The Bechdel Cast - Idiocracy

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

This week, Jamie and Caitlin wake up after being frozen for 500 years to talk about Idiocracy. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

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The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hey, Jamie. Hey, Caitlin. Oh, geez. We just woke up from being in a cryopod and society around us is terrible, but it always has been. So not anything different. But wait a second.

It's probably the, well, I'm only interested in pursuing this story if it's the working class's fault. Well, you're in luck because if the one percent is implicated in this i'm walking okay well i'm walking today's movie that's what it's about so uh okay welcome to the bechdel cast my name is jamie loftus my name is caitlin durante and this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test simply as a as a jumping off point. And this week, you'll notice is we are releasing this the week of the 4th of July, a national holiday that gets more and more ridiculous with each passing year.

The only good thing about the fourth of july is joey chestnut that has been canonically true for decades at this point now yeah so we've been talking about this making this episode for a while and trying to find you know kind of either we were between like oh we can find a really classically jingoistic movie to kind of cover and debunk or we can try to find you know a famous american satire to cover for this week and uh since we made that decision uh we've just been we've just been losing our rights miranda rights don't know them uh the the right to an abortion gone just it's it's you know if you're listening to this and and even if you are not american you are probably aware that uh it's it's particularly

dystopian yeah these past few weeks years decades and so i feel like it's a particularly interesting time to uh take a look at the movie. So all that to say, I just think it's for preamble. We chose to cover this movie before the most recent avalanche of lost rights. And I feel like it coincidentally ends up being kind of an interesting discussion because we are covering the movie Idiocracy today, a movie that has been discussed a lot in the past decade. And now that I've seen it, I don't understand why. But first, we have some housekeeping to cover.

That being, what the fuck is that Bechdel test you were talking about, Caitlin Durante? I'll tell you, Jamie Loftus uh-huh it is a media metric created by Alison Bechdel sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test and there are many different versions of it the one we use we've we've put our little flourishes on the test over the years and our version is two characters of a marginalized gender have to have names. They have to speak to each other. And their conversation has to be about something other than a man. And ideally, that conversation is narratively relevant and narratively meaningful.

This week is actually, you know, kind of a doozy as it pertains to that metric. It's interesting because we are also recording an episode about the minions this week. And by the technically despicable me, but I'm very excited for a minions episode. But I was watching Idiocracy and Minions Media because I you know we're covering and this is a you know tacit plug for the Matreon Patreon of course we are covering Despicable Me this month and what I think is interesting watching Idiocracy and Minions Media back-to-back kind of is you get two very different interpretations of what a society of bumbling men would look like. And honey, I prefer the minions every time because at least,

Oh, about I'm about to, it sucks. Cause I really genuinely love the vast majority of Mike judges work, but at least the minions are making me laugh. You know, I can't say the same for idiocracy. Minions hilarious. Idiocracy really was bumming me out in a wild way. Yeah. So anyways, this is our this is our this is I feel like a classic Bechtel cast episode of taking something that everyone keeps saying is good and being like, actually, it's not very good.

But guess, but you know what? Argue with the wall. We're right. That's what I want to tell to say to a lot of people. will say and we'll get into this but just as a little bit of a preface that yeah i see what this movie was going for and at the time i liked it when i saw it in 2006 as a college sophomore but let's talk about it so like what is your relationship with this yes so i saw it when it came out because it came out sometime in 2006 I was in college at the time I was already a huge office space fan it was like one of my favorite movies at the time so I was

already team Mike Judge and I saw this movie and at the time in the mid-2000s when I when my critical thinking skills and comedic sensibilities and cultural sensibilities were not quite as sophisticated as they are today I mean don't yeah it's also like don't be hard on yourself because this is like part of what's like interesting about looking at this movie now is like how again it's like i don't think that this movie is uniquely pushing this kind of comedic point of view i feel like this is this lines up really closely with like a lot of bush era comedy sure it is like that we all thought was funny at the time right well or at least many of us a lot of people thought was funny at the time, right? Or at least many of us. A lot of people thought was funny.

And then I also see, I feel like this movie is a great example of how the kind of aggressive apathy of this style of comedy probably had, you know, not the biggest hand, not as big a hand as fucking villainous policy and disenfranchisement. But I do see how this brand of comedy in its day served to further polarize people in a way that I don't think was really recognized at the time. Because why would it have been recognized at the time? Yeah, so all I say, don't be hard on yourself. Everyone was loving this shit. Thank you. It's true. It's true. So yeah, I liked it at the time right yeah so all i say don't be don't be hard on yourself everyone was loving this shit like it's true it's true so yeah i i liked it at the time um but didn't really engage with it after that first maybe one or two viewings in the mid-2000s but i'm excited to talk further and again just as a preface i'll say i i see what the movie was going for. Looking at it

through our, you know, 2022 lens, a lot of it, a lot of the satire, a lot of the attempted satire, maybe not executed very well, and maybe just throws a lot of groups of people under the bus. Anyway, Jamie, what is your relationship with this movie? Okay, so I am going to be harder in this movie because it feels uniquely designed to make me frustrated. But okay, so I, for context, I had not seen this movie before. But I have considered myself to be a Mike judge fan since I was basically a kid. Like I was very, I was kind of a late comer to King of the Hill, but I've now seen a lot of King of the Hill and I really love King of the

