Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Idiocracy
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: On the Beck dol Cast, the questions asked if movies
- 0:03Speaker 1: have women in them? Are all their discussions just boyfriends
- 0:07Speaker 1: and husbands? Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest
- 0:12Speaker 1: start changing it with the beck Del Cast. Hey, Jamie, Hey, Caitlin.
- 0:18Speaker 1: Oh geez, we just woke up from being in a
- 0:22Speaker 1: cryopod and society around us is terrible. But it always
- 0:29Speaker 1: has been, so not anything different. But wait a second,
- 0:34Speaker 1: it's probably the Well I'm only interested in pursuing this story.
- 0:38Speaker 1: If it's the working class is fault, well you're in
- 0:43Speaker 1: luck because if the one percent is implicated in this,
- 0:47Speaker 1: I'm walking. Okay, well I'm walking today's movie. That's what
- 0:52Speaker 1: it's about. So okay. Welcome to the Beach Dol Cast.
- 0:58Speaker 1: My name is Jamie Loft, as my name is Caitlin Durante,
- 1:01Speaker 1: and this is our show where we examine movies through
- 1:04Speaker 1: an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechel tests simply as
- 1:08Speaker 1: a as a jumping off point. And this week you'll
- 1:11Speaker 1: notice is we're releasing this the week of the fourth
- 1:15Speaker 1: of July, uh national holiday that gets more and more
- 1:19Speaker 1: ridiculous with each passing year. The only good thing about
- 1:23Speaker 1: the fourth of July is Joey chestnut that has been
- 1:25Speaker 1: canonically true for decades at this point now. So we've
- 1:29Speaker 1: been talking about this making this episode for a while
- 1:32Speaker 1: and trying to find, you know, kind of either we
- 1:35Speaker 1: were between like, oh, we can find a really classically
- 1:38Speaker 1: jingoistic movie to kind of cover in debunk, or we
- 1:42Speaker 1: can try to find, you know, a famous American satire
- 1:46Speaker 1: to cover for this week. And since we made that decision, uh,
- 1:51Speaker 1: we've just been we've just been losing our rights, Miranda rights,
- 1:57Speaker 1: don't know them, the right to an abortion gone. Just
- 2:02Speaker 1: it's it's you know, if if you're listening to this,
- 2:04Speaker 1: and even if you're not American, you're probably aware that
- 2:09Speaker 1: it's it's particularly dystopian these past few weeks, years, decades,
- 2:17Speaker 1: and so I feel like it's a particularly interesting time
- 2:21Speaker 1: to take a look at the movie. So all that
- 2:24Speaker 1: to say, I just think it's uh for preamble, we
- 2:27Speaker 1: chose to cover this movie before the most recent avalanche
- 2:32Speaker 1: of lost rights, and I feel like it coincidentally ends
- 2:35Speaker 1: up being kind of an interesting discussion because we are
- 2:38Speaker 1: covering the movie Idiocracy today, a movie that has been
- 2:45Speaker 1: discussed a lot in the past, decade, and now that
- 2:48Speaker 1: I've seen it, I don't understand why. But first we
- 2:52Speaker 1: have some housekeeping to cover that being what the fuck
- 2:57Speaker 1: is that Bettel Test you were talk about, Caitlin Rante,
- 3:01Speaker 1: I'll tell you, Jamie loftis. It is a media metric
- 3:09Speaker 1: created by Alison Becktel, sometimes called the Becktel Wallace Test,
- 3:13Speaker 1: and there are many different versions of it. The one
- 3:15Speaker 1: we use, we've we've put our little flourishes on the
- 3:18Speaker 1: test over the years, and our version is two characters
- 3:22Speaker 1: of a marginalized gender have to have names, they have
- 3:26Speaker 1: to speak to each other, and their conversation has to
- 3:28Speaker 1: be about something other than a man, and ideally that
- 3:32Speaker 1: conversation is narratively relevant and narratively meaningful. So this this
- 3:39Speaker 1: week is actually, you know, kind of a doozy as
- 3:43Speaker 1: it pertains to that metric. It's interesting because we are
- 3:46Speaker 1: also recording an episode about the Minions this week, and
- 3:52Speaker 1: by the Minions technically Despicable Me. But I'm very excited
- 3:56Speaker 1: for our Minions episode. But I was watching Idiocracy and
- 4:00Speaker 1: Minions media because I you know, recovering, and this is
- 4:04Speaker 1: a you know, tacit plug for the Matreon Patreon. Of
- 4:09Speaker 1: course we are covering Despicable Me this month. And what
- 4:13Speaker 1: I think is interesting watching Idiocracy and Minions media back
- 4:17Speaker 1: to back kind of is you get two very different
- 4:21Speaker 1: interpretations of what a society of bumbling men would look like.
- 4:27Speaker 1: And Honey, I prefer the Minions every time because at least,
- 4:33Speaker 1: oh about I'm about to it sucks because I really
- 4:36Speaker 1: genuinely love the vast majority of my judge's work, but
- 4:41Speaker 1: at least the Minions are making me laugh. You know.
- 4:44Speaker 1: I can't say the same for Idiocracy. Minions hilarious. Idiocracy
- 4:50Speaker 1: really was bumming me out in a wild way. Um So, anyways,
- 4:54Speaker 1: this is our, this is our, this is I feel
- 4:57Speaker 1: like a classic Bechtel cast at episode of taking something
- 5:01Speaker 1: that everyone keeps saying is good and being like, actually
- 5:04Speaker 1: actually be very good. But guess but you know what
- 5:09Speaker 1: argue with the wall, We're right, Um that's there. That's
- 5:13Speaker 1: what I want to tell to say to a lot
- 5:15Speaker 1: of people. Um, but I will say and we'll get
- 5:19Speaker 1: into this, but just is a little bit of a
- 5:21Speaker 1: preface that, yeah, I see what this movie was going
- 5:27Speaker 1: for and at the time I liked it. When I
- 5:30Speaker 1: saw it in two thousand six as a college sophomore.
- 5:34Speaker 1: But let's talk about it, so, like, what is your
- 5:35Speaker 1: relationship with this? So I saw it when it came out,
- 5:39Speaker 1: because it came out sometime in two thousand and six.
- 5:41Speaker 1: I was in college at the time. I was already
- 5:44Speaker 1: a huge Office Space fan. It was like one of
- 5:48Speaker 1: my favorite movies at the time, so I was already
- 5:51Speaker 1: team Mike Judge and I saw this movie. And at
- 5:56Speaker 1: the time in the mid two thousand's when I when
- 6:00Speaker 1: my critical thinking skills and comedic sensibilities and cultural sensibilities
- 6:07Speaker 1: were not quite as sophisticated as they are today. I mean, yeah,
- 6:13Speaker 1: it's also like, don't be hard on yourself because this
- 6:16Speaker 1: is like part of what's interesting about looking at this
- 6:19Speaker 1: movie now is like how again, it's like, I don't
- 6:23Speaker 1: think that this movie is uniquely pushing this kind of
- 6:29Speaker 1: comedic point of view. I feel like this is this
- 6:32Speaker 1: lines up really closely with like a lot of Bush
- 6:35Speaker 1: era comedy. Is like that we all thought was funny
- 6:39Speaker 1: at the time, right, or at least many of us
- 6:42Speaker 1: A lot of people thought was funny. And then I
- 6:44Speaker 1: also see I feel like this movie is a great
- 6:46Speaker 1: example of how the kind of aggressive apathy of this
- 6:52Speaker 1: style of comedy probably had, you know, not the biggest hand,
- 6:56Speaker 1: not as big a hand as fucking villainous policy see
- 7:00Speaker 1: and disenfranchise, But I do, I do see how you know,
- 7:04Speaker 1: this brand of comedy in its day served to further
- 7:09Speaker 1: polarize people in a way that I don't think was
- 7:14Speaker 1: like really recognized at the time, because how why would
- 7:16Speaker 1: it have been recognized the time? Right? Yeah, So all
- 7:19Speaker 1: I say, don't be don't be hard in yourself. Everyone
- 7:23Speaker 1: was loving this ship like it's true. It's true. So yeah,
- 7:26Speaker 1: I I liked it at the time, but I didn't
- 7:28Speaker 1: really engage with it after that first maybe one or
- 7:32Speaker 1: two viewings in the mid two thousand's. But I'm excited
- 7:37Speaker 1: to talk further. And again, just as a preface, I'll say,
- 7:40Speaker 1: I see what the movie was going for looking at
- 7:44Speaker 1: it through our lens. A lot of it, A lot
- 7:49Speaker 1: of the satire, a lot of the attempted satire, maybe
- 7:52Speaker 1: not executed very well, and maybe just throws a lot
- 7:57Speaker 1: of groups of people under the bus. Anyway, Jamie, what
- 8:02Speaker 1: is your relationship with this movie? Okay, so I am
- 8:07Speaker 1: going to be harder in this movie because it feels
- 8:09Speaker 1: uniquely designed to make me frustrated. Um, but okay, so
- 8:13Speaker 1: I for context. I had not seen this movie before,
- 8:18Speaker 1: but I have considered myself to be a Mic Judge
- 8:22Speaker 1: fan since I was basically a kid. Like I was
- 8:26Speaker 1: very I was kind of a latecomer to King of
- 8:29Speaker 1: the Hill. But I've now seen a lot of King
- 8:31Speaker 1: of the Hill, and I really love King of the Hill.
- 8:34Speaker 1: Not an unpopular opinion at all. It's a great show.
- 8:37Speaker 1: But I grew up with Beavis and butt Head. My
- 8:39Speaker 1: dad was a huge Beavis and butt Head fad. We
- 8:42Speaker 1: had it on a lot. Yeah, shout out. My key
- 8:46Speaker 1: did refine my taste very young. It was all pee
- 8:49Speaker 1: weee and Beavis and butt Head, and I'm eternally grateful
- 8:51Speaker 1: for it. I've got Beavis and butt Head. March. I
- 8:54Speaker 1: watched the new Paramount Plus movie the day it came out.
- 8:57Speaker 1: It's good. I didn't even know that was a thing.
- 9:00Speaker 1: Well I do work for Paramount, so I was like,
- 9:04Speaker 1: I was reminded, But it's really good. And I had
- 9:06Speaker 1: highly like all that to say. I watched all of
- 9:09Speaker 1: Silicon Valley and I didn't even really like it. But
- 9:12Speaker 1: I just feel like loyal to Mike Judge because I
- 9:14Speaker 1: like his work. I like Office Space, like he's made
- 9:17Speaker 1: so much amazing stuff and so, but I had never
- 9:19Speaker 1: seen Idiocracy. All that to say, I went into this
- 9:23Speaker 1: movie expecting to like it because I like Mike judges work.
- 9:28Speaker 1: Really the only thing I knew like the basic premise
- 9:32Speaker 1: of like it's a future American dystopia, and I also
- 9:36Speaker 1: knew and I think that this is like I've kind
- 9:38Speaker 1: of got like more stuff for this later on in
- 9:41Speaker 1: the discussion. But I also feel like this movie just
- 9:45Speaker 1: every couple of hours someone will tweet Idiocracy was a documentary,
- 9:50Speaker 1: like it was their idea, Like that is literally tweeted
- 9:53Speaker 1: every forty five seconds by someone who is like I'm
- 9:57Speaker 1: a genius, and it's like, okay, first of all, i
- 10:00Speaker 1: Q is bunk an issue this movie has that I
- 10:02Speaker 1: have been studying for years. But anyways, part of what
- 10:07Speaker 1: I love about Mike Judge's work is that he has
- 10:13Speaker 1: this like way of showing characters whose like views are
- 10:19Speaker 1: regressive and whose feel King of the Hill is the
- 10:22Speaker 1: best example of it. But like who are like goofy
- 10:25Speaker 1: people who you would disagree with that most people would
- 10:28Speaker 1: disagree with, showing them with context and enough empathy that
- 10:33Speaker 1: you're like, I understand how this person got here, and
- 10:36Speaker 1: it feels like a more productive, empathetic piece of art.
