We all know someone who has been ridiculed for being a “nerd” or a “fag”. Chances are, this happened in middle school or high school, when people are still trying to find their identity. But, whether they’re just a book-smart kid who plays chess instead of sports, or just someone who has their parents guiding their lives throughout their entire school life (cheap, outdated hand me down clothes, taking school extremely seriously, or just having a strange sense of how to talk to others), I’m fairly confident that someone you know has been made fun of for being different or for even being smart.
In the movie Idiocracy, our society’s typical “average Joe” takes part in a test experiment that keeps his body from dying when he enters a special coffin like pod.
When Joe wakes up in the future (the year 2505), he finds that every single person on earth has gotten extremely stupid and the English language turned into a hybrid of “hillbilly, inner-city slang, valley girl and various grunts”, as well as having giant corporations (Costco, Carl’s Jr., Fox News, etc.) controlling the entire population. Most chains we know nowadays have turned into legal prostitution rings (with Starbucks selling “exotic ‘coffee’ for men”). Water doesn’t even come out of water fountains anymore. Instead, a green Gatorade like drink (called Brawndo – The Thirst Mutilator) has replaced water in every sense that we use water today (except for the toilet water).
Although Joe can understand what the future Americans are saying, when he trys to talk to them (in an extremely normal and average way), they call him a “fag” and a “retard”.
Eventually, Joe uses his average intelligence to change the world and tells the people of the future that long ago, people that read and wrote weren’t considered ‘fags’ – they were even looked up to.
When I saw this movie, it hit me very hard in the sense that I could see this future slowly unraveling. In high school (10 years ago now!), I thought it would be ‘cool’ to skip classes and party all day. Meanwhile, at school though, teachers are doing their best to help the children learn things they need for college and 25% percent of the kids just laughed at the teacher’s face and did all they could to disrupt the class, which made the kids who wanted to learn, learn less.
It’s kind of hard to sum this up, and this blog is pretty fractured, but what I really want to say is PLEASE don’t be controlled by what your peers or the media and advertisers want you to do. Turn off the TV and video games, and start channeling your energy into something where you can help other people, instead of bringing them down. (Not that any of you do that anyway) J I just don’t want our society to turn into an idiocracy.
How many of us have been unlucky enough to flip through the channels and stumble across a show called Tiny & Toya? This show stars Tiny who's claim to fame is being rapstar T.I' s "babies momma." Tiny was also a singer in former R&B group Xscape in the late 90's. Even less remarkable, is Toya whose superstardom comes from being rapstar Lil Wayne's ex-wife. My question is: Why is this a show? This show consists of a half hour of random nothingness and makes me question who's bright idea it was to give these two 'hoodrats' air time on what used to be a fairly good network. Why do people care about the lives of two has beens that are only know because of what their BETTER halfs have achived. Its' almost like teaching your son to shoot for second string on the football team and telling him as long as the starters play well he will win too without having to do SQUAT!! What messege are we sending our teenagers who tune in every week unknowingly having their young minds turned to mush.
ReplyDeleteIn a micro point of view that teenager might be sitting on someone couch now vegging-out to some of that garbage right now. The values that you may teach them are being pushed to the side and the crap that is seen in the street is being reinforced. People then wonder why their teenagers make dumbass decisions and the first thing parents say is he\she should know better.
On a macro point of view when people come from different countries an they see what American kids are watching they almost fall out of there chairs or either jump on their pc's an blog about how dumb american kid are. Personally this embarassment makes me want to tell poeple I am from elsewhere.
In conclusion, parents please spend time teaching your kids or B.E.T and M.TV will do it for you.
I want to use the word " lack of curiosity"instead of "idiocracy".
ReplyDeleteIt is true that our society is least curious. I remember when I came to the US, I use to tell people that I was from Rwanda, but almost no one new what or where was Rwanda, and I would say that it is in Africa, then they will say " you should have said that before, I know the country of Africa!" really how ignorant is that? Remember the famous interview of Sarah Palin by Kath on CBS? She was asked to name one of the news papers she read regurally, but failed to name one! Did you really think that it was a got you moment? I thought It was a simple questions that all of us can answer, but our potential vice president was unable to answer. I can go on with examples to show the lack of curiosity, but I am not going to.
Please let's be curious and learn the world around us, don't feel bad if your are made fun of because you can tell that Africa is a continent not a country.
'curiousity does not kill people"