Friday, February 27, 2009
The Quintessential Post-Modern Movie?
After watching Idiocracy, the next day I had American Literature of the 1960's and we talked about Modernism and Post-Modernism. I was so shocked to see how Idiocracy fit every quality about Post-Modernism. Generally, Post-Modernists are anti-science/modern day Luddites. You could see this in the film because a theme of the movie was that our culture became so reliant on technology that it made humanity more and more dumb. For example, when the receptionist at the hospital was trying to categorize Luke Wilson's character into a specific "illness group" and could not even figure it out in her own mind so she had to pick a picture and let technology figure it out. Technology ruled everything to the point society did not have to think for themselves. Another part of Post-Modernism is that people are looked at as machines. This can be seen in the movie how everyone has a bar code. You can also see it how people's names even become advertisements and how people, like machines, are only motivated by money and sex and this movie. The last, and most dark portion of this movie that categorizes it into the quintessential Post-Modernist is that there is little to no hope for progress. In my opinion, the ending is not hopeful. Although Luke Wilson's character encourages reading, and becomes president providing a small light of hope, and supposedly "got the ball rolling," the fact that he only had three kids and Dax Shepard's character has 30+ kids, it cannot promote the idea that things are going to get better. How long before his 3 kids become adapt to the dystopian society? I would guess not long. The scary thing is, I can see some of these things happening. We brought up the calculator in class, and I am so horrible at math (hence I am an English and Philosophy major), and I rely on my calculator for EVERYTHING. I remember in taking various math classes when we would have tests that we couldn't use calculators (because the teacher assumed we could do basic math equations), fear consumed me. I also am so reliant on my phone it is ridiculous. Last year, I had my phone stolen and had it set up to get a replacement phone mailed to me. However, it would have taken 3-5 business days for my phone to arrive and I could not imagine going that long without a phone so I bought a really cheap phone, activated it, and then returned it when I got my new phone activated, so that way I would not have to go any longer without my phone. I do not think our society will ever even come close to the society depicted in Idiocracy, and in that way I do not fit in with the post-modernists, but it is scary to me to see how many things in the movie fit in with the dark view of the post-modernists.
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Because of the title and the humor I never really thought of Idiocracy as a really deep movie. Post-modernists concepts where probably the last thing I would expect to find in it, but the examples you gave are all true, and obviously, Post-modernism is in there. It kinda makes me see the whole thing in a new light.
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