Hill. Sure. Not an unpopular opinion at all. It's a great show. Yeah. But I grew up with Beavis and Butthead. My dad was a huge Beavis and Butthead fan. We had it on a lot.

Mike Loftus. Yeah, shout out Mike. He did refine my taste very young. It was all peewee and Beavis and Butthead and I'm eternally grateful for it. I've got Beavis and Butthead merch. I watched the new Paramount Plus movie the day it came out. It's good. I didn't even know that was a thing. Well, I do work for paramount so i was like i was reminded but it's really good and i had highly like all that to say i watched all of silicon valley and i didn't even really like it but i just feel like loyal to mike judge because i like his work yeah i like office space like he's made so much amazing stuff and so but i had never seen idiocracy all that to say i went into this movie expecting to

like it because i like mike judge's work really the only thing i knew like the basic premise of like it's a future american dystopia right and i also knew and i think that this is like i've kind of got like more stuff for this later on in the discussion but i also feel like this movie just every couple of hours someone will tweet idiocracy was a documentary like it was their idea like that is literally tweeted every 45 seconds by someone who is like i'm a genius and it's like okay first of all iq is bunk an issue this movie has that i have been studying for years right but anyways part of what i love about mike judge's work is that he has this like way of showing characters whose like views are regressive and who's you I feel like King of the Hill is the best example of

it but like who are like goofy people who you would disagree with that most people would disagree with sure showing them with context and enough empathy that you're like I understand how this person got here and it feels like a more productive empathetic piece of art. And so I was just really surprised that like, Idiocracy was so heartless in its views. And it just like, it just felt like a real, I don't know. First of all, Idiocracy is not a documentary, you fucking dorks. Sorry. But like, first of all, not an original thought.

Second of all, not true true i don't know i just have a lot of i didn't like the movie and i was really bummed i didn't like the movie from the first scene because of and you know hashtag stream my urine menta but like yeah the the fact that this move i mean this movie like it's weird because i totally agree with you Caitlin I do think that it was coming from a good place I think for its time it is I don't know for its time I understand why it was like considered to be like controversial satire sure and I understand why people saw value in it especially in the era that it came out in which I, I mean, this movie was being shot and eventually released in the middle of the George W. Bush administration. Yeah.

When it did seem like society was heading toward a place, a certain place. And it's also like, that wasn't wrong. I just feel like it's it's whatever my opinions aside i think this is like a kind of a very very interesting movie to look at to see like what were center to left leaning people viewing the people around them like at this time and i feel like this movie really because it's like we were both you know i i mean mean I was I definitely didn't see this you know this movie came out when I was like in middle school so I didn't like hear about it at the time but like we both 2006 you know we're we're senior citizens we were there and I do

remember this a lot and I would like even kind of group this and I know that I'm not saying like the quality of jokes are the same across the board but i would kind of group this in the like john stewart daily show era of comedy back when my aunt would fucking die for bill maher unfortunately kind of comedy of like kind of like gotcha left-leaning ish comedy of which there was a lot at this time like even early colbert report even though i feel like right that's kind of the best of all of it but but you know what i mean like yeah it was a very specific moment in comedy and like satire and it's interesting to look back on i really didn't like this movie uh well let's talk more about it shall we yeah okay sorry for like going on i just was i was so shocked i it's so you know like when you really

love a creator and you have like a creepy little parasocial connection to them and it's like how dare i not like this but i i again I, again, I, because it, there was such a big gap between when I first saw it. And now I had just forgotten about all the incredibly problematic jokes and humor. They're like, let's tacitly endorse eugenics. I'm not saying my judge was like actively recognizing that that is sort of

what the movie is being like. Some people are just born inferior. We'll get there. We'll get there. Let's talk about what happens in the movie. Yeah. And there also were some like specific jokes that I laughed at. Some things work.

Some of the commentary does work. A lot of it doesn't. Carl's Jr. stuff worked for me. The Brondo stuff. Yeah. Any kind of like commentary on capitalism and consumerism. Worked. Yes.

Okay. Here's what the story is about. The movie opens on voiceover discussing how as we entered, we being society entered the 21st century human evolution was at a turning point where intelligent people quote-unquote were reproducing less and quote-unquote less intelligent people and these quote-unquotes are from me and not the movie so the movie is saying intelligent people stopped producing as much and less intelligent people were multiplying more than ever. My blood pressure is in peril.