- 10:41Speaker 1: And so I was just really surprised that like Idiocracy
- 10:46Speaker 1: was so heartless in its views and it just like
- 10:50Speaker 1: it just felt like a real I don't know. First
- 10:52Speaker 1: of all, Idiocracy is not a documentary, you fucking dorks. Sorry,
- 10:58Speaker 1: but like for us, of all, not an original thought.
- 11:01Speaker 1: Second of all, not true. I don't know. I just
- 11:04Speaker 1: have a lot of I didn't like the movie, and
- 11:06Speaker 1: I was really bumped. I didn't like the movie from
- 11:08Speaker 1: the first scene because of and you know, hashtag stream
- 11:13Speaker 1: my urine mensa. But like, yeah, the fact that this movie,
- 11:17Speaker 1: I mean, this movie, like it's weird, because I totally
- 11:19Speaker 1: agree with you, Caitlin. I do think that it was
- 11:21Speaker 1: coming from a good place, and I think for its
- 11:25Speaker 1: time it is I don't know, for its time. I
- 11:28Speaker 1: understand why it was considered to be like controversial satire,
- 11:32Speaker 1: and I understand why people saw value in it, especially
- 11:38Speaker 1: in the era that it came out in, which I
- 11:40Speaker 1: mean this movie was being shot and eventually released in
- 11:44Speaker 1: the middle of the George W. Bush administration, when it
- 11:49Speaker 1: did seem like society was heading towards us place a
- 11:56Speaker 1: certain place, and it's also like that wasn't wrong. I
- 12:00Speaker 1: feel like it's it's whatever. My opinions aside. I think
- 12:04Speaker 1: this is like a kind of a very very interesting
- 12:06Speaker 1: movie to look at to see like what were center
- 12:10Speaker 1: to left leaning people viewing the people around them like
- 12:15Speaker 1: at this time. And I feel like this movie really
- 12:19Speaker 1: because it's like we were both you know, I mean
- 12:21Speaker 1: I I was, I definitely just you know, at this
- 12:24Speaker 1: movie came out when I was like in middle school,
- 12:27Speaker 1: so I didn't like hear about it at the time,
- 12:30Speaker 1: but like we both two thousand and six, you know,
- 12:33Speaker 1: we're we're senior citizens. We were there, and I do
- 12:37Speaker 1: remember this a lot, and I would like even kind
- 12:39Speaker 1: of group this. And I know that I'm not saying
- 12:41Speaker 1: like the quality of jokes are the same across the board,
- 12:45Speaker 1: but I would kind of group this in the like
- 12:48Speaker 1: John Stewart Daily Show era of comedy, back when my
- 12:53Speaker 1: aunt would fucking die for Bill Mara unfortunately kind of
- 12:57Speaker 1: comedy of like kind of like god left leaning ish
- 13:03Speaker 1: comedy of which there was a lot at this time,
- 13:06Speaker 1: like even early Colbert Report. Even though I feel like
- 13:09Speaker 1: it's kind of the best of all of it. But
- 13:10Speaker 1: but you know what I mean, like it was a
- 13:12Speaker 1: very specific moment in comedy and like satire, and it's
- 13:17Speaker 1: interesting to look back on. I really didn't like this movie. Uh,
- 13:22Speaker 1: let's talk more about it, shall we? Yeah? Okay, sorry
- 13:26Speaker 1: for like going on. I just was. I was so shocked.
- 13:29Speaker 1: It's so you know, like when you really love a
- 13:32Speaker 1: creator and you have like a creepy little para social
- 13:36Speaker 1: connection to them, and it's like, how dare I not
- 13:38Speaker 1: like this? But I I again, I because it there
- 13:43Speaker 1: was such a big gap between when I first saw
- 13:45Speaker 1: it and now I had just forgotten about all the
- 13:49Speaker 1: incredibly problematic jokes and humor, like let's tacitly endorse eugenics.
- 13:55Speaker 1: I'm not saying like Judge was like actively recognizing that
- 14:00Speaker 1: that is some people are just born inferior. That we
- 14:07Speaker 1: get there, We'll get there. Let's talk about what happens
- 14:11Speaker 1: in the movie because there and there are also were
- 14:13Speaker 1: some like specific jokes that I laughed at. Some things work,
- 14:18Speaker 1: Some of the commentary does work. A lot of it doesn't.
- 14:21Speaker 1: Carl's Junior stuff worked for me, The Brondo stuff, Yeah,
- 14:24Speaker 1: any kind of like commentary on capitalism and consumerism worked. Yes, Um, okay,
- 14:29Speaker 1: here's what the story is about. The movie opens on
- 14:33Speaker 1: voiceover discussing how as we entered we being society entered
- 14:41Speaker 1: the century, human evolution was at a turning point where
- 14:47Speaker 1: intelligent people quote unquote were reproducing less and quote unquote
- 14:54Speaker 1: less intelligent people. And these quote unquotes are from me
- 14:57Speaker 1: and not the movie. So the movie is saying intelligent
- 15:01Speaker 1: people stopped producing as much, and less intelligent people were
- 15:05Speaker 1: multiplying more than ever. Blood pressure is in peril. So
- 15:10Speaker 1: this is this is how the movie is framing this.
- 15:12Speaker 1: And we get like this whole montage where we meet
- 15:15Speaker 1: these two couples. You know, one is more intelligent and
- 15:19Speaker 1: they're coded a certain way. The other couple is you know,
- 15:22Speaker 1: less intelligent quote unquote. They're coded a very particular way.
- 15:26Speaker 1: We'll talk about it, but I mean it's literally like yeah,
- 15:29Speaker 1: like grad school. I mean, not to put you in
- 15:32Speaker 1: a box, but like, you know, people who have been
- 15:35Speaker 1: to college multiple times versus like it's coded as like
- 15:39Speaker 1: quote unquote trailer trash. Exactly. Yes, yes, yes, So we're
- 15:43Speaker 1: we meet these characters and the whole thing is the
- 15:46Speaker 1: characters who are coded poor are reproducing at a higher
- 15:50Speaker 1: rate anyway. Then we meet Joe Bowers played by Luke Wilson.
- 15:55Speaker 1: He is an army librarian who has been selected to
- 15:59Speaker 1: be used as a human guinea pig for a military
- 16:02Speaker 1: experiment in which soldiers will be frozen and then on
- 16:06Speaker 1: frozen at a later date to be used for future
- 16:09Speaker 1: wars or something. I'm not really sure, but it's like
- 16:12Speaker 1: that Chris what was that? Dogshit Chris Pratt? Like Amazon
- 16:16Speaker 1: Prime movie was like the Tomorrow War. He was he
- 16:19Speaker 1: was being deep frozen for Chris Pratt, the Tomorrow War. Yes,
- 16:24Speaker 1: what was that? I know what you're talking about. I
- 16:26Speaker 1: didn't see it. Sorry, Sunny, Sunny. So Sunny's here right
- 16:31Speaker 1: now and he is like looking at me, and I
- 16:33Speaker 1: like we can communicate telepathically, and he is saying, you bitch.
- 16:39Speaker 1: Comma Idiocracy is a documentary because well, yeah, I'm Sunny
- 16:45Speaker 1: the dog fucking loves centrist. He won't back down. He
- 16:51Speaker 1: won't back down. He's like, I tweeted it and I
- 16:54Speaker 1: meant it. Sonny, you were wrong for that. Continue Okay.
- 16:59Speaker 1: So Joe is selected for this experiment because he has
- 17:04Speaker 1: no family, and he's also just extremely average across the spectrum.
- 17:10Speaker 1: They have also selected a woman for this experiment, a
- 17:14Speaker 1: sex worker named Rita played by my Rudolph, and the
- 17:18Speaker 1: plan is to freeze them both for one year uh
- 17:23Speaker 1: and then on freeze them. But Officer Collins, the guy
- 17:27Speaker 1: who is leading this experiment, is fired and the project
- 17:33Speaker 1: is completely forgotten about. So Joe and Rita stay frozen
- 17:38Speaker 1: for five hundred years while oh no, while society around
- 17:45Speaker 1: them descends into shambles. The cryopods that Joe and Rita
- 17:52Speaker 1: were in ended up in a landfill, but a huge
- 17:56Speaker 1: garbage avalanche shoots Joe's Paul Odd into the living room
- 18:01Speaker 1: of Freedo played by Dax Shepherd. Kind of incredible. I
- 18:06Speaker 1: don't have strong opinions on Dak Shepherd, but you're just like,
- 18:09Speaker 1: but you see him in this role and you're like, yeah,
- 18:13Speaker 1: that was good casting. Yes, look when we're not punching
- 18:16Speaker 1: down because his his podcast is like nine times more
- 18:19Speaker 1: popular than ours. So right, relax, good job, Dax. Freedo
- 18:25Speaker 1: is watching a show about a guy who is just
- 18:29Speaker 1: hit in the balls repeatedly to give you an idea
- 18:32Speaker 1: of what entertainment and pop culture is like in this society.
- 18:36Speaker 1: Five years later, So Joe wakes up. He's all disoriented,
- 18:40Speaker 1: and Friedo tosses him out onto the streets, and Joe
- 18:44Speaker 1: stumbles around town. He notices that society has crumbled into
- 18:52Speaker 1: quote unquote idiocracy, where where the restaurant form really known
- 19:00Speaker 1: as food ruckers is now called butt fuckers. Okay, try
- 19:05Speaker 1: as I may. I can't not be like, Okay, I'm giggling.
- 19:11Speaker 1: It's it's not a good joke. It's maybe the laziest
- 19:15Speaker 1: joke of all time. And also because of the strong
- 19:19Speaker 1: no homo energy to this movie, it feels but and
- 19:26Speaker 1: then you're just also like, I mean, I just feel
- 19:28Speaker 1: like you're given so little, so little things that I
- 19:31Speaker 1: was laughing at. Yeah, I would say it's it's not
- 19:35Speaker 1: a very good joke, and yet it's maybe one of
- 19:38Speaker 1: the better jokes of this movie. Like to give you
- 19:40Speaker 1: an idea, Yeah, that's what I like. I just I
- 19:43Speaker 1: feel like the bar is on the floor, and because
- 19:48Speaker 1: it's Mike Judge, the bar is like beneath the crust
- 19:51Speaker 1: of the earth. Like you're just like, but you know whatever,
- 19:55Speaker 1: I think that this is interesting in the frame of
- 19:58Speaker 1: being reactionary. Common terry from two thousand six, We'll get
- 20:03Speaker 1: to how Mike Judge engages with people's modern takes on
- 20:07Speaker 1: idiocracy in a bit, because I think that's very interesting. Um, okay, okay,
- 20:12Speaker 1: but so but fucker's As a restaurant, people mostly speak
- 20:16Speaker 1: in unintelligible grunts. A green sports drink called Brondo comes
- 20:22Speaker 1: out of water fountains instead of water. These are the
- 20:26Speaker 1: things in society now. Joe doesn't feel well. He thinks
- 20:30Speaker 1: he's hallucinating because of the drugs the army gave him,
- 20:33Speaker 1: and he doesn't know that it's five years in the future.
- 20:36Speaker 1: So he goes to a hospital five years of summer.
- 20:39Speaker 1: That's that's how I'm going to start describing global warming summer.
- 20:46Speaker 1: Mm I like it. No, no, no, not to be
- 20:50Speaker 1: joked around about. But yet, what are we supposed to do? Okay?
- 20:54Speaker 1: We laugh, so we don't cry, right, and we still cry,
- 20:56Speaker 1: and we still later at night when we're alone. So
- 21:01Speaker 1: Joe goes to a hospital and sees doctor Justin Long.
