Once again Mike Judge’s social acumen on stupid rings true in this movie. While not the funniest movie nor even being that funny of a movie, the social criticism in this movie is what made me fascinated. Essentially, Mike Judge is arguing that as a species humans are becoming dumber. While we are advancing elements of technology like the internet, the vast majority of our efforts are spent towards cheap entertainment while our interactions are becoming cruder and very primordial.
It’s completely fathomable of this dystopian future that Judge is predicting in this movie. He sees humanities incline towards decadence and barbarism as the primary reasons for the fall of humanity. The first scene establishes this dichotomy where we have two couples: 1) the rationale, intelligent and extremely modern type and 2) the alpha male Jersey Shore type that you find in a fraternity or football team. The rationale intelligent couple fears the economy and prohibits having children for a while. Unfortunately, their decisions for abstinence leads towards a tragic ending for their lineage as the husband meets a fatal end while the wife continually hopes for the perfect man. On the other hand, the imbecile couple breed quite frequently, eventually creating a huge tree of people that dominate society.
Even now, we can both situations occurring. For instance, in Japan the population is in a steep decline even being threatened for extinction. The thing about the Japanese is that they’re fairly smart on average as a society but the recent economic downturn has created fears for having families. But if you check out our own society at the poverty levels, you can see mass breeding. Similarly, the women’s movement can be partly to blame for the instillation of the whole “perfect man” scenario, where those with the highest (theoretical) qualities are the ones desirable, leaving intelligent ones (i.e. those that do not possess the most physically attractive traits) to remain solo.
Beyond that, the heavily advertised and corporate run world are underlying causes for the resulting decline in civilization. The Brawndo conglomerate is seen to have bought out the FDA and other agencies that regulate our health and food systems. Because of the mass employment by Brawndo and the blind fealty to their stock prices, a deadly circular chain is erected where people are too stupid to realize how Brawndo is killing the environment and destroying people’s health.
Although the movie is fiction, you cannot deny the parallels between that aspect and corporations like McDonalds, etc. who evidently have their hands deep in the backside of groups like the FDA to allow their unsavory products and methods of production to exist.
I think one of the interesting things about the film is how Judge does not attempt to directly point the finger at any individual but at humans on a whole. Some people might attempt to knock on so-called secret societies like the Illuminati or Bilderberg group as having setup this global catastrophe. Quite the contrary with Judge where he more than likely, realistically and correctly faults human inhibition as the number one source where all these problems are derived.
In many ways, Mike is correct with where he caustically aims his sights. At the end of the day, people are ultimately responsible for their own actions. If you examine the scenes of the trial and Not Sure’s Rehabilitation scene, the entire thing is setup as a one way spectacle, a catharsis for everyone except Not Sure and behaves like a reading from Orwell’s 1984 regarding the whole 2 minute hate acts. Here, no one attempts to listen to reason and instead revert to primordial instincts of brutality to achieve their momentary relief. However, only Not Sure, as the average Joe, does something different: he accepts responsibility and assumes the blame.
To me Mike is making an overt statement that people are simply reverting to a primitive period. Self sacrifice is considered noble, similar to how in the movie Prometheus, the engineers would sacrifice themselves to bring about prosperity. This is a direct message to the average person, a plea to get off their asses and make positive changes in the world, even small ones to prevent the human race as a whole from entering into this pathetic theoretical world.
As someone who has preached for years on the need to remove myself from the masses, I certainly align myself with Mike’s vision. I already see too many parallels and it scares me. For instance, the worship of stupidity and the degradation of intelligence as being “faggotry.” Add to the self indulgence we’re not that far from this end point.