Idiocracy

If it's the working class is fault, well you're in luck because if the one percent is implicated in this, I'm walking. Okay, well I'm walking today's movie. That's what it's about. So okay. Welcome to the Beach Dol Cast. My name is Jamie Loft, as my name is Caitlin Durante, and this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechel tests simply as

a as a jumping off point. And this week you'll notice is we're releasing this the week of the fourth of July, uh national holiday that gets more and more ridiculous with each passing year. The only good thing about the fourth of July is Joey chestnut that has been

canonically true for decades at this point now. So we've been talking about this making this episode for a while and trying to find, you know, kind of either we were between like, oh, we can find a really classically jingoistic movie to kind of cover in debunk, or we can try to find, you know, a famous American satire to cover for this week. And since we made that decision, uh, we've just been we've just been losing our rights, Miranda rights,

don't know them, the right to an abortion gone. Just it's it's you know, if if you're listening to this, and even if you're not American, you're probably aware that it's it's particularly dystopian these past few weeks, years, decades, and so I feel like it's a particularly interesting time

to take a look at the movie. So all that to say, I just think it's uh for preamble, we chose to cover this movie before the most recent avalanche of lost rights, and I feel like it coincidentally ends up being kind of an interesting discussion because we are covering the movie Idiocracy today, a movie that has been discussed a lot in the past, decade, and now that

I've seen it, I don't understand why. But first we have some housekeeping to cover that being what the fuck is that Bettel Test you were talk about, Caitlin Rante, I'll tell you, Jamie loftis. It is a media metric created by Alison Becktel, sometimes called the Becktel Wallace Test,

and there are many different versions of it. The one we use, we've we've put our little flourishes on the test over the years, and our version is two characters of a marginalized gender have to have names, they have to speak to each other, and their conversation has to be about something other than a man, and ideally that conversation is narratively relevant and narratively meaningful. So this this week is actually, you know, kind of a doozy as

it pertains to that metric. It's interesting because we are also recording an episode about the Minions this week, and by the Minions technically Despicable Me. But I'm very excited for our Minions episode. But I was watching Idiocracy and Minions media because I you know, recovering, and this is a you know, tacit plug for the Matreon Patreon. Of

course we are covering Despicable Me this month. And what I think is interesting watching Idiocracy and Minions media back to back kind of is you get two very different interpretations of what a society of bumbling men would look like. And Honey, I prefer the Minions every time because at least, oh about I'm about to it sucks because I really genuinely love the vast majority of my judge's work, but at least the Minions are making me laugh. You know.

I can't say the same for Idiocracy. Minions hilarious. Idiocracy really was bumming me out in a wild way. Um So, anyways, this is our, this is our, this is I feel like a classic Bechtel cast at episode of taking something that everyone keeps saying is good and being like, actually actually be very good. But guess but you know what argue with the wall, We're right, Um that's there. That's what I want to tell to say to a lot

of people. Um, but I will say and we'll get into this, but just is a little bit of a preface that, yeah, I see what this movie was going for and at the time I liked it. When I saw it in two thousand six as a college sophomore. But let's talk about it, so, like, what is your relationship with this? So I saw it when it came out, because it came out sometime in two thousand and six. I was in college at the time. I was already

a huge Office Space fan. It was like one of my favorite movies at the time, so I was already team Mike Judge and I saw this movie. And at the time in the mid two thousand's when I when my critical thinking skills and comedic sensibilities and cultural sensibilities

were not quite as sophisticated as they are today. I mean, yeah, it's also like, don't be hard on yourself because this is like part of what's interesting about looking at this movie now is like how again, it's like, I don't think that this movie is uniquely pushing this kind of comedic point of view. I feel like this is this lines up really closely with like a lot of Bush era comedy. Is like that we all thought was funny at the time, right, or at least many of us

A lot of people thought was funny. And then I also see I feel like this movie is a great example of how the kind of aggressive apathy of this style of comedy probably had, you know, not the biggest hand, not as big a hand as fucking villainous policy see and disenfranchise, But I do, I do see how you know, this brand of comedy in its day served to further polarize people in a way that I don't think was like really recognized at the time, because how why would

it have been recognized the time? Right? Yeah, So all I say, don't be don't be hard in yourself. Everyone was loving this ship like it's true. It's true. So yeah, I I liked it at the time, but I didn't really engage with it after that first maybe one or two viewings in the mid two thousand's. But I'm excited to talk further. And again, just as a preface, I'll say, I see what the movie was going for looking at

it through our lens. A lot of it, A lot of the satire, a lot of the attempted satire, maybe not executed very well, and maybe just throws a lot of groups of people under the bus. Anyway, Jamie, what is your relationship with this movie? Okay, so I am going to be harder in this movie because it feels uniquely designed to make me frustrated. Um, but okay, so I for context. I had not seen this movie before, but I have considered myself to be a Mic Judge

fan since I was basically a kid. Like I was very I was kind of a latecomer to King of the Hill. But I've now seen a lot of King of the Hill, and I really love King of the Hill. Not an unpopular opinion at all. It's a great show. But I grew up with Beavis and butt Head. My dad was a huge Beavis and butt Head fad. We had it on a lot. Yeah, shout out. My key did refine my taste very young. It was all pee weee and Beavis and butt Head, and I'm eternally grateful

for it. I've got Beavis and butt Head. March. I watched the new Paramount Plus movie the day it came out. It's good. I didn't even know that was a thing. Well I do work for Paramount, so I was like, I was reminded, But it's really good. And I had highly like all that to say. I watched all of Silicon Valley and I didn't even really like it. But I just feel like loyal to Mike Judge because I like his work. I like Office Space, like he's made so much amazing stuff and so, but I had never

seen Idiocracy. All that to say, I went into this movie expecting to like it because I like Mike judges work. Really the only thing I knew like the basic premise of like it's a future American dystopia, and I also knew and I think that this is like I've kind of got like more stuff for this later on in

the discussion. But I also feel like this movie just every couple of hours someone will tweet Idiocracy was a documentary, like it was their idea, Like that is literally tweeted every forty five seconds by someone who is like I'm a genius, and it's like, okay, first of all, i Q is bunk an issue this movie has that I

have been studying for years. But anyways, part of what I love about Mike Judge's work is that he has this like way of showing characters whose like views are regressive and whose feel King of the Hill is the best example of it. But like who are like goofy people who you would disagree with that most people would disagree with, showing them with context and enough empathy that you're like, I understand how this person got here, and it feels like a more productive, empathetic piece of art.