- 21:06Speaker 1: Oh my god. We've covered so many movies in the
- 21:09Speaker 1: like mid to late two thousand's where Justin Long like
- 21:14Speaker 1: is just becoming of is becoming an influencer of his time. Yeah,
- 21:19Speaker 1: I've come all the way around. I'm just like Justin
- 21:22Speaker 1: Long kind of a cultural icon, whether I like it
- 21:26Speaker 1: or not. I mean, I've seen the movie Tusk and
- 21:29Speaker 1: it's the best movie ever made. Okay, I haven't seen
- 21:31Speaker 1: the movie Touch, and that's my business. So Dr Justin
- 21:37Speaker 1: Long realizes that Joe is unscannable because Joe doesn't have
- 21:43Speaker 1: this like bar code tattoo that everyone in the future has.
- 21:46Speaker 1: That was like one of the things that I was like, Okay,
- 21:49Speaker 1: that's like it's an easy thing to guess at, but
- 21:51Speaker 1: it's not. You know, yeah, that that worked for me.
- 21:54Speaker 1: So this leads Joe to finally realize what year it
- 21:57Speaker 1: is and that it's like five years in the future.
- 22:00Speaker 1: They're both freaking out and Joe runs away and then
- 22:04Speaker 1: gets arrested because he didn't pay his hospital bill. So
- 22:07Speaker 1: he's taken to court where his court appointed lawyer, Friedo,
- 22:13Speaker 1: the guy whose apartment Joe crashed into, defends him, but
- 22:17Speaker 1: he does a terrible job. Joe tries to plead his
- 22:21Speaker 1: case and explain the army experiment, but no one takes
- 22:25Speaker 1: him seriously and he's found guilty. He is then given
- 22:29Speaker 1: a tattoo like the bar code tattoo, and I D
- 22:33Speaker 1: and then he's made to take i Q and aptitude tests.
- 22:36Speaker 1: Kind of funny when he's called not sure, that as giggling, look,
- 22:43Speaker 1: look it's still my judge jokes that was pretty good. Yeah,
- 22:46Speaker 1: and they call him not sure. The whole movie pretty funny.
- 22:50Speaker 1: So then he takes his tests and then he is
- 22:51Speaker 1: sent to prison, but he's easily able to escape because
- 22:55Speaker 1: he is smarter than everyone there. And he goes back
- 22:59Speaker 1: to Frido house and he's like, hey, Friedo, has anyone
- 23:03Speaker 1: invented time travel? And Friedo's like, yeah, there's this time
- 23:07Speaker 1: machine and Joe is like, okay, you have to take
- 23:10Speaker 1: me there, So they head toward the time machine mcguffin
- 23:14Speaker 1: time machine right. Meanwhile, Rita has also become unfrozen and
- 23:21Speaker 1: is roaming the streets. She's kind of like scamming a
- 23:25Speaker 1: guy out of a bunch of money who is trying
- 23:27Speaker 1: to pay for her sex work. Joe finds her and
- 23:31Speaker 1: picks her up to take her to the time machine.
- 23:35Speaker 1: To get there, they need to catch a shuttle from
- 23:38Speaker 1: a huge costco, but the cops are chasing them because
- 23:41Speaker 1: Joe escaped from prison, and they catch Joe before he's
- 23:45Speaker 1: able to get on the shuttle. Quick quick interlude, Welcome
- 23:49Speaker 1: to Costco, I love you funny, It's funny Yeah. And
- 23:55Speaker 1: then the cops take Joe to the White House because
- 23:59Speaker 1: the results of his i Q test caught the attention
- 24:03Speaker 1: of the highest levels of the U. S. Government. Because
- 24:05Speaker 1: it turns out Joe is now the smartest man in
- 24:09Speaker 1: the world. So President Camacho played by Terry Crews, comes in.
- 24:15Speaker 1: He hires Joe as Secretary of the Interior and announces
- 24:19Speaker 1: that he's going to have Joe fix all of society's problems,
- 24:22Speaker 1: like the failed economy and the dying crops. But Joe
- 24:25Speaker 1: doesn't know what he's doing, and he's still trying to
- 24:28Speaker 1: get to the time machine, so he has the other
- 24:31Speaker 1: cabinet members bring Rita in, and then Joe and Rita
- 24:35Speaker 1: try to run off, but then Joe notices that the
- 24:39Speaker 1: crops are being watered with Brondo, that green sports drink stuff,
- 24:43Speaker 1: and he tells everyone that they have to water the
- 24:46Speaker 1: crops with water. But because this doesn't work immediately, and
- 24:52Speaker 1: because switching to water means that a lot of people
- 24:55Speaker 1: who work for the Brondo Corporation have lost their jobs,
- 24:58Speaker 1: people are furious at Joe and he is sentenced to
- 25:02Speaker 1: one night of rehabilitation, which is actually Joe being put
- 25:07Speaker 1: in a gladiator style arena, like allowing the government to
- 25:11Speaker 1: run you over with the truck, which again is like
- 25:14Speaker 1: some of this entire works. That's funny when you see that,
- 25:19Speaker 1: I mean, it's not, I mean, but it is kind
- 25:21Speaker 1: of when you see that bizarro like shredder monster truck
- 25:26Speaker 1: run over that guy, he just turns into dust. Like
- 25:30Speaker 1: it's kind of wild, and like all the all the
- 25:32Speaker 1: monster trucks are shaped like dicks, and there's just a
- 25:36Speaker 1: bunch of like dick and dildo jokes, and I'm like, sure, sure,
- 25:40Speaker 1: why not? Sure? Why not? Meanwhile, Rita notices that the
- 25:44Speaker 1: crops are starting to grow and Joe's plan is working,
- 25:48Speaker 1: so she and Fredo rushed to the arena. Meanwhile, back
- 25:53Speaker 1: in the arena, Joe manages to avoid being killed by
- 25:56Speaker 1: the monster trucks and avoid being killed by this guy
- 26:00Speaker 1: named Beef Supreme. A lot of very two thousand six
- 26:05Speaker 1: special effects around at this yeah point in the movie. Yes,
- 26:10Speaker 1: and then Rita and Friedo prove that the crops are
- 26:14Speaker 1: growing are growing by broadcasting footage of the crops on
- 26:18Speaker 1: the jumbo Tron so President Camacho pardons Joe and the
- 26:25Speaker 1: day is saved. Rita decides to stay behind because she
- 26:30Speaker 1: was offered a CEO job at Starbucks. So then she
- 26:34Speaker 1: and Joe say goodbye, and then Joe is about to
- 26:38Speaker 1: go off to the time machine, but it turns out
- 26:41Speaker 1: that the time machine is actually just a theme park
- 26:43Speaker 1: ride and not a real time machine cannot go back
- 26:47Speaker 1: into I was disappointed for Joe in that moment. I
- 26:51Speaker 1: was like, that genuinely sucks that you have to live here.
- 26:54Speaker 1: He really does. So he accepts a job as vice
- 26:58Speaker 1: president of the US. He eventually becomes president. He marries
- 27:04Speaker 1: Rita and they have kids and they live happily ever
- 27:09Speaker 1: after in a society that seems to continue to just
- 27:13Speaker 1: descend further and further into shambles. So that was certainly something, Uh,
- 27:21Speaker 1: shall we take a quick freak and have a panic
- 27:23Speaker 1: attack and return. Let's do yeah, and we are back.
- 27:33Speaker 1: Boy oh boy. I feel like, okay, I do want
- 27:37Speaker 1: to start by kind of addressing the elephant in the room,
- 27:42Speaker 1: which I feel like is I mean, I don't want
- 27:46Speaker 1: to say like this movies for me, this movie's biggest failure,
- 27:53Speaker 1: because I feel like that is like a broad statement
- 27:55Speaker 1: like for sure, like its biggest like plot structural failure,
- 28:00Speaker 1: which again and I've heard this so whenever brief context,
- 28:06Speaker 1: beginning basically when Donald Trump's um, I don't know why
- 28:10Speaker 1: full named him, they're like but like beginning when Donald
- 28:15Speaker 1: Trump ever heard of him, he ruined our lives, um,
- 28:21Speaker 1: but beginning when his candidacy became viable. I feel like
- 28:24Speaker 1: that is when the idiocracy as a documentary idea sort
- 28:29Speaker 1: of started coming, and even a little bit before that.
- 28:33Speaker 1: But I think that the big, the big like resurgence
- 28:37Speaker 1: of like idiocracy as a documentary came when Donald Trump
- 28:40Speaker 1: became a viable candidate because a lot of people saw
- 28:43Speaker 1: the Terry Crews character, who is a professional wrestler who
- 28:46Speaker 1: became president, reflected in Donald Trump, who is a failed
- 28:51Speaker 1: son reality star who became president. This completely ignoring the
- 28:56Speaker 1: fact that we already had elected an actor to be
- 29:00Speaker 1: one of our worst presidents in the nineteen eighties. But whatever,
- 29:04Speaker 1: I guess we'll give it a pass. I wasn't around
- 29:06Speaker 1: for the nineteen eighties, so I couldn't bitch about it. Um.
- 29:09Speaker 1: In any case, fifteen was when this started to come up,
- 29:16Speaker 1: So I was surprised when the central conceit of the movie.
- 29:20Speaker 1: And again I've seen this has been more discussed in
- 29:23Speaker 1: the past couple of years. Um, I want to shout
- 29:26Speaker 1: out Sarah z incredible YouTuber and my bud who made
- 29:33Speaker 1: a great video about this will link it in the description,
- 29:35Speaker 1: who kind of unpacks us to a larger extent. But um, basically,
- 29:41Speaker 1: what is at the core of this movie is the
- 29:43Speaker 1: concept that your i Q determines your deservedness to reproduce
- 29:50Speaker 1: and the idea that it's just very like essentialist and
- 29:55Speaker 1: that like this movie, I feel like it's the biggest
- 29:58Speaker 1: failure is it ignores, kind of, with the exception of corporations,
- 30:04Speaker 1: every structural problem that exists and instead redirects that anger
- 30:10Speaker 1: and resentment on poor people. And that is so like
- 30:14Speaker 1: and it's like so many things and again it's like
- 30:17Speaker 1: the corporate stuff is kind of exempt, which I think
- 30:20Speaker 1: is an interesting reflection of like where the writer's minds
- 30:22Speaker 1: were at at this time, because they recognize that, but
- 30:25Speaker 1: they did not really like there's so many things that
- 30:28Speaker 1: happened in this movie beginning with Okay, sorry, I'm just
- 30:32Speaker 1: like already melting up. But like, let's talk about i
- 30:36Speaker 1: Q first. Because that's where the movie starts. It implies
- 30:39Speaker 1: in the opening sequence, a sequence that rivals Midsummer for
- 30:44Speaker 1: opening sequences that make me want to just explode. What
- 30:51Speaker 1: makes me want to reflect a recent experience of mine
- 30:54Speaker 1: put Dr Brauner's on my vagina by mistake. Look, I
- 31:04Speaker 1: did not know that that you are not supposed to
- 31:07Speaker 1: do that. And what a horrifying lesson. Dr Brauner's on
- 31:13Speaker 1: my one clitter is unbelievable. Unbelievable, that of acid. So
- 31:20Speaker 1: I'm not laughing you. I'm just you're ready to laugh
- 31:24Speaker 1: at me because I got into MENA and I did that,
- 31:27Speaker 1: which is further proof that i Q is a false metric.
- 31:32Speaker 1: You don't have to be smart and you don't even
- 31:34Speaker 1: need to be able to read. The thing is like okay,
- 31:37Speaker 1: but like okay, i Q is like it's implied in
- 31:42Speaker 1: the opening sequence of this movie that people with lower
- 31:47Speaker 1: i q s are the source of most societal ills.
