Future Boy Film Club: Idiocracy

There are two visions of the future in this famously overlooked gem of a movie from Mike Judge, now out on DVD. One is funny, but inaccurate, misleading, and potentially dangerous. The other is very funny, all-too-accurate, and absolutely terrifying.

The first vision, a well-illustrated, mercifully short one that sets up the rest of the film, is this: stupid people are having more kids than smart people, therefore the world is getting more stupid. This is an old chestnut, and the notion was shot down long ago by evolutionary biology. Stupidity is not a genetic trait. There are hundreds of thousands of genes that play a cooperative role in intelligence, but it's more about how they work together than what they are -- which is why education, the environmental factor, is so damned important.

I don't believe for one second that Mike Judge is into eugenics, but it's hard not to watch this part of the movie without feeling like the message is that we should sterilize idiots for the good of society. Sorry, Mike, but it's a little too close to the bone. Not too long ago, the U.S. did sterilize the stupid. Not only did it not work, it also helped give the most evil man in history one of his worst ideas. "I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning the prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock," wrote the pencil-moustached one.