So this is how the movie is framing this. And we get like this whole montage where we meet these two couples, you know, one is more intelligent, and they're coded a certain way. The other couple is, you know, less intelligent, quote unquote and they're coded a certain way the other couple is you know less intelligent quote-unquote they're coded a very particular way we'll talk about it but i mean it's literally like yeah like grad school i mean not to put you in a box but uh like you know people who have been to college multiple times versus like it's coded as like quote-unquote trailer trash exactly yes yes yeah so we're we meet these characters and the whole thing is the characters who are coded poor are reproducing at a higher rate anyway then we meet joe bowers played by luke wilson he is an army librarian who has been

selected to be used as a human guinea pig for a military experiment in which soldiers will be frozen and then unfrozen at a later date to be used for future wars or something. I'm not really sure. Oh, yeah. It's like that Chris. What was that dog shit? Chris Pratt, like Amazon Prime movie was like the Tomorrow War. He was he was being deep frozen for Chris Pr pratt's the tomorrow war yes what was that i know what you're talking about i didn't see it sorry sunny sunny so sunny is here right now and he is like looking at me and i like we can communicate telepathically and he is saying you bitch comma idiocracy is a documentary because well yeah sunny the dog fucking loves

he's a centrist he won't back down he he won't back down he's like i tweeted it and i meant it wow sunny you were wrong for that continue okay so joe is selected for this experiment because he has no family and he's also just extremely average across the spectrum. Sure. They have also selected a woman for this experiment, a sex worker named Rita, played by Maya Rudolph. And the plan is to freeze them both for one year and then unfreeze them but officer Collins the guy who is leading this experiment is fired and the project is completely forgotten about so Joe and Rita stay frozen for 500 years while no oh no while society around them descends into shambles the cryopods that joe and rita were in ended up in a landfill but a huge garbage avalanche

shoots joe's pod into the living room of frito played by dax shepherd kind of incredible i don't have strong opinions on dax shepherd but you're just like but you see him in this role and you're like yeah yeah that was good casting yes look when we're not punching down because his pot his podcast is like 900 times more popular than ours so So relax. Good job, Dax. Frito is watching a show about a guy who is just hit in the balls repeatedly to give you an idea of what entertainment and pop culture is like in this society 500 years later. So Joe wakes up, he's all disoriented. And Frito tosses him out onto the streets and Joe stumbles around town. He notices that society has crumbled into, quote unquote, idiocracy, where the restaurant formerly known as Fuddruckers is now called Buttfuckers.

Okay, try as I may, I can't not be like, okay, I'm giggling. It's not a good joke. It's maybe the laziest joke of all time. And also because of the strong no homo energy to this movie. Oh, yeah. also because of the strong no homo energy to this movie oh yeah it it feel but and then you're just also like i mean i just feel like you're given so little so little things that i was laughing at yeah i i would say it's it's not a very good joke and yet it's maybe one of the better jokes of this movie like to give you an idea yeah that's what i like i just

i feel like the bar is on the floor yeah and because it's mike judge the bar is like beneath the crust of the earth like you're just like but you know whatever i i think that this is interesting in the frame of being reactionary commentary from 2006 right we'll get to how mike judge engages with people's modern takes on idiocracy in a bit because i think that's very interesting um okay okay but so but fuckers is a restaurant people mostly speak in unintelligible grunts a green sports drink called brondo comes out of water fountains instead of water. Sure. These are the things in society now.

Joe doesn't feel well. He thinks he's hallucinating because of the drugs the army gave him. And he doesn't know that it's 500 years in the future. So he goes to a hospital. 500 years of summer. That's how I'm going to start describing global warming. 500 years of summer that's oh okay that's how i'm gonna start describing global warming i like it no no no not to be joked around about but yet what are we supposed to do you know okay we laugh so we don't cry right and we still cry and we still cry later at night

when we're alone yes so joe goes to a hospital and sees dr justin long oh my god we've covered so many movies in the like mid to late 2000s where justin long like is just becoming a is becoming an influencer of his time yeah i've come all the way around I'm just like Justin Long kind of a cultural icon whether I like it or not I mean I've seen the movie Tusk and it's the best movie ever made okay I haven't seen the movie Tusk you gotta see Tusk and that's my business so Dr. Justin Long realizes that Joe is unscannable because Joe doesn't have this like barcode tattoo that everyone in the future has. Right. That was like one of the things that I was like, okay, that's like, it's an easy thing to guess at, but it's not, you know. Yeah. That worked for me.