And so I was just really surprised that like Idiocracy was so heartless in its views and it just like it just felt like a real I don't know. First of all, Idiocracy is not a documentary, you fucking dorks. Sorry, but like for us, of all, not an original thought. Second of all, not true. I don't know. I just have a lot of I didn't like the movie, and I was really bumped. I didn't like the movie from the first scene because of and you know, hashtag stream

my urine mensa. But like, yeah, the fact that this movie, I mean, this movie, like it's weird, because I totally agree with you, Caitlin. I do think that it was coming from a good place, and I think for its

time it is I don't know, for its time. I understand why it was considered to be like controversial satire, and I understand why people saw value in it, especially in the era that it came out in, which I mean this movie was being shot and eventually released in the middle of the George W. Bush administration, when it did seem like society was heading towards us place a certain place, and it's also like that wasn't wrong. I

feel like it's it's whatever. My opinions aside. I think this is like a kind of a very very interesting movie to look at to see like what were center to left leaning people viewing the people around them like at this time. And I feel like this movie really because it's like we were both you know, I mean I I was, I definitely just you know, at this movie came out when I was like in middle school, so I didn't like hear about it at the time, but like we both two thousand and six, you know,

we're we're senior citizens. We were there, and I do remember this a lot, and I would like even kind of group this. And I know that I'm not saying like the quality of jokes are the same across the board, but I would kind of group this in the like John Stewart Daily Show era of comedy, back when my aunt would fucking die for Bill Mara unfortunately kind of comedy of like kind of like god left leaning ish comedy of which there was a lot at this time,

like even early Colbert Report. Even though I feel like it's kind of the best of all of it. But but you know what I mean, like it was a very specific moment in comedy and like satire, and it's interesting to look back on. I really didn't like this movie. Uh, let's talk more about it, shall we? Yeah? Okay, sorry for like going on. I just was. I was so shocked.

It's so you know, like when you really love a creator and you have like a creepy little para social connection to them, and it's like, how dare I not like this? But I I again, I because it there was such a big gap between when I first saw it and now I had just forgotten about all the incredibly problematic jokes and humor, like let's tacitly endorse eugenics. I'm not saying like Judge was like actively recognizing that that is some people are just born inferior. That we

get there, We'll get there. Let's talk about what happens in the movie because there and there are also were some like specific jokes that I laughed at. Some things work, Some of the commentary does work. A lot of it doesn't. Carl's Junior stuff worked for me, The Brondo stuff, Yeah, any kind of like commentary on capitalism and consumerism worked. Yes, Um, okay,

here's what the story is about. The movie opens on voiceover discussing how as we entered we being society entered the century, human evolution was at a turning point where intelligent people quote unquote were reproducing less and quote unquote less intelligent people. And these quote unquotes are from me and not the movie. So the movie is saying intelligent people stopped producing as much, and less intelligent people were

multiplying more than ever. Blood pressure is in peril. So this is this is how the movie is framing this. And we get like this whole montage where we meet these two couples. You know, one is more intelligent and they're coded a certain way. The other couple is you know, less intelligent quote unquote. They're coded a very particular way. We'll talk about it, but I mean it's literally like yeah,

like grad school. I mean, not to put you in a box, but like, you know, people who have been to college multiple times versus like it's coded as like quote unquote trailer trash. Exactly. Yes, yes, yes, So we're we meet these characters and the whole thing is the characters who are coded poor are reproducing at a higher rate anyway. Then we meet Joe Bowers played by Luke Wilson.

He is an army librarian who has been selected to be used as a human guinea pig for a military experiment in which soldiers will be frozen and then on frozen at a later date to be used for future wars or something. I'm not really sure, but it's like that Chris what was that? Dogshit Chris Pratt? Like Amazon Prime movie was like the Tomorrow War. He was he was being deep frozen for Chris Pratt, the Tomorrow War. Yes, what was that? I know what you're talking about. I

didn't see it. Sorry, Sunny, Sunny. So Sunny's here right now and he is like looking at me, and I like we can communicate telepathically, and he is saying, you bitch. Comma Idiocracy is a documentary because well, yeah, I'm Sunny the dog fucking loves centrist. He won't back down. He won't back down. He's like, I tweeted it and I meant it. Sonny, you were wrong for that. Continue Okay.

So Joe is selected for this experiment because he has no family, and he's also just extremely average across the spectrum. They have also selected a woman for this experiment, a sex worker named Rita played by my Rudolph, and the plan is to freeze them both for one year uh and then on freeze them. But Officer Collins, the guy who is leading this experiment, is fired and the project is completely forgotten about. So Joe and Rita stay frozen for five hundred years while oh no, while society around

them descends into shambles. The cryopods that Joe and Rita were in ended up in a landfill, but a huge garbage avalanche shoots Joe's Paul Odd into the living room of Freedo played by Dax Shepherd. Kind of incredible. I don't have strong opinions on Dak Shepherd, but you're just like, but you see him in this role and you're like, yeah, that was good casting. Yes, look when we're not punching down because his his podcast is like nine times more

popular than ours. So right, relax, good job, Dax. Freedo is watching a show about a guy who is just hit in the balls repeatedly to give you an idea of what entertainment and pop culture is like in this society. Five years later, So Joe wakes up. He's all disoriented, and Friedo tosses him out onto the streets, and Joe stumbles around town. He notices that society has crumbled into quote unquote idiocracy, where where the restaurant form really known

as food ruckers is now called butt fuckers. Okay, try as I may. I can't not be like, Okay, I'm giggling. It's it's not a good joke. It's maybe the laziest joke of all time. And also because of the strong no homo energy to this movie, it feels but and then you're just also like, I mean, I just feel like you're given so little, so little things that I was laughing at. Yeah, I would say it's it's not a very good joke, and yet it's maybe one of the better jokes of this movie. Like to give you

an idea, Yeah, that's what I like. I just I feel like the bar is on the floor, and because it's Mike Judge, the bar is like beneath the crust of the earth. Like you're just like, but you know whatever, I think that this is interesting in the frame of being reactionary. Common terry from two thousand six, We'll get to how Mike Judge engages with people's modern takes on

idiocracy in a bit, because I think that's very interesting. Um, okay, okay, but so but fucker's As a restaurant, people mostly speak in unintelligible grunts. A green sports drink called Brondo comes out of water fountains instead of water. These are the things in society now. Joe doesn't feel well. He thinks he's hallucinating because of the drugs the army gave him, and he doesn't know that it's five years in the future. So he goes to a hospital five years of summer.