- 31:53Speaker 1: People with higher i q s are also being criticized here,
- 31:56Speaker 1: but in a very different way. We're like people with
- 31:59Speaker 1: higher i q s are being criticized for being so
- 32:03Speaker 1: cautious that they refuse to reproduce. And I feel like
- 32:08Speaker 1: both of these takes have aged very poorly, and the
- 32:13Speaker 1: take towards people with lower i Q is much more harmful,
- 32:16Speaker 1: but both of them are harmful, So I mean whatever,
- 32:20Speaker 1: Like I've done a lot of research in the past
- 32:22Speaker 1: about i Q and like I feel like it's pretty
- 32:26Speaker 1: common knowledge at this point, but probably but was not
- 32:28Speaker 1: common knowledge in two thousand and six that i Q
- 32:33Speaker 1: is a deeply basically at this point useless metrics on
- 32:39Speaker 1: every front. It was invented by this French guy named
- 32:42Speaker 1: Alfred Bennet to basically like use in schools for kids
- 32:47Speaker 1: who were like to track their progress every so often.
- 32:51Speaker 1: The idea is that i Q is not permanent. It
- 32:54Speaker 1: was a way of sort of evaluating how schools were doing.
- 32:57Speaker 1: It wasn't a reflection on the individual. What it's heard
- 33:01Speaker 1: in too was it was taken a hold by eugenicists,
- 33:05Speaker 1: which are you know, like which is the school of
- 33:07Speaker 1: thought that your intelligence can be determined by your gender,
- 33:13Speaker 1: by your race, by your class, and that these are
- 33:16Speaker 1: individual essentialist faults on people and have nothing to do
- 33:20Speaker 1: with systemic stuff. And so it's just like without giving
- 33:24Speaker 1: the history of eugenics, but like i Q has been
- 33:27Speaker 1: weaponized against a number of marginalized communities Over the years,
- 33:33Speaker 1: it's been particularly black people have have had i Q
- 33:37Speaker 1: weaponized against them Black Americans specifically. There's a really famous
- 33:42Speaker 1: book from the nineties called The Bell Curve that it
- 33:45Speaker 1: was a very popular book that just argued white Americans
- 33:49Speaker 1: are simply smarter and they should be Like it's a
- 33:51Speaker 1: white supremacist text, but it was very popular. I mean
- 33:55Speaker 1: it just it goes in all this stuff, like your
- 33:57Speaker 1: skull shape determined whether you deserve to liver die it
- 34:01Speaker 1: if you were anything but completely neurotypical, you are somehow
- 34:05Speaker 1: less worthy to not just reproduce but live. So yeah,
- 34:15Speaker 1: like it's it's just been used, it's been taken so
- 34:18Speaker 1: wildly out of context from the reason it was created
- 34:22Speaker 1: that it has literally it's not just marginalized and excluded people,
- 34:27Speaker 1: it's killed people. And it's now just now becoming a
- 34:32Speaker 1: more common knowledge thing and is like that is slowing,
- 34:37Speaker 1: but it's not stopping. And so all that to say,
- 34:41Speaker 1: I'm not implying that I think that Mike Judge knew
- 34:44Speaker 1: the history of this and did it anyways, based on
- 34:49Speaker 1: his other work, I want to give him the benefit
- 34:52Speaker 1: of the doubt and say that this was kind of
- 34:54Speaker 1: just like a lazy writing choice, but that as a
- 34:59Speaker 1: base for your movie about the decline of society is
- 35:03Speaker 1: just like just one of the worst takes you can have.
- 35:08Speaker 1: Like it's kind of stunning, Lee Bad. Here's my sorry
- 35:11Speaker 1: I'm feel about I don't apologize. I've made a podcast
- 35:15Speaker 1: about it two years ago. I don't really want to
- 35:17Speaker 1: talk about it more. But like it's a whole thing.
- 35:19Speaker 1: It is a whole thing, and it's a horrible basis
- 35:21Speaker 1: for a movie, like you said, because there is a
- 35:24Speaker 1: way to make a satirical movie about uninformed and regressive
- 35:31Speaker 1: ideology spreading and leading to the downfall of civilization. There's
- 35:38Speaker 1: a way to do that that's thoughtful and effective as
- 35:41Speaker 1: far as satire goes, and that doesn't demonize marginalized communities
- 35:46Speaker 1: like people living in poverty, for example. But this movie
- 35:51Speaker 1: doesn't do that because it's just making broad statements, like
- 35:57Speaker 1: first of all, just that like some people are mart
- 36:00Speaker 1: and other people are really stupid, and I'm trying to
- 36:03Speaker 1: avoid like ablest language on this episode. It's I feel
- 36:07Speaker 1: like it's going to be difficult because leans into it
- 36:10Speaker 1: very hard. So it's it's doing that. It is also
- 36:14Speaker 1: coding those people in very particular ways, where again the
- 36:18Speaker 1: quote unquote smart sensible people are coded as being upper
- 36:23Speaker 1: middle class wealthy. Again, there's like that couple in the
- 36:27Speaker 1: opening sequence according to the university, but don't like to
- 36:31Speaker 1: talk about it, I renounced my master's degree. Um. They
- 36:37Speaker 1: that couple. According to IMDb, their character's names are yuppy
- 36:41Speaker 1: husband and yuppy wife. So that just like gives you
- 36:43Speaker 1: a sense which is like kind of funny because it's like,
- 36:47Speaker 1: consider who is writing the movie. They would much more
- 36:51Speaker 1: closely identify with the yuppie husband and yuppie wife than
- 36:56Speaker 1: with the poor people. But they're still just like the trio.
- 37:00Speaker 1: There's just a just like a complete void of empathy
- 37:04Speaker 1: for anyone but Luke Wilson in this movie. And sorry
- 37:09Speaker 1: to say his name, Like I was like saying a slur,
- 37:12Speaker 1: but like I what, I just whatever, I just it
- 37:16Speaker 1: just doesn't work for me. So so it's this coding
- 37:19Speaker 1: where you know, it's like the smart sensible people are
- 37:23Speaker 1: rich and the quote unquote unintelligent people who multiply rapidly
- 37:28Speaker 1: are clearly coded as being poor. And again on IMDb,
- 37:32Speaker 1: that couple in this like opening montage their character's names
- 37:36Speaker 1: are trashy guy and slutty girl. There's a whole conversation
- 37:41Speaker 1: that we'll have about like the way women are like
- 37:45Speaker 1: disfranchised or not included at all, which which I will
- 37:49Speaker 1: argue could be solid satire on a view of a
- 37:52Speaker 1: dystopian future, but it doesn't seem like that is what
- 37:55Speaker 1: they're doing. It's exactly. It is hard because this could
- 37:58Speaker 1: easily be an episode that is like five hours long,
- 38:01Speaker 1: and I don't want it because it's a short movie, mercifully,
- 38:04Speaker 1: and we're trying to make episodes that are not longer
- 38:09Speaker 1: longer than the movie. But this movie is hard because
- 38:12Speaker 1: it's it's loaded with a lot of stuff. And so
- 38:15Speaker 1: I think the main things and I would say that
- 38:17Speaker 1: the people who are poor in the opening sequence, and
- 38:21Speaker 1: basically most of the people from the future are coded
- 38:24Speaker 1: in the same way to different degrees of aggression. So
- 38:27Speaker 1: I'm just started talking about everybody there. But it was
- 38:30Speaker 1: like bizarrely very American in that it's making all of
- 38:36Speaker 1: these like bad quote choices seem like they are made
- 38:41Speaker 1: completely by the individual and so that they can be
- 38:44Speaker 1: held complete. And so that is like the way the
- 38:46Speaker 1: systemic but it's like that ranges in so many different
- 38:50Speaker 1: ways where it's like it's not addressed that poor people
- 38:55Speaker 1: have less access to birth control, to sex education in
- 39:00Speaker 1: two abortions if they want them, and in terms of religion,
- 39:04Speaker 1: like tend to be rather religious communities, and so it's
- 39:07Speaker 1: like huge elements that are completely wiped and it's just
- 39:10Speaker 1: made to seem like, oh, well, no, they are just
- 39:13Speaker 1: so chaotically horny that they cannot help but proliferate. Like
- 39:18Speaker 1: it's just like it's so frustrating it is. It's like
- 39:21Speaker 1: it's very I don't know, it's very two thousand six.
- 39:24Speaker 1: And then when you fast forward to the future and
- 39:27Speaker 1: then you see people who, first of all, I just
- 39:29Speaker 1: am like, as a reality TV watcher, I object, and
- 39:34Speaker 1: also I think that that again like ignores it's like, oh,
- 39:38Speaker 1: people want to see people get kicked in the nuts, which,
- 39:42Speaker 1: first of all, yes, none of your business. Second of all,
- 39:47Speaker 1: does nothing to address why those programs appear and why
- 39:52Speaker 1: they're the most easily accessible programs in the fucking country.
- 39:56Speaker 1: And it's like you have to pay to watch the
- 39:59Speaker 1: fucking Soprano or whatever, or like whatever the grad school
- 40:02Speaker 1: crowd is watching, and so it doesn't address any of
- 40:05Speaker 1: the systemic like why are these programs so popular? Could
- 40:09Speaker 1: it be possibly because they are the most accessible programs,
- 40:14Speaker 1: and that is not the fault of the people who
- 40:17Speaker 1: cannot afford to pay for five hundred other channels. Like
- 40:21Speaker 1: it's just it ignores things on every single level. And
- 40:25Speaker 1: then we'll get to like fucking prisons and governments, like oh, yeah,
- 40:30Speaker 1: we are just simply not smart enough to know how
- 40:33Speaker 1: prisons work. And it's like, no, that's how prisons are
- 40:35Speaker 1: designed to work. Like it just makes me. It just
- 40:39Speaker 1: ignores that so many of these issues are by design
- 40:42Speaker 1: and not out of individual failings from people that are
- 40:47Speaker 1: being intentionally disenfranchised. That is the entire premise of them.
- 40:52Speaker 1: Like that's the commentary this movie is making. And it's
- 40:55Speaker 1: so backwards, because yeah, it's like you said, it just
- 40:58Speaker 1: fails to recognize the lack of access and opportunities you
- 41:03Speaker 1: experience when you live in poverty. It fails to recognize
- 41:07Speaker 1: that poverty is a cruel cycle that is nearly impossible
- 41:10Speaker 1: to escape because of things like capitalism and racism and
- 41:14Speaker 1: able is m and all these other systemic issues. It
- 41:17Speaker 1: fails to It suggests that again, like poor people multiply
- 41:22Speaker 1: for fun and not because there are multiple structures designed
- 41:26Speaker 1: to keep poor people poor so that their labor can
- 41:29Speaker 1: be exploited by the ruling class. Like well, and then women,
- 41:33Speaker 1: I mean, and it also like doubles down on and
- 41:35Speaker 1: this feels slightly more intentional at least, but like women
- 41:40Speaker 1: are sex objects only, and I feel like that's maybe
- 41:43Speaker 1: a more arguable point because it feels like they're at
- 41:45Speaker 1: least more consciously making that point and they're just not
- 41:49Speaker 1: doing it very well. But like it's it just kind
- 41:52Speaker 1: of on all fronts. It's just recasting systemic issues to
- 41:56Speaker 1: be personal failings is just like the shittiest kind of
- 42:02Speaker 1: satire for me. And it doesn't even mean that, like,
- 42:06Speaker 1: you know, it's not to say that like individuals who
- 42:10Speaker 1: are being actively marginalized and other can't hugely funk up.
