoI have frankly no idea what to make of the show. It feels so alien it might as well be european.
- dkarl 10y agoI think Mike Judge's humor lands best with people who recognize the behavior on the screen as driven by impulses they feel in themselves. It simultaneously gratifies those impulses and teaches us what the world looks like without the moderating influences of culture and experience. "Beavis and Butt-Head" is a celebration of crudity, a lesson in empathy and humility, and a reminder that "refinement" and "education" are not just silly, fancy things but aspects of every person's experience. The distance between us and Beavis and Butt-Head was created by myriad formative experiences with parents, friends, teachers, and culture, who not only influenced us directly but also taught us which influences to be open to. If you take perverse delight in their misadventures then you truly know: there but for the grace of good fortune go I.
- vlunkr 10y agoThis may be the most intelligent paragraph ever written with the word "Butt-Head" in it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- aaron695 10y agoI really like a some of Mike Judges work but B&BH is not part of that. Where is the humor in killing an ant with a magnifying glass. I see were it was heading/went for the better but no. Don't like B&BH. It was a non clever, be cruel but true to parady show to start IMO. It had truths but not cleverness.
- fapjacks 10y agoI think you were not the target demographic, so it doesn't make sense to you. If you were never an unpopular, troublemaking loser (the kind that Beck sang about), there is a lot of stuff you wouldn't get.
- oceanghost 10y agoNice try Mike Judge!!!!
- mynameishere 10y agoOne problem with satire (or cynicism in general) is that it's a cheap way to feel smart about one's self. Idiocracy really seems to have been designed to encourage this in people. However, the movie is divided into two parts, the first five minutes and the next eighty-five. The first part is basically an advertisement for eugenics, and the rest is slapstick. People always feel smart because they "get" the second part.
- pvg 10y agoSatire is not a form of cynicism.
- defined 10y agoI disagree. Idiocracy IMHO was designed to show one possible result - in satirical form - of the race to the bottom that we see every day. If it's a "cheap way to feel smart", then perhaps those that feel smart merely by watching the movie don't realize they are part of it. Others don't need to feel smart, and simply find it funny and disquieting. I thought it was a brilliant satire when I watched it some years ago.
- coldpie 10y agoBy any measure, people are smarter today than they ever have been in the past.
- dr_ick 10y agoI suspect we are better educated overall, but people are not "smarter". http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-you-smarter-than-your-grandfather-probably-not-150402883/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-you-smarter...
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago> I disagree. Idiocracy IMHO was designed to show one possible result - in satirical form - of the race to the bottom that we see every day. It's pretty disturbing that it explicitly endorses eugenics to do that, though. Edit: If you disagree, please explain how "the world is going to hell because stupid people are breeding too much" isn't eugenics.
- jumpkickhit 10y agoI'd love to see Mike Judge team up with Trey Parker and Matt Stone on a project. Id imagine it would be a instant classic, hilarious hard-hitting social commentary.
- DrSayre 10y agoTechnically they already have. Mike Judge was the voice of Kenny in the South Park movie.
- Tloewald 10y agoIt seems to me that Mike Judge doesn't actually need Trey Parker and Matt Stone to do this (having done it several times already).
- rhizome 10y agoJudge has way, way more heart that Parker and Stone put together, and I think that relation would probably doom any project between them. Unlike P/S, Mike Judge is never mean. If you ask me, I'd suggest he do something with Mike Mills.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- aswanson 10y agoHe moved to Silicon Valley, where he lasted three months each at two different jobs. In a way, he felt tricked. When he was growing up in Albuquerque, everyone told him that if he wanted a lucrative and satisfying career, all he had to do was get a technical degree. “Guidance counselors just pound it into us: science, college, science,” he says. But he had a technical degree and could barely afford his rent. His next-door neighbor worked as an auto mechanic, and not only did he make more money than Judge, but he kept flexible hours and seemed to be substantially happier.
- doc_gunthrop 10y agoMakes one wonder if his next door neighbor was the inspiration for the character Lawrence in Office Space.
- nefitty 10y agoThat would make sense. Lawrence was a construction worker. Peter was shown at the end of the film blissfully working in his hard hat alongside Lawrence, "This ain't so bad huh? Makin' bucks. Gettin' exercise. Workin outside..."
- bbhart 10y agoFrom the article: "He would serve as inspiration for Lawrence, the construction-worker neighbor in “Office Space”"
- doc_gunthrop 10y agoThat's what I get for reading the comments before the article. Lawrence was a great character, and his reaction to the hypothetical about being asked about "having the case of the Mondays"[0] is classic. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4B0pLDqYqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4B0pLDqYqI
- throwaway91111 10y agoIronically I feel like I'm cheating my company by taking in six figures while just coding.... and even then, nothing that matters. And i haven't the degree. He was lied to. What matters are skills. Schools barely teach them anymore.