• irmoz@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    It's quite easy to come away from the film with the idea that a general "stupidity" of predominantly poor people is to blame for most of society's problems. The film even starts by heavily implying poor people breed too much and are stupid, while smart, educated, wealthy people are too smart to have kids because they've rationally determined it's a bad decision in the economy. It then goes on to outright claim this will make humanity, on average, "stupider".

    This is very, very close to eugenecist rhetoric. Eugenecists are all about weeding out "inferior genes" from humanity to increase our iverall "fitness". So tbh, I may have overstated. If you think the film suggests we need to limit dumb or poor people's breeding, then you might actually be reading the film right.

    What I should really say is I just hate the film's overall message, whether it's intentional or not. Which is a shame, because I otherwise like the film and find it quite funny.

    • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      The point seemed to be that society was deliberately creating a large population of low income, poorly educated people being fed the cheapest slop by companies for short term gain, and that society then reaped what it sowed. The population of Idiocracy aren't the ones being blamed, they're a result of their environment that was created around them.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Poor?

      In idiocracy, it's portrayed as stupid people out breeding the smart. And implication of them being poor is you own bias. Trashy, yes. Stupid, yes. Poor? That's on you champ.

      I'm sorry that you tainted your own experience of the movie in this way and that you think that the commentary has anything to do with anything other than intelligence. I'm sorry that gave you a very negative outlook on the film.

      • irmoz@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Sure, call it "my own bias" if you want. It's called coding. Characters can be coded poor, by giving them accents conventional of poor people, situating them in houses common of poor people, dressing them in ways that stand out as stereotypically poor, etc. And like I said, it might not even be intentional. But coding can happen even unintentionally.