- 42:17Speaker 1: That's obviously true. We've all got parent but that's not
- 42:22Speaker 1: But but that is not the rhetoric of this movie
- 42:25Speaker 1: at all. It's like the systemic issues are not at
- 42:29Speaker 1: the top of this movie. It's like people are just
- 42:32Speaker 1: not smart enough to know better. It's a very two
- 42:36Speaker 1: thousand and six way of looking at the world. So yes,
- 42:40Speaker 1: instead of there being any of that recognition of systemic
- 42:45Speaker 1: oppression and there being any thoughtful commentary on, you know,
- 42:51Speaker 1: the capitalist machine and all of its repressive systems. Again,
- 42:55Speaker 1: this movie just makes fun of poor people and relies
- 42:58Speaker 1: on ablest language and homophobic slurs mostly for the humor
- 43:05Speaker 1: of the movie. And it's like that sort of stuff
- 43:08Speaker 1: is very like very two thousand and six, and I
- 43:13Speaker 1: feel like it's mostly used for shock value. It just
- 43:18Speaker 1: doesn't feel satirical remotely. And it's like, it's just like,
- 43:21Speaker 1: can you believe that we're using these like slurs over
- 43:26Speaker 1: and over and over and it's because poor people suck.
- 43:30Speaker 1: You're just like I hate every part of this, Like
- 43:33Speaker 1: what I hate every part of this. It's real crummy.
- 43:38Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and then come back for
- 43:41Speaker 1: more discussion and we're back. So sorry, I yelled out
- 43:51Speaker 1: a lot of my frustrations with this movie, I think
- 43:57Speaker 1: in terms of the so we've talked a lot, but
- 44:00Speaker 1: at this point, how the lower classes are made to
- 44:04Speaker 1: seem like the source of all evil, which it okay,
- 44:12Speaker 1: that is the place from which we're coming, but in
- 44:14Speaker 1: the future, it seems like the issues that the writers
- 44:19Speaker 1: have with poor people in two thousand five have become
- 44:24Speaker 1: the entire culture, and so now people with all levels
- 44:29Speaker 1: of money and power behave exactly like how two writers
- 44:33Speaker 1: and two thousand and five, who were rich at the
- 44:36Speaker 1: time of writing it perceived poor people. And again it's like, uh,
- 44:42Speaker 1: I really like my John and I think that he's
- 44:46Speaker 1: made great stuff before this and after, and this is
- 44:51Speaker 1: just a really frustrating piece of work to look at.
- 44:54Speaker 1: This was his flop era. I guess this was his
- 44:56Speaker 1: flop era, but it was later. We'll get to this
- 44:59Speaker 1: in second, like it was later spun to seem like
- 45:03Speaker 1: his his his what's the opposite of flop? His masterpiece?
- 45:08Speaker 1: And that's like because there were genuinely a lot his
- 45:11Speaker 1: top era. Sorry I just thought of that his top era,
- 45:16Speaker 1: but like because there were whatever, the history of this
- 45:19Speaker 1: production was like it became a cult classic, like a
- 45:23Speaker 1: lot of Mike Judge stuff because it was considered too
- 45:27Speaker 1: offensive into like specific audience e to release widely, and
- 45:33Speaker 1: so I feel like it it got this like you know,
- 45:35Speaker 1: kind of like punk credibility before it even came out,
- 45:38Speaker 1: because it was like, oh, this is the movie studios
- 45:41Speaker 1: don't want to release. And I understand that element of
- 45:44Speaker 1: like that is a really quick way to make a
- 45:46Speaker 1: cult classic, especially from someone who's already made cult classics.
- 45:51Speaker 1: But then you watch it and you're just like not
- 45:54Speaker 1: to you know whatever, Like it's it's it's pointless to
- 45:58Speaker 1: have an argument of like, I agree with the student
- 46:00Speaker 1: you because I'm sure the reason the studio had for
- 46:02Speaker 1: not wanting to release him widely I would not agree with.
- 46:05Speaker 1: But I'm also like not upset that this wasn't the
- 46:07Speaker 1: most popular movie in the world, because I don't want
- 46:10Speaker 1: to like its politics are very dated anyways, fastward to
- 46:14Speaker 1: the future. Everyone has the exact opinions of Eton Cohen
- 46:21Speaker 1: and Mike Judge's opinion of poor people in two thousand
- 46:23Speaker 1: and five. Okay, so what this does is, I feel
- 46:29Speaker 1: like in the upper classes of the future, it further
- 46:32Speaker 1: erases again with like the bizarre exception of corporations, which
- 46:38Speaker 1: they seem very aware of, ignores everything else, examples being
- 46:44Speaker 1: the House of Representation, where it's portrayed that the it's
- 46:50Speaker 1: not that the American government is designed to oppress people,
- 46:55Speaker 1: it's that the people in the American government are just
- 46:59Speaker 1: not smart enough to know how to provide justice to people,
- 47:05Speaker 1: which is again, basically no one was talking about this
- 47:09Speaker 1: in two thousand six because it was like these two
- 47:11Speaker 1: writers were considered to be on the cutting edge in
- 47:13Speaker 1: two thousand six and they clearly didn't know. So again
- 47:16Speaker 1: it's like, don't punish yourself in the past, but in
- 47:18Speaker 1: the present moment, it's like, well that is not true,
- 47:22Speaker 1: like they're it's intentional that they're taking our rights away,
- 47:27Speaker 1: there is an end game in mind. It's not that
- 47:30Speaker 1: they're not smart enough to know better, and that that
- 47:34Speaker 1: same ethos is applied to the prison system, which is
- 47:39Speaker 1: again egregious because it's like, Ben need us to tell
- 47:42Speaker 1: you how implicitly and intentionally racist and classist the prison
- 47:47Speaker 1: system is in the US. But again it's the way
- 47:51Speaker 1: that it's portrayed is like, well, we don't know, we
- 47:54Speaker 1: don't know any better, like we're just we're just we
- 47:57Speaker 1: didn't get enough math classes, like to you're just like
- 48:02Speaker 1: this is ridiculous. And the same applies to the way
- 48:05Speaker 1: the police are. Like the police are of the three,
- 48:09Speaker 1: I feel like at least they are shown as like
- 48:12Speaker 1: absurdly violent and absurdly reactionary in a way that I
- 48:18Speaker 1: would agree with. But again it's like portrayed, not because
- 48:21Speaker 1: that is like endorsed and always has been in the
- 48:25Speaker 1: in American policing. It's like it's because the individual people
- 48:29Speaker 1: are so ridiculous and you're like no, but it's they
- 48:33Speaker 1: are empowered to act that way. Like it's just there's
- 48:36Speaker 1: no systemic criticism except for corporations, and so the corporation
- 48:39Speaker 1: stuff weirdly, for the most part, for me, it works, Yeah,
- 48:44Speaker 1: so I think, and that is best exemplified by the
- 48:48Speaker 1: Brondo thing. But there's also like Carl's Jr. Is now
- 48:53Speaker 1: running like child Protective Services, and I thought that was
- 48:57Speaker 1: kind of funny, and the whole the drive thru has
- 49:02Speaker 1: like a gas they can shoot in your face to
- 49:04Speaker 1: like dissociate you, like that kind of stuff. I was like,
- 49:08Speaker 1: I thought that that was like more effective and it
- 49:11Speaker 1: felt very very intentional, like you were an unfit mother,
- 49:13Speaker 1: your children will be repossessed by Carls Jr. Like that
- 49:18Speaker 1: for two thousand six satire. That worked for me, right,
- 49:20Speaker 1: But then there's other stuff where like you can go
- 49:22Speaker 1: to Starbucks and get like an erotic massage, which felt
- 49:28Speaker 1: like shamy of sex work. And there's the whole conversation
- 49:31Speaker 1: to be had about that and also implies that the
- 49:35Speaker 1: lower classes, or just like poor people in general, are
- 49:40Speaker 1: again it like goes into what we were talking about earlier.
- 49:42Speaker 1: I like the way the opening sequence divides classes is
- 49:47Speaker 1: like people with more education and money not horny. People
- 49:51Speaker 1: with less education and the money so horny they cannot
- 49:54Speaker 1: help but have a trillion kids, which is again unfair
- 50:00Speaker 1: to both parties. Like you know, we started like it's like,
- 50:05Speaker 1: you know, people of all classes who are all manners
- 50:08Speaker 1: of horny. Like it's so like obviously reductive of people
- 50:14Speaker 1: like to say that your class determines how your are sexual,
- 50:20Speaker 1: like how much you want to reproduce, Like it's just
- 50:23Speaker 1: like it feels like silly to even say out loud
- 50:25Speaker 1: because it's so ridiculous. And I feel like the future
- 50:29Speaker 1: furthers that logic of like what Mike Judge and Eton
- 50:33Speaker 1: Cohen thought of poor people in two thousand five, which
- 50:35Speaker 1: is that they are like so uneducated that they cannot
- 50:39Speaker 1: control themselves, which again you're just like pull that goes
- 50:44Speaker 1: into the future of like, oh, they just are so
- 50:46Speaker 1: horny they want they want hand jobs as star books.
- 50:50Speaker 1: And it's like not only like you're saying that's shamey
- 50:53Speaker 1: to sex work. But it's also just like reductive of
- 50:58Speaker 1: poor people in the way that the movie is from
- 51:00Speaker 1: moment one, Like it's just just reinforces that. Yeah. So
- 51:03Speaker 1: so some of it works, some of it doesn't. But
- 51:05Speaker 1: the Brondo thing I think works the best where there's
- 51:08Speaker 1: voice over that I'll basically just like say verbatim here
- 51:12Speaker 1: where it is said that water was considered a threat
- 51:16Speaker 1: to Brondo's profit margin, so Brondo came to replace water everywhere,
- 51:22Speaker 1: it's basically except for like in toilets it seems, which
- 51:25Speaker 1: is also pretty funny. But the Brondo Corporation bought the
- 51:30Speaker 1: f d A and then the FCC, enabling them to
- 51:33Speaker 1: say do and sell anything they wanted, which is, you know,
- 51:38Speaker 1: pretty I think a pretty effective commentary on the way
- 51:41Speaker 1: that like corporate takeover is constantly happening in this country
- 51:47Speaker 1: and how you know capitalism is going to be the
- 51:52Speaker 1: death of assault. And then because the way it manifests
- 51:55Speaker 1: in this movie is that they're watering crops with Brondo,
- 51:59Speaker 1: which is full of electrolytes, which is basically just pumping
- 52:02Speaker 1: salt into the ground where plants can no longer grow,
- 52:07Speaker 1: and then it's leading to this dustpol where everyone's going
- 52:10Speaker 1: to starve to death. So and I appreciate that it
- 52:12Speaker 1: took the further step of like, even if you resolved
- 52:16Speaker 1: that issue by using water, that would collapse the economy
- 52:20Speaker 1: because of how the economy was built around one corporate entity,
- 52:25Speaker 1: and like, yeah, that kind of like the corporate stuff
- 52:29Speaker 1: worked really well, and it's it's just wild that they
- 52:33Speaker 1: took that energy to specifically one sector. But again, I
- 52:37Speaker 1: feel like that is very indicative of Bush era satire,
- 52:41Speaker 1: where and I do think that George W. Bush, who
- 52:45Speaker 1: is you don't need me to tell you he's a
- 52:48Speaker 1: war criminal. He's a war criminal. But at the time,
- 52:52Speaker 1: and even I remember my perception of him as a
- 52:54Speaker 1: kid was that he was not smart, and so his
- 53:01Speaker 1: decisions that were actively harming people in America and people
- 53:06Speaker 1: outside of America. Certainly he started sucking wars, but it
- 53:12Speaker 1: was because he couldn't say nucle hear correctly. It wasn't
- 53:17Speaker 1: because of all these systemic issues. And so I feel
- 53:21Speaker 1: like that is a lot of the logic and energy
- 53:24Speaker 1: that this movie is drawing on is like how people
- 53:27Speaker 1: perceived George W. Bush specifically at this time, which is
- 53:33Speaker 1: like he is abusing people in and outside of his
- 53:37Speaker 1: country because he doesn't know better, when the reality is
- 53:41Speaker 1: he knew exactly what he was doing because he was
- 53:44Speaker 1: a nepotism piece of ship who was continuing the war
- 53:47Speaker 1: that his father started. And so it's like there is
- 53:50Speaker 1: no question that like he do what he was doing,
- 53:54Speaker 1: you know. But but it was But what the sat
- 53:56Speaker 1: fire of the time focused on more was like it
- 54:00Speaker 1: was it was just like kind of picking on Southern
- 54:02Speaker 1: American of like, oh, I don't like how he says
- 54:07Speaker 1: this word versus like he is continuing a war that
- 54:12Speaker 1: has nothing to do with what he says it, like
- 54:15Speaker 1: he knew what he was doing. Whatever. This is not
- 54:19Speaker 1: a controversial opinion, Like, no, we're saying this here on
- 54:22Speaker 1: the heready here first on the back podcast, beloved American
- 54:26Speaker 1: President George W. Bush and beloved American painter while we're
- 54:31Speaker 1: at it, um there. Obviously he's a piece of ship.