That's that's how I'm going to start describing global warming summer. Mm I like it. No, no, no, not to be joked around about. But yet, what are we supposed to do? Okay? We laugh, so we don't cry, right, and we still cry, and we still later at night when we're alone. So Joe goes to a hospital and sees doctor Justin Long. Oh my god. We've covered so many movies in the like mid to late two thousand's where Justin Long like is just becoming of is becoming an influencer of his time. Yeah,

I've come all the way around. I'm just like Justin Long kind of a cultural icon, whether I like it or not. I mean, I've seen the movie Tusk and it's the best movie ever made. Okay, I haven't seen the movie Touch, and that's my business. So Dr Justin Long realizes that Joe is unscannable because Joe doesn't have this like bar code tattoo that everyone in the future has. That was like one of the things that I was like, Okay, that's like it's an easy thing to guess at, but

it's not. You know, yeah, that that worked for me. So this leads Joe to finally realize what year it is and that it's like five years in the future. They're both freaking out and Joe runs away and then gets arrested because he didn't pay his hospital bill. So he's taken to court where his court appointed lawyer, Friedo, the guy whose apartment Joe crashed into, defends him, but he does a terrible job. Joe tries to plead his case and explain the army experiment, but no one takes

him seriously and he's found guilty. He is then given a tattoo like the bar code tattoo, and I D and then he's made to take i Q and aptitude tests. Kind of funny when he's called not sure, that as giggling, look, look it's still my judge jokes that was pretty good. Yeah, and they call him not sure. The whole movie pretty funny. So then he takes his tests and then he is sent to prison, but he's easily able to escape because

he is smarter than everyone there. And he goes back to Frido house and he's like, hey, Friedo, has anyone invented time travel? And Friedo's like, yeah, there's this time machine and Joe is like, okay, you have to take me there, So they head toward the time machine mcguffin time machine right. Meanwhile, Rita has also become unfrozen and is roaming the streets. She's kind of like scamming a guy out of a bunch of money who is trying

to pay for her sex work. Joe finds her and picks her up to take her to the time machine. To get there, they need to catch a shuttle from a huge costco, but the cops are chasing them because Joe escaped from prison, and they catch Joe before he's able to get on the shuttle. Quick quick interlude, Welcome to Costco, I love you funny, It's funny Yeah. And then the cops take Joe to the White House because the results of his i Q test caught the attention

of the highest levels of the U. S. Government. Because it turns out Joe is now the smartest man in the world. So President Camacho played by Terry Crews, comes in. He hires Joe as Secretary of the Interior and announces that he's going to have Joe fix all of society's problems,

like the failed economy and the dying crops. But Joe doesn't know what he's doing, and he's still trying to get to the time machine, so he has the other cabinet members bring Rita in, and then Joe and Rita try to run off, but then Joe notices that the crops are being watered with Brondo, that green sports drink stuff, and he tells everyone that they have to water the

crops with water. But because this doesn't work immediately, and because switching to water means that a lot of people who work for the Brondo Corporation have lost their jobs, people are furious at Joe and he is sentenced to one night of rehabilitation, which is actually Joe being put in a gladiator style arena, like allowing the government to run you over with the truck, which again is like

some of this entire works. That's funny when you see that, I mean, it's not, I mean, but it is kind of when you see that bizarro like shredder monster truck run over that guy, he just turns into dust. Like it's kind of wild, and like all the all the monster trucks are shaped like dicks, and there's just a bunch of like dick and dildo jokes, and I'm like, sure, sure, why not? Sure? Why not? Meanwhile, Rita notices that the crops are starting to grow and Joe's plan is working,

so she and Fredo rushed to the arena. Meanwhile, back in the arena, Joe manages to avoid being killed by the monster trucks and avoid being killed by this guy named Beef Supreme. A lot of very two thousand six special effects around at this yeah point in the movie. Yes, and then Rita and Friedo prove that the crops are growing are growing by broadcasting footage of the crops on the jumbo Tron so President Camacho pardons Joe and the day is saved. Rita decides to stay behind because she

was offered a CEO job at Starbucks. So then she and Joe say goodbye, and then Joe is about to go off to the time machine, but it turns out that the time machine is actually just a theme park ride and not a real time machine cannot go back into I was disappointed for Joe in that moment. I was like, that genuinely sucks that you have to live here. He really does. So he accepts a job as vice

president of the US. He eventually becomes president. He marries Rita and they have kids and they live happily ever after in a society that seems to continue to just descend further and further into shambles. So that was certainly something, Uh, shall we take a quick freak and have a panic attack and return. Let's do yeah, and we are back.

Boy oh boy. I feel like, okay, I do want to start by kind of addressing the elephant in the room, which I feel like is I mean, I don't want to say like this movies for me, this movie's biggest failure, because I feel like that is like a broad statement like for sure, like its biggest like plot structural failure, which again and I've heard this so whenever brief context, beginning basically when Donald Trump's um, I don't know why full named him, they're like but like beginning when Donald

Trump ever heard of him, he ruined our lives, um, but beginning when his candidacy became viable. I feel like that is when the idiocracy as a documentary idea sort of started coming, and even a little bit before that.

But I think that the big, the big like resurgence of like idiocracy as a documentary came when Donald Trump became a viable candidate because a lot of people saw the Terry Crews character, who is a professional wrestler who became president, reflected in Donald Trump, who is a failed son reality star who became president. This completely ignoring the fact that we already had elected an actor to be one of our worst presidents in the nineteen eighties. But whatever,

I guess we'll give it a pass. I wasn't around for the nineteen eighties, so I couldn't bitch about it. Um. In any case, fifteen was when this started to come up, So I was surprised when the central conceit of the movie. And again I've seen this has been more discussed in the past couple of years. Um, I want to shout out Sarah z incredible YouTuber and my bud who made a great video about this will link it in the description,

who kind of unpacks us to a larger extent. But um, basically, what is at the core of this movie is the concept that your i Q determines your deservedness to reproduce and the idea that it's just very like essentialist and that like this movie, I feel like it's the biggest failure is it ignores, kind of, with the exception of corporations, every structural problem that exists and instead redirects that anger

and resentment on poor people. And that is so like and it's like so many things and again it's like the corporate stuff is kind of exempt, which I think is an interesting reflection of like where the writer's minds were at at this time, because they recognize that, but they did not really like there's so many things that happened in this movie beginning with Okay, sorry, I'm just like already melting up. But like, let's talk about i

Q first. Because that's where the movie starts. It implies in the opening sequence, a sequence that rivals Midsummer for opening sequences that make me want to just explode. What makes me want to reflect a recent experience of mine put Dr Brauner's on my vagina by mistake. Look, I did not know that that you are not supposed to do that. And what a horrifying lesson. Dr Brauner's on my one clitter is unbelievable. Unbelievable, that of acid. So

I'm not laughing you. I'm just you're ready to laugh at me because I got into MENA and I did that, which is further proof that i Q is a false metric. You don't have to be smart and you don't even need to be able to read. The thing is like okay, but like okay, i Q is like it's implied in the opening sequence of this movie that people with lower i q s are the source of most societal ills. People with higher i q s are also being criticized here,

but in a very different way. We're like people with higher i q s are being criticized for being so

cautious that they refuse to reproduce. And I feel like both of these takes have aged very poorly, and the take towards people with lower i Q is much more harmful, but both of them are harmful, So I mean whatever, Like I've done a lot of research in the past about i Q and like I feel like it's pretty common knowledge at this point, but probably but was not common knowledge in two thousand and six that i Q is a deeply basically at this point useless metrics on

every front. It was invented by this French guy named Alfred Bennet to basically like use in schools for kids who were like to track their progress every so often. The idea is that i Q is not permanent. It was a way of sort of evaluating how schools were doing.

