By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Stupid fox: another Idiocracy take
“Knowing Judge’s sterling track record as an American satirist,I had to find out what went wrong,” writes John Patterson in the Guardian of Idiocracy. 
“Usually a film eliciting such utter contempt from its own backers is a disaster. Far less often, it’s a masterpiece… There is venomous anti-corporate satire throughout… remarkable mainly because Judge names real corporations. I was astounded – and invigorated – by the sheer vitriol Judge directs at these companies… Like fast-food giant Carl’s Jr, which in 2006 sells 6,000-calorie burgers the size of dictionaries under the slogan, “Don’t Bother Me, I’m Eating”. In Idiocracy, this has devolved into “Fuck You! I’m Eating!”… [E]very commercial transaction has been sexualised: at Starbucks you can get coffee plus a handjob (or a “full body” latte). Idiocracy isn’t a masterpiece – Fox seems to have stiffed Judge on money at every stage – but it’s endlessly funny, and my friends and I will be repeating certain lines for months… [W]ord got out fast: I saw it last Saturday in a half-empty house. Two days later, same place, same show – packed-out. There’s an audience for this movie, but its natural demographic barely knows it’s out there. Behind the movie’s satire lie long-term social changes like the stupidisation of the American electorate over 30 years through deliberate underfunding of public education, the corporate takeover of every area of public and private life, and the tendency of the media – particularly Fox News – to substitute anti-intellectual rage and partisan division for reasoned public debate… So why was Idiocracy dumped? Perhaps because it taps a growing anti-corporate mood in the nation; perhaps because it expertly satirises the jingoistic self-absorption that now passes for public culture. Or perhaps because more people are sick of the modern America that Fox energetically helped to build than the Fox corporation itself is ready to admit.” [Patterson is a great fan of Office Space.]