- 54:35Speaker 1: But I just think that the way and he was
- 54:37Speaker 1: he was considered a piece of ship by a large
- 54:40Speaker 1: portion of the country throughout his presidency. But it was
- 54:45Speaker 1: like the ways that people made fun of him that
- 54:47Speaker 1: I feel like informed the direction of the satire of
- 54:51Speaker 1: this movie. And it just feels like, while it's like
- 54:54Speaker 1: the rage at him couldn't be more justified, the like
- 54:59Speaker 1: the vantage why people are coming in at is like
- 55:02Speaker 1: very misdirected. And I feel like we sort of had
- 55:06Speaker 1: a resurgence of this a lot during the Trump presidency
- 55:12Speaker 1: where it was and it's like, I'm sure we fucking
- 55:14Speaker 1: engaged with us to something like we were certainly there.
- 55:17Speaker 1: Like Trump is like not a smart person, I would say,
- 55:21Speaker 1: very true, but does he know exactly what he's doing
- 55:25Speaker 1: when he's perpetuating systemic issues A hundred and so it's
- 55:30Speaker 1: like not the question of like I don't like this
- 55:32Speaker 1: guy because he don't talk smart enough for me. It's
- 55:34Speaker 1: like like, take a step back, and this movie doesn't
- 55:38Speaker 1: take a step back except for Brando. It's so weird.
- 55:43Speaker 1: It is so weird. So yes, the kind of biases
- 55:47Speaker 1: that the movie is leaning into, as far as like
- 55:52Speaker 1: being antipore, extends to other things such as setism and racism,
- 56:01Speaker 1: because like I homophobia and homophobia, right, I think a
- 56:05Speaker 1: lot of the characters who are you know, quote unquote
- 56:08Speaker 1: idiots who are populating this idiocracy in the year five,
- 56:14Speaker 1: are playing into again not only classist stereotypes, but racist
- 56:19Speaker 1: stereotypes and sexist stereotypes, because a lot of the women
- 56:24Speaker 1: that you see, not that there are many on screen,
- 56:28Speaker 1: but the few women with speaking roles who are in
- 56:31Speaker 1: this movie usually are characterized as bimbos, like the attorney
- 56:38Speaker 1: general or like the women who are hanging around the president.
- 56:42Speaker 1: They are like dressed provocatively and you know, just again
- 56:49Speaker 1: this like quote slutty bimbo type and that is like
- 56:54Speaker 1: again the filmmakers just bias against any sexually liberated woman
- 57:00Speaker 1: or sex worker. And this is this is an element
- 57:05Speaker 1: of the movie that I think could have worked, Like
- 57:09Speaker 1: implying that the future of America is wildly sexist and
- 57:17Speaker 1: hateful towards sex work is I don't even think a
- 57:20Speaker 1: controversial take that is where the is currently headed. But unfortunately,
- 57:27Speaker 1: the way the movie has written just seems to like say, like, yeah,
- 57:31Speaker 1: this society treats women like bimbos who deserve no respect
- 57:36Speaker 1: because that is what they because and like that is
- 57:39Speaker 1: how they are behaving, and it seems like they have
- 57:42Speaker 1: no cognizance of how they're being march. It just doesn't
- 57:46Speaker 1: feel like it's satire, Like it just feels like doing
- 57:49Speaker 1: the thing I feel like, especially with my Rudolph's character, like,
- 57:54Speaker 1: so it's it's weird because I could see someone making
- 57:57Speaker 1: the argument that, well, yeah, the care ters are using
- 58:02Speaker 1: all this homophobic and ablest language because you know, that's
- 58:08Speaker 1: what a devolved society would do, and that's the satire,
- 58:13Speaker 1: that's the commentary. But you don't get to have that happened.
- 58:18Speaker 1: And then I just feel like the commentary is and
- 58:20Speaker 1: actually being made. I mean it's not and it's like
- 58:24Speaker 1: I understand why they thought it was maybe, but it's
- 58:28Speaker 1: also like a you're operating from like even the found
- 58:31Speaker 1: the foundation of the premise is so flawed that it's
- 58:35Speaker 1: like you can't really address specific issues based on the
- 58:38Speaker 1: idea of like well, no one is smart enough to
- 58:41Speaker 1: realize what they're doing. And it's like, well, how could
- 58:43Speaker 1: you address any systemic issue if this movie does not
- 58:46Speaker 1: recognize systemic issues as a concept, Like it just recognizes
- 58:51Speaker 1: all systemic issues as as it applies to poor people.
- 58:57Speaker 1: And then it's like, oh, well, women are treated as
- 58:59Speaker 1: bimbos because there bimbos because and like Maya Rudolph is
- 59:04Speaker 1: not like the other girls, but also she's kind of
- 59:06Speaker 1: like the other girls. Okay, can we talk about my
- 59:09Speaker 1: Rudolph's characters, because I I do appreciate that by the
- 59:14Speaker 1: end of the movie, and I mean the end of
- 59:17Speaker 1: the movie, she is more motivated. She rests, you know,
- 59:23Speaker 1: in the terms of like classic special cast discussion, she
- 59:27Speaker 1: saves the male protagonist of the movie. You know, like
- 59:30Speaker 1: she is active in helping to resolve the conflict of
- 59:35Speaker 1: the film, at least the one that ends up getting presented,
- 59:38Speaker 1: because like half way through the movie, it's like, and
- 59:40Speaker 1: now the conflict is crops and it's like, okay, yeah,
- 59:45Speaker 1: but for most of the movie that isn't even the issue,
- 59:47Speaker 1: So she becomes involved in what eventually ends up like
- 59:52Speaker 1: you're just like becoming the issue of the movie. And
- 59:55Speaker 1: it would have been interesting if that was the whole
- 59:58Speaker 1: premise of the movie, because that was giving me Mary
- 1:00:02Speaker 1: kay naturally passport to Paris vibes. Um. Okay, be guys
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: as part at any point in this episode, you were
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: wrong because that I was like, Okay, they more effectively
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: resolved a national water crisis issue than anyone, Like I mean,
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: I'm wanting to bring up a movie like don't look
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: up as being more effective. I don't want to talk
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: about don't look up because I didn't like it. I
- 1:00:30Speaker 1: want to talk about Passport to Paris because I did,
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: like I'm so sorry, and Mary Kidd and actually resolved
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: France's water access issues in the and they got to
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: kiss their crushes like perfect story. Could you, even in
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: your entire life, say that, No, I can't. All I
- 1:00:48Speaker 1: did was the Dr Brauner's directly under my vagina. I
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: can't do what they do Dr Brando, Dr Brando's acidic
- 1:00:57Speaker 1: waste onto my and it's it's he said, the injury
- 1:01:01Speaker 1: with the doctor Broder's issue because the bottle is covered
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: in words. And then I looked after after the throbbing
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: had stopped, and I will say I was taking a
- 1:01:15Speaker 1: shower with someone who I liked. Oh sexy. Oh, I
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: mean speaking of horny ist time. We're all having a
- 1:01:22Speaker 1: horny time when I when I say, when I tell
- 1:01:26Speaker 1: you this was not recent. But anyways, I read the
- 1:01:31Speaker 1: bottle hours later and the words, the warning I needed
- 1:01:36Speaker 1: was there, but it was buried in like weird o garbage. Anyways,
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: where was that? An idiocracy? Um could have been helpful.
- 1:01:46Speaker 1: All that to say, like this movie, it starts to
- 1:01:49Speaker 1: make a criticism, but then says like, well, but insert
- 1:01:53Speaker 1: a press class here is basically like that anyways, So
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: and then you're just I don't like, it's just bizarre.
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: It does feel like I don't know I I And
- 1:02:05Speaker 1: if you were older than us, which might not be
- 1:02:08Speaker 1: possible we're quite old, um, but if you were older
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: than us, feel free to wait in like my interpretation
- 1:02:18Speaker 1: and a lot of his reflection because I was like
- 1:02:20Speaker 1: when our kid throughout the bush years, but my interpretation
- 1:02:24Speaker 1: of a lot of this just based on like I whatever,
- 1:02:27Speaker 1: grew up watching John Stewart with my aunt, Like my
- 1:02:31Speaker 1: aunt was very into this brand of comedy, and so
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: that was primarily through her that I would see it.
- 1:02:37Speaker 1: And it felt very like allied with Democrat senators and
- 1:02:43Speaker 1: lawmakers in a way that is largely for a lot
- 1:02:47Speaker 1: of leftists no longer true. Is like at this point,
- 1:02:51Speaker 1: I feel like it's very I mean, it was like
- 1:02:53Speaker 1: not that it wasn't known by people in the mid
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: two thousands, but it is larger known now that like
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: democrats measures and lawmakers are also largely fucking you over,
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: but they're just like smiling while they do it. But
- 1:03:08Speaker 1: at this time it felt like democrats or just generally
- 1:03:11Speaker 1: center to left leaning politicians were not on the chopping
- 1:03:17Speaker 1: block to be criticized. And that's because that it doesn't
- 1:03:21Speaker 1: really come up like you do. I thought you got
- 1:03:24Speaker 1: like a pretty effect of like Fox News early Fox
- 1:03:28Speaker 1: News commentary here of like it's just like sexy naked
- 1:03:32Speaker 1: people talking nonsense, which is like that's a lot of
- 1:03:36Speaker 1: what Fox News is, and like it's it's not based
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: in facts. It's very visual medium. Um. But you do
- 1:03:43Speaker 1: not get the other side of that because I think
- 1:03:46Speaker 1: at the time the writers of the movie would have
- 1:03:49Speaker 1: agreed with like centrist propaganda MSNBC vibes, you know stuff.
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: I'm I'm de radicalizing my mommy from wowow Jill's working. No,
- 1:04:04Speaker 1: it is working. She no longer brings out her MSNBC
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: mom mug when I am visiting. I think she's starting
- 1:04:12Speaker 1: to be embarrassed at it, and rightfully so she listens
- 1:04:15Speaker 1: to the show. Hi Jill, Hi Jill. Um. I wanted
- 1:04:19Speaker 1: to go back to read a real quick where so,
- 1:04:25Speaker 1: as you said, she's absent for a large chunk of
- 1:04:29Speaker 1: the movie, but then she does become active in the
- 1:04:34Speaker 1: resolution and she helps to again resolve this like crop
- 1:04:39Speaker 1: thing she has agency in those few scenes, but prior
- 1:04:45Speaker 1: to that, she is almost indistinguishable from the other characters
- 1:04:52Speaker 1: who are also supposed to be the quote unquote idiots,
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: because she, for example, she cannot grasp the idea that
- 1:05:01Speaker 1: her pimp, this guy named Upgrade, would be dead and
- 1:05:06Speaker 1: would have died five years earlier, kind of thing, like
- 1:05:09Speaker 1: she spent so much of the movie looking for this
- 1:05:12Speaker 1: character that, Like, it's so frustrating because the movie, I think,
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: to its credit, does introduce Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph
- 1:05:20Speaker 1: as like characters with very different backgrounds who are of
- 1:05:24Speaker 1: equal intelligence. That is why they're being selected first. And
- 1:05:28Speaker 1: so to fast forward five years and have him be
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: able to understand the fact that time has passed and
- 1:05:35Speaker 1: her n to understand that is ridiculous. Doesn't make any sense.