It wasn't a reflection on the individual. What it's heard in too was it was taken a hold by eugenicists, which are you know, like which is the school of thought that your intelligence can be determined by your gender, by your race, by your class, and that these are individual essentialist faults on people and have nothing to do

with systemic stuff. And so it's just like without giving the history of eugenics, but like i Q has been weaponized against a number of marginalized communities Over the years, it's been particularly black people have have had i Q weaponized against them Black Americans specifically. There's a really famous book from the nineties called The Bell Curve that it was a very popular book that just argued white Americans are simply smarter and they should be Like it's a

white supremacist text, but it was very popular. I mean it just it goes in all this stuff, like your skull shape determined whether you deserve to liver die it if you were anything but completely neurotypical, you are somehow less worthy to not just reproduce but live. So yeah, like it's it's just been used, it's been taken so wildly out of context from the reason it was created that it has literally it's not just marginalized and excluded people,

it's killed people. And it's now just now becoming a more common knowledge thing and is like that is slowing, but it's not stopping. And so all that to say, I'm not implying that I think that Mike Judge knew the history of this and did it anyways, based on his other work, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that this was kind of just like a lazy writing choice, but that as a base for your movie about the decline of society is just like just one of the worst takes you can have.

Like it's kind of stunning, Lee Bad. Here's my sorry I'm feel about I don't apologize. I've made a podcast about it two years ago. I don't really want to talk about it more. But like it's a whole thing. It is a whole thing, and it's a horrible basis for a movie, like you said, because there is a way to make a satirical movie about uninformed and regressive

ideology spreading and leading to the downfall of civilization. There's a way to do that that's thoughtful and effective as far as satire goes, and that doesn't demonize marginalized communities like people living in poverty, for example. But this movie doesn't do that because it's just making broad statements, like first of all, just that like some people are mart and other people are really stupid, and I'm trying to

avoid like ablest language on this episode. It's I feel like it's going to be difficult because leans into it very hard. So it's it's doing that. It is also coding those people in very particular ways, where again the quote unquote smart sensible people are coded as being upper middle class wealthy. Again, there's like that couple in the opening sequence according to the university, but don't like to talk about it, I renounced my master's degree. Um. They

that couple. According to IMDb, their character's names are yuppy husband and yuppy wife. So that just like gives you a sense which is like kind of funny because it's like, consider who is writing the movie. They would much more closely identify with the yuppie husband and yuppie wife than with the poor people. But they're still just like the trio. There's just a just like a complete void of empathy

for anyone but Luke Wilson in this movie. And sorry to say his name, Like I was like saying a slur, but like I what, I just whatever, I just it just doesn't work for me. So so it's this coding where you know, it's like the smart sensible people are rich and the quote unquote unintelligent people who multiply rapidly are clearly coded as being poor. And again on IMDb, that couple in this like opening montage their character's names

are trashy guy and slutty girl. There's a whole conversation that we'll have about like the way women are like disfranchised or not included at all, which which I will argue could be solid satire on a view of a dystopian future, but it doesn't seem like that is what they're doing. It's exactly. It is hard because this could easily be an episode that is like five hours long, and I don't want it because it's a short movie, mercifully, and we're trying to make episodes that are not longer

longer than the movie. But this movie is hard because it's it's loaded with a lot of stuff. And so I think the main things and I would say that the people who are poor in the opening sequence, and basically most of the people from the future are coded in the same way to different degrees of aggression. So

I'm just started talking about everybody there. But it was like bizarrely very American in that it's making all of these like bad quote choices seem like they are made completely by the individual and so that they can be

held complete. And so that is like the way the systemic but it's like that ranges in so many different ways where it's like it's not addressed that poor people have less access to birth control, to sex education in two abortions if they want them, and in terms of religion, like tend to be rather religious communities, and so it's like huge elements that are completely wiped and it's just made to seem like, oh, well, no, they are just

so chaotically horny that they cannot help but proliferate. Like it's just like it's so frustrating it is. It's like it's very I don't know, it's very two thousand six. And then when you fast forward to the future and then you see people who, first of all, I just am like, as a reality TV watcher, I object, and also I think that that again like ignores it's like, oh, people want to see people get kicked in the nuts, which,

first of all, yes, none of your business. Second of all, does nothing to address why those programs appear and why they're the most easily accessible programs in the fucking country. And it's like you have to pay to watch the fucking Soprano or whatever, or like whatever the grad school crowd is watching, and so it doesn't address any of

the systemic like why are these programs so popular? Could it be possibly because they are the most accessible programs, and that is not the fault of the people who cannot afford to pay for five hundred other channels. Like it's just it ignores things on every single level. And then we'll get to like fucking prisons and governments, like oh, yeah, we are just simply not smart enough to know how prisons work. And it's like, no, that's how prisons are

designed to work. Like it just makes me. It just ignores that so many of these issues are by design and not out of individual failings from people that are being intentionally disenfranchised. That is the entire premise of them. Like that's the commentary this movie is making. And it's so backwards, because yeah, it's like you said, it just fails to recognize the lack of access and opportunities you

experience when you live in poverty. It fails to recognize that poverty is a cruel cycle that is nearly impossible to escape because of things like capitalism and racism and able is m and all these other systemic issues. It fails to It suggests that again, like poor people multiply for fun and not because there are multiple structures designed to keep poor people poor so that their labor can

be exploited by the ruling class. Like well, and then women, I mean, and it also like doubles down on and this feels slightly more intentional at least, but like women are sex objects only, and I feel like that's maybe a more arguable point because it feels like they're at least more consciously making that point and they're just not doing it very well. But like it's it just kind of on all fronts. It's just recasting systemic issues to be personal failings is just like the shittiest kind of

satire for me. And it doesn't even mean that, like, you know, it's not to say that like individuals who are being actively marginalized and other can't hugely funk up. That's obviously true. We've all got parent but that's not But but that is not the rhetoric of this movie at all. It's like the systemic issues are not at the top of this movie. It's like people are just not smart enough to know better. It's a very two

