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I attended an audience testing screener for Idiocracy before the film's final edit. I could not believe my eyes and ears, I loved it unlike anything I'd seen be
by bsenftner 6mo ago
I attended an audience testing screener for Idiocracy before the film's final edit. I could not believe my eyes and ears, I loved it unlike anything I'd seen before, it was the hardest US culture satire I'd seen up to that point. Then the lights came up and the audience started giving their reviews, in an open mike fashion. They all identified with the "idiots" and were indignant insulted, and angry. I remember making eye contact with Mike Judge like "WTF!" It was an early screener and I think that reaction was a surprise to the film team. I own a copy and watch it more than once a year. One of my favorite hard satires.
- m_mueller 6mo agoimagine how it would hit today. I'd guess a vast majority would feel insulted by it...
- FlufferTheGreat 6mo agoHow many felt insulted by Don't Look Up--I'm guessing that Venn is a circle.
- m_mueller 6mo ago"this so called planet killer doesn't matter to us, and we live in a free speech country! checkmate scientists" like that?
- jfengel 6mo agoI wasn't insulted, but it did feel a bit too on the nose to really work as satire. Idiocracy got there just in time, before things became so stupid that satire wasn't possible any more. You have to exaggerate so hard that it lacks the feeling of cleverness required by satire. The Onion struggles on. They've always been true masters of the form. I wrote my own news satire back in the 80s and quit when I saw The Onion; they were far better than I would ever be. Practically nobody else can still pull off satire here in the worst timeline.
- throwup238 6mo agoArmando Iannucci - creator of The Thick of It and Veep - has said this in public statements. Politics is so ridiculous now on both sides of the Atlantic that he finds political satire impossible to pull off anymore. His last show for HBO Avenue 5 had to take place on a space liner for rich people with Hugh Laurie as a faux-captain who can’t keep his accent straight. In Australia the satire Utopia has now predicted several major pointless government projects, including a stadium in Tasmania that no one wanted. https://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/abc-comedy-series-predicts-tasmanias-new-stadium/news-story/8da360168e5d41b3b9fb0f984d51226c https://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/abc-comedy-series-...
- jkestner 6mo agoTexas Monthly (“The National Magazine of Texas”) covers local news with a straight face, letting the absurdity speak for itself. Read the recent article about ranchers and rabbis searching for the perfect heifer to bring about the end of the world - you can see the movie coming (Coen Brothers or The Daniels?) https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/red-heifer-prophecy-texas-ranch-byron-stinson/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/red-heifer-prophe...
- t-3 6mo agoA straightforward rendition of the last 10 years wouldn't even pass the smell test for a satire. It might work as some kind of experimental dark slapstick.
- babycheetahbite 6mo agoRead through this comment section to get a glimpse.
- sidewndr46 6mo agoI guess that explains the lack of promotion around this film?
- dspillett 6mo agoYep. The studio didn't know what the hell to do with it. I'm guessing that we (those of us who have seen it despite the lack of promotion) are lucky that they didn't just can it completely, or demand it get cut to ribbons and reformed as something else.
- unsupp0rted 6mo agoI’m sure they did demand that
- sidewndr46 6mo agoI think director's in that era can avoid this by not doing extra takes for scenes that would never make it anyways. Mike Judge did not have the budget for that anyways. Nowadays they just change the scenes in post anyways, leading to some of the worst and most atrocious continuity errors.
- jacquesm 6mo ago> They all identified with the "idiots" and were indignant insulted, and angry. That is sort of the point of the movie. It is a satire, but it is also a documentary packaged as a satire and the wrapping paper isn't all that thick.
- vaginaphobic 6mo ago[dead]
- whalesalad 6mo agoIt's no longer satire it's really a documentary.
- nils-m-holm 6mo agoIt's a utopia at this point.
- noahomrilevin 6mo agoHa love this comment
- mindslight 6mo agoAnother way of looking at it is that Idiocracy illustrates what it will look like when we try to rebuild after the Grump catastrophe. The various sci-fi stories of advanced civilizations that depend on machines but have no idea how build them or of the first step to understanding them never really spell out how society would get there. Well, now we know. Eventually the ignorant taking-for-granted of Grumpism will turn into helpless appreciation as they realize how dependent they are on those technologies. Grumpism already has a strong contingent of mysticism and woo, which can just as easily be applied to real phenomena with solid technical explanations that few go looking for.
- cucumber3732842 6mo agoEh. I don't really see anything wrong with that. Every industry flubs things because the people creating the product aren't the same demographics consuming it. No big deal IMO. I think it's just a product of your typical Hollywood filter bubble. The Average American(TM) isn't so stupid as to not see the glaring "left to it's own devices middle america would turn the whole country into white trash, also with literal trash everywhere" undertone even if they can't quite put their finger on it. You could make essentially the same movie about how impenetrable and unaccountable bureaucracy and abstraction of responsibility away to 3rd parties is going to make society grind to a halt (e.g. trash piling up because all disposal methods have been declared not environmentally friendly enough, etc, etc) and someone who just doesn't give enough shits to ask permission can be the hero of the story and frame it to offend all the people who specifically identify as the opposite of the dumb people in idiocracy. That said I think it's a great movie and they struck a good balance.
- xattt 6mo agoIt breaks my heart when I hear people outraged about Onion stories, not because that they fall for them, but because they know they have a hard time telling truth from fiction.
