I recently watched the movie Idiocracy, a middling satire where an average guy is cryogenically frozen then wakes up 500 years later and finds that western society has become so stupid that he's now the world's smartest man. One of the best examples is a family restaurant called Fuddrucker's eventually evolves into Buttfucker's. The #1 movie in the nation is Ass, a two-hour shot of a person's ass and Ow, My Balls! is a wildly popular TV show.
Fox, which distributed the movie, pretty much buried the thing. If it hit the theatres here, it was probably in and out in the blink of an eye. But it's not because it’s a bad movie; hell, way worse pieces of shit become blockbusters. It's because it's scary as hell.
Dystopian stories have long been popular fiction fodder. Look at Children of Men, V for Vendetta, Logan's Run, Blade Runner, Soylent Green, Brazil, Escape from New York – these are (mostly) well-regarded dystopian tales. But Idiocracy blows them all out of the water because it's far and away the most plausible.
In the last couple of months, I've gotten a frightening look at how stupid our culture is becoming. That's right, I got cable TV.
Aside from maybe visiting Cambodia, it's one of the most unsettling things I've seen in quite some time.
I can't say it's overwhelmingly shocking, since no one expects TV to be some sort of educational device. I mostly got it so I could watch more Raptors games this season. But even the ostensibly intelligent programming has disappeared.
On Remembrance Day this year, I had my own moment of silence by sleeping until close to 11 a.m. I snapped on the TV at 11 and flipped over to the History Channel to see what they're showing at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the precise moment when the First World War finally ended. A war which changed the world as we know it, a black mark in human history. What did they have on?
CSI: New York.
Apparently it was the day for remembrance of fictional murder victims and honouring their memory with forensic skills that track down their killers.
Of course, being the responsible and conscientious reporter that I am, I wouldn't just use this one example to condemn the whole channel. It's more the straw that broke the intelligent camel's back. Prior to Remembrance Day, the last three times I switched to the History Channel, it was airing movies: The Fugitive, Twelve O'Clock High and The Quick and the Dead. Exactly how does a God-awful girl-power western with Sharon Stone and Leo di Caprio count as history?
But hey, at least there's another entire channel devoted to intelligent fare right? God bless The Learning Channel! It has all you could ever want to learn about weddings, babies, house-flipping, babies, nannies and house-flipping.
Oh wait, that's not fair. They also show What Not To Wear, which is wholly educational.
It makes little difference to me that these idiots choose to fling their credibility out the window; it's their product to run into the ground if they want to and to some extent, I don't blame them. These be lean times and intelligent programming doesn't pull in as many viewers as something with lots of tits and explosions.
(Full disclaimer here: I like tits. And explosions. I didn't get cable just to watch documentaries about Proust or question period. I like a good action movie and sometimes you just want to veg out in front of the tv and watch something brainless. But TV is full of brainless content. Can't there be a least a few stations that have something better?)
It probably makes me a bit of an elitist, but a small part of me resents that idea that these channels show brainless content while also bolstering egos. Showing piss like The Quick and the Dead allows Little Johhny Mouth-breather to sit at home and fap to Sharon Stone, but he can still say he spent the afternoon watching The History Channel. It's already hard enough to be a teacher without mass media dumbing down the concepts of what "educational" really means. This society of ours already re-brands everything (retarded = special, fat = big-boned, etc) so that nobody gets offended, but we have to draw the line somewhere. I'd draw it at calling stupid "smart."