- 1:05:40Speaker 1: And it's also suggesting. I feel what's being stated here
- 1:05:45Speaker 1: by the filmmakers is, well, of course she's not smart,
- 1:05:50Speaker 1: she's a sex worker. Like it's just casting judgment on well, yeah,
- 1:05:53Speaker 1: and it's like and also the only thing that's on
- 1:05:55Speaker 1: her mind is her loyalty and or fear of her pimp.
- 1:06:01Speaker 1: And it's like and and this like slowly disappears throughout
- 1:06:07Speaker 1: the plot, but it's not motivated by anything, like it's
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: just slowly or if it's motivated by anything, it's by
- 1:06:14Speaker 1: the fact that she's developing a crush on Luke Wilson
- 1:06:17Speaker 1: for no right. So that's the other thing where she
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: becomes Joe's love interest. He poop because if a man
- 1:06:27Speaker 1: and woman are the two leads of a movie, they
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: legally have to get together. By the end you were
- 1:06:33Speaker 1: alive and two five you have to get married. Heads
- 1:06:37Speaker 1: have to fuck. Initially, they're just acquaintances because they're both
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: participating in this experiment, and then when they're both in
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: five they link back up. He's trying to basically rescue
- 1:06:50Speaker 1: her and bring her along so that they can time
- 1:06:52Speaker 1: travel when he thinks that's possible. I would say this,
- 1:06:56Speaker 1: my favorite scene of this movie is when Joe is
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: trying to makes sense of time travel. That was commentary
- 1:07:03Speaker 1: on time travel narratives that I thought was the commentary.
- 1:07:09Speaker 1: That was good. I like that a lot. This movie
- 1:07:11Speaker 1: does have its moments which almost makes it more frustrating,
- 1:07:13Speaker 1: and they're like I would keep like a solid seven
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: minutes of this movie and then the rest is trash um.
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: But yeah, so they link back up and they're they're
- 1:07:21Speaker 1: trying to escape, and then things start to get flirty
- 1:07:26Speaker 1: when they're at the White House, and well for it,
- 1:07:29Speaker 1: before that, he has to pretend like they're going to
- 1:07:32Speaker 1: have sex with each other so that they can actually
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: go off and plan their escape. And that, to me,
- 1:07:37Speaker 1: that worked because he's not actually trying to like exploit
- 1:07:40Speaker 1: her or have sex with or anything like that. That
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: didn't work for me because I felt like it was
- 1:07:44Speaker 1: implied that he was inherently of like he's a good
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: guy because he's not trying to assault her. You're like,
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that it makes anything. They would be together, like, right,
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: that doesn't justify why they end up together, right, I
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: mean in terms of the plot, right, it makes sense.
- 1:08:01Speaker 1: But then things do start to get flirty, like when
- 1:08:03Speaker 1: they're at the White House and she's like, you know,
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: you don't have to sleep on the floor, you can
- 1:08:08Speaker 1: sleep in the bed with me, and he's like, and
- 1:08:10Speaker 1: he so his whole thing, he never understands that she's
- 1:08:12Speaker 1: a sex worker through the entire movie and possibly through
- 1:08:15Speaker 1: their entire marriage question mark, and we don't clear. Yeah,
- 1:08:19Speaker 1: he thinks that she's a painter, So maybe you could
- 1:08:21Speaker 1: make the argument like, yeah, she's not smart enough to
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: understand that her pimp has been dead for five centuries.
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: He is not smart enough to notice that Rita is
- 1:08:32Speaker 1: a sex worker. Question mark. None of it worked. I
- 1:08:35Speaker 1: did just no. But eventually they get married and he
- 1:08:41Speaker 1: and Rita becomes his first lady because he becomes president,
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: and it's just like, of course this would happen in
- 1:08:48Speaker 1: a movie from two thousand six where a man and
- 1:08:52Speaker 1: a woman have to romantically end up together at the end.
- 1:08:55Speaker 1: I think it would have been more I mean, there's
- 1:08:57Speaker 1: so many more interesting ways to take that where it's
- 1:08:59Speaker 1: like if you're the only to like, even if you
- 1:09:01Speaker 1: are going from the fucking baseline weirdo eugenicis logic that
- 1:09:05Speaker 1: this movie depends on to happen. I just feel it
- 1:09:09Speaker 1: would be more fun to see two characters who are
- 1:09:11Speaker 1: from the same era and are like considered intellectually superior,
- 1:09:15Speaker 1: like in conflict with each other, which these two never are.
- 1:09:19Speaker 1: They're never in conflict with each other. I understand that
- 1:09:21Speaker 1: it's like they have a vested interest in banding together,
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: but it's just like her character has never taken seriously
- 1:09:29Speaker 1: enough to really develop any sort of side plot of
- 1:09:33Speaker 1: her own, Like if you just like let go of
- 1:09:35Speaker 1: the fact that, like if you just allowed her to
- 1:09:37Speaker 1: understand where she was, things could have become so different,
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: Like she could have allied with a different side of
- 1:09:45Speaker 1: the fucking future conflict then Luke Wilson did. They could
- 1:09:49Speaker 1: have been political rivals, they could have been like so
- 1:09:51Speaker 1: many different things could have happened other than like she
- 1:09:54Speaker 1: has no idea where she is, and then at the
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: last second, she's like, I have a crush on you,
- 1:09:58Speaker 1: Like that's like the most boring thing that could possibly happen.
- 1:10:02Speaker 1: That said, Luke Wilson's character, like you're just implying, is
- 1:10:05Speaker 1: also very boring and hard to root for, and he's
- 1:10:10Speaker 1: like such a straight I mean, it's not Luke Wilson's fault,
- 1:10:12Speaker 1: but it's like that character is such a straight man
- 1:10:15Speaker 1: that you're like, who fucking cares right, gives a ship?
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: This man is so boring. And then there's this like
- 1:10:23Speaker 1: running joke where she is tricking this guy into giving
- 1:10:28Speaker 1: her money on the promise that sometime in the future
- 1:10:33Speaker 1: she will do something sexual with him, which just makes
- 1:10:37Speaker 1: her seem kind of like deceitful, and I mean, I
- 1:10:42Speaker 1: don't always saw honest. That didn't really bother me. I'm
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: just like, yeah, I think Hanning a future man. I
- 1:10:48Speaker 1: don't really care because she has to like survive. It
- 1:10:50Speaker 1: only bothered me because I think that you could someone
- 1:10:54Speaker 1: watching this might draw connection between because she's a sex worker, like, oh,
- 1:11:00Speaker 1: like this is what sex workers do. They try to,
- 1:11:02Speaker 1: like I don't know, cheat you out of your money,
- 1:11:04Speaker 1: or they're dishonest or they're something like that. And that's
- 1:11:08Speaker 1: what rubbed me the wrong way. Yeah, yeah, I feel
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: like there's there's a few ways to come at that,
- 1:11:12Speaker 1: because I was also like, well, she's money and this
- 1:11:16Speaker 1: person is Um has money and she needs to survive.
- 1:11:22Speaker 1: I wanted to quickly talk about how my judge talks
- 1:11:25Speaker 1: about this movie now, and by now, I mean sort
- 1:11:28Speaker 1: of like the way that in The Idiocracy is a
- 1:11:31Speaker 1: documentary era, so the last eight years. So he said
- 1:11:36Speaker 1: this in an interview with The Daily Beast. Let me
- 1:11:38Speaker 1: just quickly trick the year on this. Okay, early Trump era, um,
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: and this is him commenting on what then was already
- 1:11:49Speaker 1: a very common idiocracy as a documentary tweet vibes God
- 1:11:54Speaker 1: so boring. Okay, So he he says in quote three
- 1:11:59Speaker 1: or four years ago, I started getting comments about it,
- 1:12:01Speaker 1: people discovering it, and it just keeps building. Now every
- 1:12:04Speaker 1: other Twitter comments I get is about Idiocracy and how
- 1:12:07Speaker 1: the documentary. Now, at first I was thinking, yeah, that's
- 1:12:10Speaker 1: nice to hear, but then very specific things like Carl's Jr.
- 1:12:14Speaker 1: Announcing that they were going to have a completely robotic,
- 1:12:16Speaker 1: non employee store, and that's Carl's Jr. In the movie.
- 1:12:20Speaker 1: Then there's this thing called the Filatio Cafe in Switzerland
- 1:12:23Speaker 1: where you get blow jobs with coffee, and we had
- 1:12:26Speaker 1: the Starbucks thing in there. And then Donald Trump being
- 1:12:28Speaker 1: in the WWF before and talking about his penis size.
- 1:12:31Speaker 1: It's just one specific thing after another unquote. Now I
- 1:12:35Speaker 1: will not argue with the like technical factual truth of
- 1:12:40Speaker 1: what he's saying, but like I feel like the reason
- 1:12:43Speaker 1: people say Idiocracy documentary has more to do with hyper
- 1:12:47Speaker 1: specifics like that versus the foundation of the world that's
- 1:12:53Speaker 1: built in the movie that has I would argue, little
- 1:12:56Speaker 1: to nothing to do with what we are dealing with now.
- 1:13:00Speaker 1: And also also, I mean to say, Ata said hilarious
- 1:13:04Speaker 1: to think that we're going to exist in five years,
- 1:13:06Speaker 1: but I kept having that thought. I'm like we're all
- 1:13:10Speaker 1: going to be fucking dead. The environment will not sustain
- 1:13:14Speaker 1: life because of how badly we've fucked it up. Awesome, Uh,
- 1:13:19Speaker 1: but you know whatever, appreciate the optimism, um, but ultimately,
- 1:13:24Speaker 1: you know, like I, I just think it's it's a
- 1:13:28Speaker 1: bummer because I do appreciate the filmmaker that it's like.
