When I did finally watch it, I didn't really like it, but I also didn't feel like two hours of my life had been stolen. I laughed a few times, I thought that it was somewhat interesting social commentary, but overall I felt it was just stupid comedy. I watched it again a few months later, and it was much, much better. Since I already knew what was happening, I started noticing a lot of small details. This wasn't just stupid comedy. The creator of this film had put some thought and consideration into this. The advertisements (like "Uhmerican Exxxpress: don't leave home") were wonderful mini-parodies. The comment about the lawyer's dad knowing someone on the admissions board of Costco law school was hilarious. Rita's kindergartenesque paiting of Joe was a nice finishing touch. Most of all, the satire came through more clearly, and I found it to be convincing.
How many people would give it this second view, though? And how many people never saw it to begin with because of its bad reputation?
The layering is probably no accident. I didn't know until reading this review that the creator of Idiocracy also made Office Space. According to the article, Mike Judge was disappointed in the fanhood of Office Space because the people it mocked became its biggest fans, and they didn't recognize the second, deeper level of satire. The reviewer notes that "Buried just below the surface, however, is a critique of the modern American workplace and of the materialism that makes us slaves to our machines." On the surface, however, it is a silly, farcical comedy about office life.
This reviewer goes on to say that Judge went in the opposite direction with Idiocracy, creating the "feel-bad comedy of the year." He goes on to note that it is rare to watch a movie that openly challenges your beliefs, and that Idiocracy does just that.
It didn't do so well at the box office. It had limited release and didn't even cover its production costs.
All of this is leading up to a question about the effectiveness of satire. It seems like a very fine line to walk. You have to make your satire apparent enough to be understood while still making it veiled enough to be entertaining so that other people will watch it. In the case of Idiocracy, where the creator is clearly telling the audience something they probably do not want to hear, the entertainment factor is incredibly important. I think that is why I didn't like it the first time I saw it. I had to dig through a lot of farce to find the satire. Once I did, however, I was impressed. I wonder how the viewing world at large did with this film. Did it convey the message it needed to? Did it reach the people it needed to? Does it run the risk of preaching to the choir? Or does the scatological humor, slapstick, and "low comedy" attract the audience who the message is aimed at? If it does, does that message actually reach them?
Hmm...that's really interesting. I do see how Idiocracy is more in-your-face satirical than Office Space was. I actually saw the blurb on the DVD jacket that this was from the creator of Office Space, so I was biased in favor of it from the beginning. I watched it with some friends, and we snickered and laughed all through, but at the end, the general comment was, "What a stupid movie!" The disparity between our enjoyment of it and our final evaluation struck me, and your blog sheds some light on it. I can think of another movie that made me laugh and groan at the same time--an Indian comedy in which the guy is desperately trying to woo the leading woman but keeps getting tripped up by his nemesis. It was funny, but everytime he came so close to his love and lost because of his own ineptitude, we groaned and felt like shooting him. So perhaps the "stupid movie" that makes is groan and laugh is something like this: we are set up to root for the hero and we can't avoid rooting for him. But he's not up against survival/the Enemy/fate/the system; he's up against his own stupidity, and that's what makes us exasperated. In this sense, the hero of Idiocracy was not just Joe, but the human race. As humans, we are essentially rooting for humanity, but we get annoyed at humanity's stupidity.
ReplyDelete