thousand and six way of looking at the world. So yes, instead of there being any of that recognition of systemic oppression and there being any thoughtful commentary on, you know, the capitalist machine and all of its repressive systems. Again, this movie just makes fun of poor people and relies on ablest language and homophobic slurs mostly for the humor of the movie. And it's like that sort of stuff is very like very two thousand and six, and I

feel like it's mostly used for shock value. It just doesn't feel satirical remotely. And it's like, it's just like, can you believe that we're using these like slurs over and over and over and it's because poor people suck. You're just like I hate every part of this, Like what I hate every part of this. It's real crummy. Let's take a quick break and then come back for

more discussion and we're back. So sorry, I yelled out a lot of my frustrations with this movie, I think in terms of the so we've talked a lot, but at this point, how the lower classes are made to seem like the source of all evil, which it okay, that is the place from which we're coming, but in the future, it seems like the issues that the writers have with poor people in two thousand five have become the entire culture, and so now people with all levels

of money and power behave exactly like how two writers and two thousand and five, who were rich at the time of writing it perceived poor people. And again it's like, uh, I really like my John and I think that he's made great stuff before this and after, and this is just a really frustrating piece of work to look at. This was his flop era. I guess this was his flop era, but it was later. We'll get to this in second, like it was later spun to seem like

his his his what's the opposite of flop? His masterpiece? And that's like because there were genuinely a lot his

top era. Sorry I just thought of that his top era, but like because there were whatever, the history of this production was like it became a cult classic, like a lot of Mike Judge stuff because it was considered too offensive into like specific audience e to release widely, and so I feel like it it got this like you know, kind of like punk credibility before it even came out, because it was like, oh, this is the movie studios

don't want to release. And I understand that element of like that is a really quick way to make a cult classic, especially from someone who's already made cult classics. But then you watch it and you're just like not to you know whatever, Like it's it's it's pointless to have an argument of like, I agree with the student you because I'm sure the reason the studio had for not wanting to release him widely I would not agree with.

But I'm also like not upset that this wasn't the most popular movie in the world, because I don't want to like its politics are very dated anyways, fastward to the future. Everyone has the exact opinions of Eton Cohen and Mike Judge's opinion of poor people in two thousand

and five. Okay, so what this does is, I feel like in the upper classes of the future, it further erases again with like the bizarre exception of corporations, which they seem very aware of, ignores everything else, examples being the House of Representation, where it's portrayed that the it's not that the American government is designed to oppress people, it's that the people in the American government are just not smart enough to know how to provide justice to people,

which is again, basically no one was talking about this in two thousand six because it was like these two writers were considered to be on the cutting edge in two thousand six and they clearly didn't know. So again it's like, don't punish yourself in the past, but in the present moment, it's like, well that is not true, like they're it's intentional that they're taking our rights away,

there is an end game in mind. It's not that they're not smart enough to know better, and that that same ethos is applied to the prison system, which is again egregious because it's like, Ben need us to tell you how implicitly and intentionally racist and classist the prison system is in the US. But again it's the way that it's portrayed is like, well, we don't know, we don't know any better, like we're just we're just we didn't get enough math classes, like to you're just like

this is ridiculous. And the same applies to the way the police are. Like the police are of the three, I feel like at least they are shown as like absurdly violent and absurdly reactionary in a way that I would agree with. But again it's like portrayed, not because that is like endorsed and always has been in the in American policing. It's like it's because the individual people are so ridiculous and you're like no, but it's they

are empowered to act that way. Like it's just there's no systemic criticism except for corporations, and so the corporation stuff weirdly, for the most part, for me, it works, Yeah, so I think, and that is best exemplified by the Brondo thing. But there's also like Carl's Jr. Is now running like child Protective Services, and I thought that was kind of funny, and the whole the drive thru has like a gas they can shoot in your face to

like dissociate you, like that kind of stuff. I was like, I thought that that was like more effective and it felt very very intentional, like you were an unfit mother, your children will be repossessed by Carls Jr. Like that for two thousand six satire. That worked for me, right, But then there's other stuff where like you can go to Starbucks and get like an erotic massage, which felt

like shamy of sex work. And there's the whole conversation to be had about that and also implies that the lower classes, or just like poor people in general, are again it like goes into what we were talking about earlier. I like the way the opening sequence divides classes is like people with more education and money not horny. People with less education and the money so horny they cannot help but have a trillion kids, which is again unfair

to both parties. Like you know, we started like it's like, you know, people of all classes who are all manners of horny. Like it's so like obviously reductive of people like to say that your class determines how your are sexual, like how much you want to reproduce, Like it's just like it feels like silly to even say out loud

because it's so ridiculous. And I feel like the future furthers that logic of like what Mike Judge and Eton Cohen thought of poor people in two thousand five, which is that they are like so uneducated that they cannot control themselves, which again you're just like pull that goes into the future of like, oh, they just are so horny they want they want hand jobs as star books. And it's like not only like you're saying that's shamey

to sex work. But it's also just like reductive of poor people in the way that the movie is from moment one, Like it's just just reinforces that. Yeah. So so some of it works, some of it doesn't. But the Brondo thing I think works the best where there's voice over that I'll basically just like say verbatim here where it is said that water was considered a threat to Brondo's profit margin, so Brondo came to replace water everywhere, it's basically except for like in toilets it seems, which

is also pretty funny. But the Brondo Corporation bought the f d A and then the FCC, enabling them to say do and sell anything they wanted, which is, you know, pretty I think a pretty effective commentary on the way that like corporate takeover is constantly happening in this country and how you know capitalism is going to be the

death of assault. And then because the way it manifests in this movie is that they're watering crops with Brondo, which is full of electrolytes, which is basically just pumping salt into the ground where plants can no longer grow, and then it's leading to this dustpol where everyone's going

to starve to death. So and I appreciate that it took the further step of like, even if you resolved that issue by using water, that would collapse the economy because of how the economy was built around one corporate entity, and like, yeah, that kind of like the corporate stuff worked really well, and it's it's just wild that they

took that energy to specifically one sector. But again, I feel like that is very indicative of Bush era satire, where and I do think that George W. Bush, who is you don't need me to tell you he's a war criminal. He's a war criminal. But at the time, and even I remember my perception of him as a kid was that he was not smart, and so his decisions that were actively harming people in America and people outside of America. Certainly he started sucking wars, but it

was because he couldn't say nucle hear correctly. It wasn't because of all these systemic issues. And so I feel like that is a lot of the logic and energy that this movie is drawing on is like how people perceived George W. Bush specifically at this time, which is like he is abusing people in and outside of his country because he doesn't know better, when the reality is he knew exactly what he was doing because he was a nepotism piece of ship who was continuing the war

