Idiocracy - new Mike Judge movie in superlimited release

???

also, when I watched the show regularly(years back), Khan was the best character w/ the best lines.

adam beales did you ever seen the one where hank is worried hes a racist because ladybird keeps reacting violently to the repairman played by bernie mac? or the one with chris rock where bobby writes a bunch of 'black people drive like THIS!' jokes?

PEGGY: I'll tell you something right now: We cannot afford to have that dog running amok, biting every black person she sees. It makes us look like a bunch of ignorant rednecks. Oh, and it's bad for black people too.

BOBBY: You're so lucky, Connie, you're ethnic. Joseph and I are just nothing. We're just white and boring.
JOSEPH: Yeah.

Still, I'm not gonna argue this any further. I can't imagine it going well.

though i can understand if, like adam beales, you have never actually paid any attention to anything hes done before, that the half-assed treatment of maya rudolph & scarface could seem like it (my big draw to the film = mike judge directs film starring maya rudolph & scarface)

I always thought that they should have a throwaway gag "Meanwhile, on the other side of town..." and quickly show a foursome of basically identical black dudes hanging out in their alley sippin' on beers, saying "yep" and then an equivalently imcoherent black-dude ramble from melanin-enhanced Boomhauer.

I don't think it's actively racist in any way. I think it tries hard, in fact, to be progressive -- antiracist. But I have qualms about the ways it goes about this. While I think the show's aims are noble, I think it ends up sweeping the real face of racism under the rug. And for a show that attempts to present a semi-gritty, humane, morally honest view of life in suburban Texas, I think that's a mistake, though a small, harmless one.

I understand that you don't see it this way, and I have no problem with that.

But Idiocracy is another matter. Here, I think Judge isn't really in control of his feelings/ideas about the intersection of race, class and intellect. And I think he ends up shooting himself in the foot. Made it hard for me to enjoy the movie. Why, for instance, do so many white people in the film have Hispanic names? What's the point?

Oh, and strike every instance of the phrase "I think" in ppg 2 of my last post. It'll reduce the impression of moronism by at least 10%.

And out (again).

uh cuz they're actually Hispanic (ie, part of the currently largest and fastest growing ethnic group in the US)?

Honestly, given that the film rather clumsily and literally maps out how the future became populated by the profoundly stupid with no mention of race/ethnicity, it didn't even occur to me.

But the moron-future in this film looked, felt and sounded an awful lot like Tijuana/East LA.

***

Now, you look at a film full of outlandishly stereotypical depictions of moronic Hispanics, where half the seemingly white morons have Hispanic last names, set in a bombed-out, stereotypically third-world wasteland with a suspicious resemblance to certain Mexican/American border towns ... and you don't see even the slightest hint of passive, unconscious racism.

That's fine. I can accept that. But I don't understand why we can't have a civil discussion (hell, even a civil disagreement) about it.

I've been to Tijuana and didn't see a specific resemblance. I mean mountains of trash look the same all over, whether they be in Calcutta or Botswana or Mexico City. The name thing I honestly took no notice of beyond it being a "in the future miscegenation will be common" kind of aside.

Yeah, but that brings up something else. Are Calcutta, Botswana and Mexico City in the state they're in due to the fact that their inhabitants are all morons? I mean, what's the implication?