- 1:13:33Speaker 1: And I wonder if in the future he will push
- 1:13:36Speaker 1: back on this very persistent idea because I feel like
- 1:13:40Speaker 1: people are repeated, like I wouldn't really care as much
- 1:13:42Speaker 1: if this was like a movie that no one saw
- 1:13:44Speaker 1: in two thousand and six and people still like no
- 1:13:47Speaker 1: one really saw it, because then you're just like, well,
- 1:13:49Speaker 1: it's a victimist crime, you know. Like, but because people
- 1:13:52Speaker 1: are continually pushed to this movie as an example of like,
- 1:13:57Speaker 1: this is what's wrong with America, when I, when I
- 1:14:01Speaker 1: just outside of the corporate criticism, was not getting a
- 1:14:05Speaker 1: lot of what appears to actually be wrong, right, Like,
- 1:14:10Speaker 1: just feels like an annoying, distracting, victim blamey approach to
- 1:14:17Speaker 1: cultural criticism. And I wonder if and it's one thing,
- 1:14:20Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, if you were a filmmaker in two
- 1:14:22Speaker 1: thousand six, just reflect on that that's all you can
- 1:14:25Speaker 1: really do at this point, and I would I would
- 1:14:27Speaker 1: be interested to see if he ever kind of reflects
- 1:14:30Speaker 1: on the criticism of yeah, because it's very frustrating to
- 1:14:36Speaker 1: be living today in a society where period period, end
- 1:14:41Speaker 1: of thought, no, but like our rights are actively being
- 1:14:47Speaker 1: taken away. There's talk of how the Supreme Court is
- 1:14:51Speaker 1: going to continue to keep taking away the right to
- 1:14:55Speaker 1: get marriage, like like all this stuff. I was talking
- 1:15:00Speaker 1: talking about this with my best friend recently about how
- 1:15:02Speaker 1: like good news days from the past, like couple decades,
- 1:15:08Speaker 1: it's only been good news days because it's just like, wow,
- 1:15:12Speaker 1: this right that people should have had all along, finally
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: is a right that people have officially it's been codified, right,
- 1:15:24Speaker 1: So like, but then you've got your bad news days
- 1:15:27Speaker 1: where it's like, oh, yeah, Roe v. Wade overturned and
- 1:15:31Speaker 1: now abortion is criminalized and gay marriage might be criminalized,
- 1:15:35Speaker 1: and you just like all these horrible things and um,
- 1:15:39Speaker 1: what was my point? So it's just like so frustrating
- 1:15:41Speaker 1: to like, I mean, and that's just the fucking tip
- 1:15:44Speaker 1: of the iceberg, just like systemic racism and policing and
- 1:15:48Speaker 1: all just every societal ill stuff that has never been
- 1:15:52Speaker 1: like significantly legally challenged. Right, It's just like we're getting
- 1:15:56Speaker 1: a lot of rights overturned, but there's also a lot
- 1:15:59Speaker 1: of stuff that never even gotten Right, there's this a
- 1:16:01Speaker 1: whole slew of like oppressive societal issues that we're dealing
- 1:16:06Speaker 1: with every day. And then for people to compare that
- 1:16:12Speaker 1: to this movie, which just blames poor people for the
- 1:16:18Speaker 1: decline of civilization, it's very of the age. And I
- 1:16:22Speaker 1: know that, like sometimes we get criticism for like examining
- 1:16:25Speaker 1: older movies from a current lens, but I mean, even
- 1:16:28Speaker 1: in the two thousand six lens, like this was very
- 1:16:31Speaker 1: much Again, it's like we're not saying that this movie
- 1:16:33Speaker 1: was unusual for its time. And I do vary strongly
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: feel that like this type of comedy it's time. It's
- 1:16:42Speaker 1: not whatever. There's like art isn't useless, it's not like
- 1:16:47Speaker 1: but I do think that you can trace this era
- 1:16:51Speaker 1: of satire's role in a kind of like unproductive energy
- 1:16:57Speaker 1: with with people that a lot of people recognize and
- 1:17:01Speaker 1: are like not engaging with. There's not a ton of
- 1:17:04Speaker 1: like I feel like, I mean, even just like the
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: fact that Bill Maher is the only person from this
- 1:17:09Speaker 1: era that is still doing the same ship he was
- 1:17:11Speaker 1: in two thousand six, and now most of his original
- 1:17:13Speaker 1: viewers fucking hate him. So I feel like that, like
- 1:17:16Speaker 1: he is the case study for like people don't like
- 1:17:20Speaker 1: this anymore and the people who like this are like
- 1:17:24Speaker 1: weirdo doubling down assholes, Like this type of comedy doesn't
- 1:17:29Speaker 1: really exist anymore in a popular sense, but the fact
- 1:17:33Speaker 1: that this was popular in its time does leave a legacy.
- 1:17:38Speaker 1: And the way that like the comedy that we were doing,
- 1:17:40Speaker 1: you know, five to ten years ago, in the comedy
- 1:17:42Speaker 1: we're doing now will leave a legacy and it's not
- 1:17:44Speaker 1: all going to be great, And it's like, you know,
- 1:17:47Speaker 1: the older I get that where it's like you can't
- 1:17:49Speaker 1: I mean, you can't take back your funck ups. All
- 1:17:53Speaker 1: you can do is address and not endorse them. And
- 1:17:56Speaker 1: it feels like that is kind of like what the
- 1:17:57Speaker 1: filmmakers of this movie have done by not wishing back
- 1:18:00Speaker 1: against the idiocracy as a documentary thing, right, Yeah, they're
- 1:18:04Speaker 1: just kind of patting themselves on the back for being
- 1:18:06Speaker 1: like awesome movie. I predicted a coffee shop that gives
- 1:18:10Speaker 1: out blow jobs, which what's wrong with that anyway? Not
- 1:18:15Speaker 1: an indicator of the downfall of society. Um, do you
- 1:18:18Speaker 1: have anything else to talk about? No, I think this
- 1:18:22Speaker 1: movie had its heart in the right place, but it
- 1:18:24Speaker 1: like it just I really, I think it's aged extremely
- 1:18:29Speaker 1: poorly and I don't like it at all. Agree and right, Yeah,
- 1:18:34Speaker 1: Like we understand the cultural landscape informing the media and
- 1:18:38Speaker 1: the satire at the time, and sometimes it does feel
- 1:18:42Speaker 1: weird to criticize a movie that's a product of its
- 1:18:46Speaker 1: environment from like almost two decades ago, but that's also
- 1:18:53Speaker 1: our job. Anyway, The movie I don't think passes the
- 1:18:57Speaker 1: Bechtel test. I don't think so either. I don't think
- 1:19:00Speaker 1: women interact at any point, and if they do, I
- 1:19:04Speaker 1: didn't notice it. But what about our nipple scale, in
- 1:19:08Speaker 1: which we rate the movie zero to five nipples based
- 1:19:12Speaker 1: on how does it do when looking at it through
- 1:19:16Speaker 1: an intersectional feminist lens? And I would give this movie
- 1:19:22Speaker 1: not good. I'll give it a half nipple because I
- 1:19:27Speaker 1: do think it gets the kind of like capitalist consumersm
- 1:19:34Speaker 1: commentary more right than anything else. But that should have
- 1:19:41Speaker 1: been one of many things that gets acknowledged and commented on.
- 1:19:48Speaker 1: The movie ignores and instead blames the downfall of society
- 1:19:54Speaker 1: on poor people. Yeah, and that sucks so and then again,
- 1:19:59Speaker 1: just like all of the the classist, the ablest, the racist,
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: the sexist coding of the characters is really shitty. One
- 1:20:11Speaker 1: half nipple. I'll give it to my Rudolph, whose talents
- 1:20:16Speaker 1: in this movie are squandered, because she is far better
- 1:20:23Speaker 1: than what this movie suggests. She's the best. Um, I'm
- 1:20:27Speaker 1: going to give a zero because I didn't like it
- 1:20:29Speaker 1: to piss me off, So I guess I have nothing
- 1:20:32Speaker 1: else to say. I just like I do. I do
- 1:20:34Speaker 1: agree that the corporate criticism is valid. There were jokes
- 1:20:39Speaker 1: in this movie that made me laugh, Like, there are
- 1:20:41Speaker 1: jokes in this movie that I'll probably return to. It
- 1:20:42Speaker 1: would be like that was a funny thing. But it's
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: just the premise of this movie is so frustrating to
- 1:20:48Speaker 1: me that I and I have no nostalgic attachment to it.
- 1:20:53Speaker 1: So I'm gonna give it zero. And so I have
- 1:20:55Speaker 1: no nipples to give, and I, um, if anything to
- 1:20:59Speaker 1: end not a positive, No, I do feel like you're like, oh,
- 1:21:01Speaker 1: there is actually a huge market right now for effective satire. UM,
- 1:21:08Speaker 1: and there's I think most of it is happening currently
- 1:21:10Speaker 1: in TV. But there is a lot of good satire
- 1:21:13Speaker 1: of American politics and American dystopia that are coming out.
- 1:21:18Speaker 1: I do want to say that, like it's not that
- 1:21:22Speaker 1: you know, idiocracy being like kind of shitty means that
- 1:21:25Speaker 1: American satire is dead. It just means like this one
- 1:21:28Speaker 1: aged very poorly, but the genre has continued. There's no
- 1:21:33Speaker 1: you know, lack of inspiration to pull from, and it
- 1:21:37Speaker 1: is a genre that is like kind of gone on,
- 1:21:39Speaker 1: I think, to to develop and grow in a very
- 1:21:43Speaker 1: interesting way. And also I think that satire has everything
- 1:21:46Speaker 1: to do with the point of view of who's writing it,
- 1:21:48Speaker 1: and so having more satire that is not written by
- 1:21:51Speaker 1: already powerful straight says white Guys is always going to
- 1:21:55Speaker 1: be a good thing, and that we have a lot
- 1:21:57Speaker 1: more of that now and there's still obviously room for more.
- 1:22:03Speaker 1: But I do think that this genre like is a
- 1:22:06Speaker 1: very like satire, like good satire, and like timeless satire
- 1:22:10Speaker 1: is like really really hard to do. Um true, because
- 1:22:14Speaker 1: which is why this movie didn't do it. It worked
- 1:22:17Speaker 1: at the time, it does not work work now. So
- 1:22:21Speaker 1: zero nipples hated it. Um let's end the episode. Let's
- 1:22:24Speaker 1: stop the fourth of July, just kidding, Abolish the Supreme
- 1:22:27Speaker 1: Court of Shitty Country. Anyways, and watch z Way. I
- 1:22:33Speaker 1: think Way is doing some of my favorites. She's doing
- 1:22:35Speaker 1: some of the American satire right now. Yeah, like she's
- 1:22:38Speaker 1: the best. Yeah. With with that in mind, satire historically
- 1:22:43Speaker 1: does not age particularly well. This is not a personal
- 1:22:46Speaker 1: attack or indictment on Mike Judge. This movie did not
- 1:22:49Speaker 1: age well at all. I don't think it's any any
- 1:22:52Speaker 1: longer really valuable satire to reflect on where America is at,
- 1:22:56Speaker 1: and it probably wasn't at the time either, but that's
- 1:22:58Speaker 1: kind of no one's business at this point because it's
- 1:23:00Speaker 1: the future. So with that in mind, uh, we love you.
- 1:23:04Speaker 1: Keep fighting, keep taking care of yourself, and we will
- 1:23:09Speaker 1: be right there with you doing the same. The fourth
- 1:23:12Speaker 1: of July is a waste of your time. But if
- 1:23:14Speaker 1: you want a hot dog, bioll means get one. I
- 1:23:17Speaker 1: think this episode comes out like three days after well
- 1:23:21Speaker 1: then fuck you know there. Look, there's no wrong time
- 1:23:26Speaker 1: to eat a hot dog, is what I'm saying. And
- 1:23:27Speaker 1: so for the fourth of July too, have co opted
- 1:23:29Speaker 1: hot dog culture in this way I think is a
- 1:23:32Speaker 1: net negative. But you know whatever, all press is good
- 1:23:34Speaker 1: press for for for the hot dog, of course, so
- 1:23:38Speaker 1: you can follow us online at Bechtel Cast. On Instagram
- 1:23:42Speaker 1: and Twitter. You can follow our Patreon ak Matreon at
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: patreon dot com. Slash Bechtel Cast is currently Minions March
- 1:23:51Speaker 1: A k A. What was the Gruella um Corrella Stevil?
- 1:23:59Speaker 1: There's two options ends, Yeah, it's either grew la Stevel
- 1:24:03Speaker 1: or Yeah, we're doing to Steve Corral movies. So we're
- 1:24:08Speaker 1: doing forty year Old Virgin, a very very popular request.
- 1:24:11Speaker 1: People wanted to hear us get upset about it and
- 1:24:13Speaker 1: boy did wait and uh we're also doing a millions
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- 1:24:20Speaker 1: over there, and we have over a hundred bonus episodes
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- 1:24:39Speaker 1: and what are your crops with toilet water exactly? Bye
- 1:24:43Speaker 1: bye bye