that his father started. And so it's like there is no question that like he do what he was doing, you know. But but it was But what the sat fire of the time focused on more was like it was it was just like kind of picking on Southern American of like, oh, I don't like how he says this word versus like he is continuing a war that has nothing to do with what he says it, like

he knew what he was doing. Whatever. This is not a controversial opinion, Like, no, we're saying this here on the heready here first on the back podcast, beloved American President George W. Bush and beloved American painter while we're at it, um there. Obviously he's a piece of ship. But I just think that the way and he was he was considered a piece of ship by a large

portion of the country throughout his presidency. But it was like the ways that people made fun of him that I feel like informed the direction of the satire of this movie. And it just feels like, while it's like the rage at him couldn't be more justified, the like the vantage why people are coming in at is like

very misdirected. And I feel like we sort of had a resurgence of this a lot during the Trump presidency where it was and it's like, I'm sure we fucking engaged with us to something like we were certainly there. Like Trump is like not a smart person, I would say, very true, but does he know exactly what he's doing when he's perpetuating systemic issues A hundred and so it's like not the question of like I don't like this

guy because he don't talk smart enough for me. It's like like, take a step back, and this movie doesn't take a step back except for Brando. It's so weird.

It is so weird. So yes, the kind of biases that the movie is leaning into, as far as like being antipore, extends to other things such as setism and racism, because like I homophobia and homophobia, right, I think a lot of the characters who are you know, quote unquote idiots who are populating this idiocracy in the year five, are playing into again not only classist stereotypes, but racist stereotypes and sexist stereotypes, because a lot of the women

that you see, not that there are many on screen, but the few women with speaking roles who are in this movie usually are characterized as bimbos, like the attorney general or like the women who are hanging around the president. They are like dressed provocatively and you know, just again this like quote slutty bimbo type and that is like again the filmmakers just bias against any sexually liberated woman

or sex worker. And this is this is an element of the movie that I think could have worked, Like implying that the future of America is wildly sexist and hateful towards sex work is I don't even think a

controversial take that is where the is currently headed. But unfortunately, the way the movie has written just seems to like say, like, yeah, this society treats women like bimbos who deserve no respect because that is what they because and like that is how they are behaving, and it seems like they have

no cognizance of how they're being march. It just doesn't feel like it's satire, Like it just feels like doing the thing I feel like, especially with my Rudolph's character, like, so it's it's weird because I could see someone making the argument that, well, yeah, the care ters are using all this homophobic and ablest language because you know, that's what a devolved society would do, and that's the satire, that's the commentary. But you don't get to have that happened.

And then I just feel like the commentary is and actually being made. I mean it's not and it's like I understand why they thought it was maybe, but it's also like a you're operating from like even the found the foundation of the premise is so flawed that it's like you can't really address specific issues based on the idea of like well, no one is smart enough to

realize what they're doing. And it's like, well, how could you address any systemic issue if this movie does not recognize systemic issues as a concept, Like it just recognizes all systemic issues as as it applies to poor people. And then it's like, oh, well, women are treated as bimbos because there bimbos because and like Maya Rudolph is not like the other girls, but also she's kind of

like the other girls. Okay, can we talk about my Rudolph's characters, because I I do appreciate that by the end of the movie, and I mean the end of the movie, she is more motivated. She rests, you know, in the terms of like classic special cast discussion, she

saves the male protagonist of the movie. You know, like she is active in helping to resolve the conflict of the film, at least the one that ends up getting presented, because like half way through the movie, it's like, and now the conflict is crops and it's like, okay, yeah, but for most of the movie that isn't even the issue, So she becomes involved in what eventually ends up like

you're just like becoming the issue of the movie. And it would have been interesting if that was the whole premise of the movie, because that was giving me Mary kay naturally passport to Paris vibes. Um. Okay, be guys as part at any point in this episode, you were wrong because that I was like, Okay, they more effectively resolved a national water crisis issue than anyone, Like I mean, I'm wanting to bring up a movie like don't look up as being more effective. I don't want to talk

about don't look up because I didn't like it. I want to talk about Passport to Paris because I did, like I'm so sorry, and Mary Kidd and actually resolved France's water access issues in the and they got to kiss their crushes like perfect story. Could you, even in your entire life, say that, No, I can't. All I

did was the Dr Brauner's directly under my vagina. I can't do what they do Dr Brando, Dr Brando's acidic waste onto my and it's it's he said, the injury with the doctor Broder's issue because the bottle is covered in words. And then I looked after after the throbbing had stopped, and I will say I was taking a shower with someone who I liked. Oh sexy. Oh, I mean speaking of horny ist time. We're all having a horny time when I when I say, when I tell

you this was not recent. But anyways, I read the bottle hours later and the words, the warning I needed was there, but it was buried in like weird o garbage. Anyways, where was that? An idiocracy? Um could have been helpful. All that to say, like this movie, it starts to make a criticism, but then says like, well, but insert a press class here is basically like that anyways, So and then you're just I don't like, it's just bizarre.

It does feel like I don't know I I And if you were older than us, which might not be possible we're quite old, um, but if you were older than us, feel free to wait in like my interpretation and a lot of his reflection because I was like when our kid throughout the bush years, but my interpretation of a lot of this just based on like I whatever, grew up watching John Stewart with my aunt, Like my aunt was very into this brand of comedy, and so that was primarily through her that I would see it.

And it felt very like allied with Democrat senators and lawmakers in a way that is largely for a lot of leftists no longer true. Is like at this point, I feel like it's very I mean, it was like not that it wasn't known by people in the mid two thousands, but it is larger known now that like democrats measures and lawmakers are also largely fucking you over,

but they're just like smiling while they do it. But at this time it felt like democrats or just generally center to left leaning politicians were not on the chopping block to be criticized. And that's because that it doesn't really come up like you do. I thought you got like a pretty effect of like Fox News early Fox News commentary here of like it's just like sexy naked people talking nonsense, which is like that's a lot of what Fox News is, and like it's it's not based

in facts. It's very visual medium. Um. But you do not get the other side of that because I think at the time the writers of the movie would have agreed with like centrist propaganda MSNBC vibes, you know stuff. I'm I'm de radicalizing my mommy from wowow Jill's working. No, it is working. She no longer brings out her MSNBC mom mug when I am visiting. I think she's starting to be embarrassed at it, and rightfully so she listens

to the show. Hi Jill, Hi Jill. Um. I wanted to go back to read a real quick where so, as you said, she's absent for a large chunk of the movie, but then she does become active in the resolution and she helps to again resolve this like crop thing she has agency in those few scenes, but prior to that, she is almost indistinguishable from the other characters who are also supposed to be the quote unquote idiots, because she, for example, she cannot grasp the idea that