- coldtea 6mo agoThe outrageous "impossible/sarcastic" Onion stories from decades ago are hardly fiction these days.
- justin66 6mo agoI’m honestly not sure whether I believe these comments, or understand how to put them in context. Not for the first time I’m aware I do live in a cultural bubble, but: it’s hard for me to image anyone getting outraged by an Onion story (other than a religious right person stumbling across the “Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock?” piece, or something like that). Similarly, hard to imagine someone identifying with the over-the-top stupid people in Idiocracy. Wild.
- bdashdash 6mo agoI feel Idiocracy is irresistible bait for 'not like the other girls'-types. Everytime this movie comes up, droves of people mention how they get it, while others don't. It's becoming a trope in itself.
- afavour 6mo agoAgreed. It’s cited so often on Reddit by people who want to establish their superiority over the masses. “It’s a documentary!!” is a meme unto itself. It’s also got a kind of weird eugenics-y vibe to it (like establishing “stupid people breeding makes stupid people” as incontrovertible fact) when you step back and examine it as a movie that’s making Serious Statements. But it isn’t. It’s not a bad movie. But it’s a comedy, the satirical elements are heavily over exaggerated by fans.
- pixl97 6mo agoIt's kind of funny when you say the movie isn't making serious statements when the highest of our publicly elected officials isn't a serious person. We elect people that are actively harmful to our well being. These people say things so incredibly stupid it can be painful. And then you wonder why people look at the movie like it's a documentary?
- spiderfarmer 6mo agoTrump voters identify with the idiots.
- throw0101d 6mo ago> We elect people that are actively harmful to our well being. People choose policies that will actively harm themselves and their family/friends: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness
- afavour 6mo agoHe might not present as a serious person but he is. The nativist impulses, the gutter racism, the “F you I’ve got mine” attitude, the party establishment that enabled him despite all that… these are all serious things worth serious analysis. “Stupid people vote for stupid guy” is exactly the kind of analysis I’m critical of Idiocracy for.
- spacebacon 6mo agoIndignant behavior may have been a result of a perceived attack on viewers belief system. Possibly combined with no 2nd order awareness of thought. Additionally, a subtle “critique” framing from the screening host or “open mic” framing may prime the participants to command attention. Outrage is the easiest when one has no conceptual lens to add interpretive value.
- bsenftner 6mo agoI did feel that the use of an open mic encouraged the negative opinions to cascade. Once one of them voiced negativity, it really turned into a "me too! I was insulted by..."
- HexPhantom 6mo agoSatire really breaks when the target doesn't recognize itself as the target
- azangru 6mo agoHave they edited stuff out because of the audience reaction? Do you own an unedited copy?
- bsenftner 6mo agoI own the official release, and upon first viewing I do remember slight changes from that screener version, but nothing material. I half expected all or at least some of the brand names to be replaced because the film was so insulting towards them, but that all remained. Starbucks whores were okay, I guess, with Starbucks.
- hulitu 6mo agoI tried to (re)watch it on Disney+ and the "militaristic ads" were cut.
- Intermernet 6mo agoMany US citizens didn't get that Starship Troopers was a black comedy. There are serious video reviews taking it seriously as an action movie where the characters are true US heroes. I have a feeling these people are the same as the ones you're talking about.
- ndsipa_pomu 6mo agoI agree. RoboCop also belongs to the not-obvious-to-some-satire club.
- GJim 6mo agoIn the words of Barry Humphries: If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up.
- johnofthesea 6mo agoOr the Prince.
- shinjitsu 6mo agoAs a fan of Heinlein's book, the movie flattened the exploration of the political themes from the book and turned it into said black comedy. It would be like turning Animal House or Lord of the Flies into a black comedy.
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- Arodex 6mo agoI read the book, was very interested by the points he made, but I completely understand and support Verhoeven's take on it as a naive utopia that will get completely derailed. Just look at how the "veterans" of the "forever war" are foaming at the mouth at the idea of war-criming and sending others to die in Iran. Heinlein's central idea that people who offered their service to the rest of society are better qualified to vote doesn't survive the slightest encounter with reality.
- j-kent 6mo agoSame goes with Starship Troopers - Clearly biting satire, but at the time was considered to be a dumb action movie by most.
- red-iron-pine 6mo agoit was a dumb action movie, with a bit of satire and some non-trivial nudity. the book is a political science treatise about the role of the citizen in government and draws heavily from Thomas Hobbes and Max Weber, basically invented the "space marine" concept that we see in 40k or Starcraft or Doom, and touched on things like haptic feedback and non-traditional UI and how it could be C2.
- yodsanklai 6mo agoIt's primarily a movie about fascism and propaganda. The fact that most viewers missed it is actually concerning.
- Arodex 6mo agoThe nudity is also part of the point. American will heavily restrict movies with nudity or swear words, but see far less problems with showing gore and violence on screen to youngsters. Seen from Europe (Verhoeven is Dutch), this is completely deranged.
- yodsanklai 6mo agoI watched this movie as a teenager and I did miss the satire (although I could see something was off and there was a message beyond the action). It's a bit the opposite of "don't look up" in that sense that the message isn't in your face. But in the current times, this movie really resonates.
- cyjackx 6mo agoI guess I see why, though. Taken from the perspective of tropes of middle Americans, it's pretty condescending and claims everything they are is idiotic and responsible for the state of the world, when it is more complicated than that and the ivory tower has its own culpability