her pimp, this guy named Upgrade, would be dead and would have died five years earlier, kind of thing, like she spent so much of the movie looking for this character that, Like, it's so frustrating because the movie, I think, to its credit, does introduce Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph as like characters with very different backgrounds who are of

equal intelligence. That is why they're being selected first. And so to fast forward five years and have him be able to understand the fact that time has passed and her n to understand that is ridiculous. Doesn't make any sense. And it's also suggesting. I feel what's being stated here by the filmmakers is, well, of course she's not smart,

she's a sex worker. Like it's just casting judgment on well, yeah, and it's like and also the only thing that's on her mind is her loyalty and or fear of her pimp. And it's like and and this like slowly disappears throughout the plot, but it's not motivated by anything, like it's just slowly or if it's motivated by anything, it's by the fact that she's developing a crush on Luke Wilson for no right. So that's the other thing where she

becomes Joe's love interest. He poop because if a man and woman are the two leads of a movie, they legally have to get together. By the end you were alive and two five you have to get married. Heads have to fuck. Initially, they're just acquaintances because they're both participating in this experiment, and then when they're both in five they link back up. He's trying to basically rescue her and bring her along so that they can time

travel when he thinks that's possible. I would say this, my favorite scene of this movie is when Joe is trying to makes sense of time travel. That was commentary on time travel narratives that I thought was the commentary. That was good. I like that a lot. This movie does have its moments which almost makes it more frustrating, and they're like I would keep like a solid seven minutes of this movie and then the rest is trash um.

But yeah, so they link back up and they're they're trying to escape, and then things start to get flirty when they're at the White House, and well for it, before that, he has to pretend like they're going to have sex with each other so that they can actually go off and plan their escape. And that, to me, that worked because he's not actually trying to like exploit

her or have sex with or anything like that. That didn't work for me because I felt like it was implied that he was inherently of like he's a good guy because he's not trying to assault her. You're like, that doesn't mean that it makes anything. They would be together, like, right, that doesn't justify why they end up together, right, I mean in terms of the plot, right, it makes sense.

But then things do start to get flirty, like when they're at the White House and she's like, you know, you don't have to sleep on the floor, you can sleep in the bed with me, and he's like, and he so his whole thing, he never understands that she's a sex worker through the entire movie and possibly through

their entire marriage question mark, and we don't clear. Yeah, he thinks that she's a painter, So maybe you could make the argument like, yeah, she's not smart enough to understand that her pimp has been dead for five centuries. He is not smart enough to notice that Rita is

a sex worker. Question mark. None of it worked. I did just no. But eventually they get married and he and Rita becomes his first lady because he becomes president, and it's just like, of course this would happen in a movie from two thousand six where a man and a woman have to romantically end up together at the end.

I think it would have been more I mean, there's so many more interesting ways to take that where it's like if you're the only to like, even if you are going from the fucking baseline weirdo eugenicis logic that this movie depends on to happen. I just feel it would be more fun to see two characters who are from the same era and are like considered intellectually superior, like in conflict with each other, which these two never are.

They're never in conflict with each other. I understand that it's like they have a vested interest in banding together, but it's just like her character has never taken seriously enough to really develop any sort of side plot of her own, Like if you just like let go of the fact that, like if you just allowed her to understand where she was, things could have become so different, Like she could have allied with a different side of

the fucking future conflict then Luke Wilson did. They could have been political rivals, they could have been like so many different things could have happened other than like she has no idea where she is, and then at the last second, she's like, I have a crush on you, Like that's like the most boring thing that could possibly happen.

That said, Luke Wilson's character, like you're just implying, is also very boring and hard to root for, and he's like such a straight I mean, it's not Luke Wilson's fault, but it's like that character is such a straight man that you're like, who fucking cares right, gives a ship?

This man is so boring. And then there's this like running joke where she is tricking this guy into giving her money on the promise that sometime in the future she will do something sexual with him, which just makes her seem kind of like deceitful, and I mean, I don't always saw honest. That didn't really bother me. I'm just like, yeah, I think Hanning a future man. I

don't really care because she has to like survive. It only bothered me because I think that you could someone watching this might draw connection between because she's a sex worker, like, oh, like this is what sex workers do. They try to, like I don't know, cheat you out of your money, or they're dishonest or they're something like that. And that's

what rubbed me the wrong way. Yeah, yeah, I feel like there's there's a few ways to come at that, because I was also like, well, she's money and this person is Um has money and she needs to survive. I wanted to quickly talk about how my judge talks about this movie now, and by now, I mean sort of like the way that in The Idiocracy is a documentary era, so the last eight years. So he said this in an interview with The Daily Beast. Let me

just quickly trick the year on this. Okay, early Trump era, um, and this is him commenting on what then was already a very common idiocracy as a documentary tweet vibes God so boring. Okay, So he he says in quote three or four years ago, I started getting comments about it, people discovering it, and it just keeps building. Now every other Twitter comments I get is about Idiocracy and how

the documentary. Now, at first I was thinking, yeah, that's nice to hear, but then very specific things like Carl's Jr. Announcing that they were going to have a completely robotic, non employee store, and that's Carl's Jr. In the movie. Then there's this thing called the Filatio Cafe in Switzerland where you get blow jobs with coffee, and we had the Starbucks thing in there. And then Donald Trump being in the WWF before and talking about his penis size.

It's just one specific thing after another unquote. Now I will not argue with the like technical factual truth of what he's saying, but like I feel like the reason people say Idiocracy documentary has more to do with hyper specifics like that versus the foundation of the world that's built in the movie that has I would argue, little to nothing to do with what we are dealing with now. And also also, I mean to say, Ata said hilarious to think that we're going to exist in five years,

but I kept having that thought. I'm like we're all going to be fucking dead. The environment will not sustain life because of how badly we've fucked it up. Awesome, Uh, but you know whatever, appreciate the optimism, um, but ultimately, you know, like I, I just think it's it's a bummer because I do appreciate the filmmaker that it's like.

And I wonder if in the future he will push back on this very persistent idea because I feel like people are repeated, like I wouldn't really care as much if this was like a movie that no one saw in two thousand and six and people still like no one really saw it, because then you're just like, well,

it's a victimist crime, you know. Like, but because people are continually pushed to this movie as an example of like, this is what's wrong with America, when I, when I just outside of the corporate criticism, was not getting a lot of what appears to actually be wrong, right, Like, just feels like an annoying, distracting, victim blamey approach to

cultural criticism. And I wonder if and it's one thing, it's like, Okay, if you were a filmmaker in two thousand six, just reflect on that that's all you can really do at this point, and I would I would be interested to see if he ever kind of reflects on the criticism of yeah, because it's very frustrating to be living today in a society where period period, end of thought, no, but like our rights are actively being

taken away. There's talk of how the Supreme Court is going to continue to keep taking away the right to

get marriage, like like all this stuff. I was talking talking about this with my best friend recently about how like good news days from the past, like couple decades, it's only been good news days because it's just like, wow, this right that people should have had all along, finally is a right that people have officially it's been codified, right, So like, but then you've got your bad news days where it's like, oh, yeah, Roe v. Wade overturned and

now abortion is criminalized and gay marriage might be criminalized, and you just like all these horrible things and um, what was my point? So it's just like so frustrating to like, I mean, and that's just the fucking tip of the iceberg, just like systemic racism and policing and all just every societal ill stuff that has never been

like significantly legally challenged. Right, It's just like we're getting a lot of rights overturned, but there's also a lot of stuff that never even gotten Right, there's this a whole slew of like oppressive societal issues that we're dealing with every day. And then for people to compare that to this movie, which just blames poor people for the

decline of civilization, it's very of the age. And I know that, like sometimes we get criticism for like examining older movies from a current lens, but I mean, even in the two thousand six lens, like this was very much Again, it's like we're not saying that this movie was unusual for its time. And I do vary strongly feel that like this type of comedy it's time. It's

not whatever. There's like art isn't useless, it's not like but I do think that you can trace this era of satire's role in a kind of like unproductive energy with with people that a lot of people recognize and are like not engaging with. There's not a ton of like I feel like, I mean, even just like the fact that Bill Maher is the only person from this era that is still doing the same ship he was in two thousand six, and now most of his original

viewers fucking hate him. So I feel like that, like he is the case study for like people don't like this anymore and the people who like this are like weirdo doubling down assholes, Like this type of comedy doesn't really exist anymore in a popular sense, but the fact that this was popular in its time does leave a legacy.

And the way that like the comedy that we were doing, you know, five to ten years ago, in the comedy we're doing now will leave a legacy and it's not all going to be great, And it's like, you know, the older I get that where it's like you can't I mean, you can't take back your funck ups. All

you can do is address and not endorse them. And it feels like that is kind of like what the filmmakers of this movie have done by not wishing back against the idiocracy as a documentary thing, right, Yeah, they're just kind of patting themselves on the back for being like awesome movie. I predicted a coffee shop that gives out blow jobs, which what's wrong with that anyway? Not an indicator of the downfall of society. Um, do you

have anything else to talk about? No, I think this movie had its heart in the right place, but it like it just I really, I think it's aged extremely poorly and I don't like it at all. Agree and right, Yeah, Like we understand the cultural landscape informing the media and the satire at the time, and sometimes it does feel weird to criticize a movie that's a product of its environment from like almost two decades ago, but that's also our job. Anyway, The movie I don't think passes the

Bechtel test. I don't think so either. I don't think women interact at any point, and if they do, I didn't notice it. But what about our nipple scale, in which we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on how does it do when looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens? And I would give this movie not good. I'll give it a half nipple because I do think it gets the kind of like capitalist consumersm

commentary more right than anything else. But that should have been one of many things that gets acknowledged and commented on. The movie ignores and instead blames the downfall of society on poor people. Yeah, and that sucks so and then again, just like all of the the classist, the ablest, the racist, the sexist coding of the characters is really shitty. One half nipple. I'll give it to my Rudolph, whose talents in this movie are squandered, because she is far better

than what this movie suggests. She's the best. Um, I'm going to give a zero because I didn't like it to piss me off, So I guess I have nothing else to say. I just like I do. I do agree that the corporate criticism is valid. There were jokes in this movie that made me laugh, Like, there are jokes in this movie that I'll probably return to. It would be like that was a funny thing. But it's just the premise of this movie is so frustrating to me that I and I have no nostalgic attachment to it.

So I'm gonna give it zero. And so I have no nipples to give, and I, um, if anything to end not a positive, No, I do feel like you're like, oh, there is actually a huge market right now for effective satire. UM, and there's I think most of it is happening currently in TV. But there is a lot of good satire of American politics and American dystopia that are coming out. I do want to say that, like it's not that you know, idiocracy being like kind of shitty means that

American satire is dead. It just means like this one aged very poorly, but the genre has continued. There's no you know, lack of inspiration to pull from, and it is a genre that is like kind of gone on, I think, to to develop and grow in a very

interesting way. And also I think that satire has everything to do with the point of view of who's writing it, and so having more satire that is not written by already powerful straight says white Guys is always going to be a good thing, and that we have a lot more of that now and there's still obviously room for more. But I do think that this genre like is a very like satire, like good satire, and like timeless satire is like really really hard to do. Um true, because

which is why this movie didn't do it. It worked at the time, it does not work work now. So zero nipples hated it. Um let's end the episode. Let's stop the fourth of July, just kidding, Abolish the Supreme Court of Shitty Country. Anyways, and watch z Way. I think Way is doing some of my favorites. She's doing some of the American satire right now. Yeah, like she's the best. Yeah. With with that in mind, satire historically does not age particularly well. This is not a personal

attack or indictment on Mike Judge. This movie did not age well at all. I don't think it's any any longer really valuable satire to reflect on where America is at, and it probably wasn't at the time either, but that's kind of no one's business at this point because it's the future. So with that in mind, uh, we love you. Keep fighting, keep taking care of yourself, and we will be right there with you doing the same. The fourth of July is a waste of your time. But if

you want a hot dog, bioll means get one. I think this episode comes out like three days after well then fuck you know there. Look, there's no wrong time to eat a hot dog, is what I'm saying. And so for the fourth of July too, have co opted hot dog culture in this way I think is a net negative. But you know whatever, all press is good press for for for the hot dog, of course, so you can follow us online at Bechtel Cast. On Instagram and Twitter. You can follow our Patreon ak Matreon at

patreon dot com. Slash Bechtel Cast is currently Minions March A k A. What was the Gruella um Corrella Stevil? There's two options ends, Yeah, it's either grew la Stevel or Yeah, we're doing to Steve Corral movies. So we're doing forty year Old Virgin, a very very popular request. People wanted to hear us get upset about it and boy did wait and uh we're also doing a millions

episode which is just I can't wait. Um, so go over there, and we have over a hundred bonus episodes to listen to, just me and Caitlin, shouldn't the ship having fun? And and also our March at t public dot com slash the Bectel Cast for all of your merchandising needs and otherwise, um yeah, take care of yourselves and what are your crops with toilet water exactly? Bye bye bye