Sure. So this leads Joe to finally realize what year it is and that it's like 500 years in the future. They are both freaking out and Joe runs away and then gets arrested because he didn't pay his hospital bill. So he's taken to court where his court appointed lawyer, Frito, the guy whose apartment Joe crashed into, defends him, but he does a terrible job. Joe tries to plead his case and explain the army experiment but no one takes him seriously and he is found guilty he is then given a tattoo like the barcode tattoo and id and then he's made to take iq and aptitude tests kind of funny when he's called not sure that i was giggling look right look it's still my judge jokes that

was pretty good yeah and they call him not sure the whole movie pretty funny so then he takes his test and then he is sent to prison but he's easily able to escape because he is smarter than everyone there and he goes back to frito's house and he's like hey Frito has anyone invented time travel and Frito's like yeah there's this time machine and Joe's like okay you have to take me there so they head toward the time machine real MacGuffin time machine right meanwhile Rita has also become unfrozen and is roaming the streets. She's kind of like scamming a guy out of a bunch of money who is trying to like pay for her sex work. Joe finds her and picks her up to take her to the time machine.

To get there, they need to catch a shuttle from a huge Costco. But the cops are chasing them because Joe escaped from prison and they catch Joe before he's able to get on the shuttle. Quick, quick interlude. Welcome to Costco. I love you. Funny. It's funny. Yes. Good. And then the cops take Joe to the White House because the results of his IQ test caught the attention of the highest levels of the US government because it turns out Joe is now the smartest man in the world. So President Camacho, played by Terry Crews, comes in, he hires Joe as Secretary of the Interior, and announces that he's going to have Joe fix all of society's problems, like the failed economy and the dying crops. But Joe doesn't know what he's doing,

and he's still trying to get to the time machine. So he has the other cabinet members bring Rita in, and then Joe and Rita try to run off. But then Joe notices that the crops are being watered with Brondo, that green sports drink stuff. And he tells everyone that they have to water the crops with water. But because this doesn't work immediately, and because switching to water means that a lot of people who work for the Brondo Corporation have lost their jobs people are furious at joe and he is sentenced to one night of rehabilitation which is actually joe being put in a gladiator style arena like allowing the government to run you over

with a truck which again is like some of the satire works that's funny when you see that i mean it's not i mean but it is kind of when you see that bizarro like shredder monster truck run over that guy he just turns it to dust like yeah it's kind of wild yeah and like all the all the monster trucks are shaped like dicks and there's just a bunch of like dick and dildo jokes and i'm like sure sure why not sure why not meanwhile Rita notices that the crops are starting to grow and Joe's plan is working so she and Frito rush to the arena meanwhile back in the arena Joe manages to avoid being killed by the monster trucks and avoid being killed by this guy named Beef Supreme. A lot of very 2006 special effects flying around at this point in the movie. Yes.

And then Rita and Frito prove that the crops are growing by broadcasting footage of the crops on the Jumbotron. So President Camacho pardonse and the day is saved rita decides to stay behind because she was offered a ceo job at starbucks so then she and joe say goodbye and then joe is about to go off to the time machine but it turns out that the time machine is actually just a theme park ride and not a real time machine he cannot go back and do it so i was disappointed for joe in that moment i was like that genuinely sucks that you have to live here he really does so he accepts a job as vice president of the u.S. He eventually becomes president.

He marries Rita and they have kids and they live happily ever after in a society that seems to continue to just descend further and further into shambles. So that was certainly something. Shall we take a quick break and have a panic attack in return? Let's do. Yeah. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who, on October 16, 2017, was murdered.

There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price.

Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case.

So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in.

Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous

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And we are back. Boy, oh boy. I feel like, okay, I do want to start by kind of uh addressing the elephant in the room which i feel like is i mean i don't want to say like this movie is for me this movie's biggest failure because i feel like that is like a broad statement i think for sure like its biggest like plot structural failure um which again and i and i've heard this so whatever brief context beginning basically when donald trump's um i don't know why i full named him there like but like beginning when donald trump ever heard of him he ruined our lives um but beginning when his candidacy became viable i feel like that is when the idiocracy as a documentary idea sort of started coming and even a little bit before that but i think that the big the big like resurgence of like idiocracy as a documentary came when donald

trump became a viable candidate because a lot of people saw the Terry Cruz character who is a professional Wrestler who became president Reflected in Donald Trump who is a failed Son reality star who became Right president yes This completely ignoring the fact that we already

Had elected an actor To be one of our worst presidents In the 1980s but whatever i guess we'll give it a pass i wasn't around for the 1980s so i couldn't bitch about it um in any case like 2014-15 was when this started to come up yeah so i was surprised when the central conceit of the movie and again i i've i've seen this has been more discussed in the past couple years um i want to shout out sarah zed incredible youtuber and my bud who made a great video about this we'll link it in the description who kind of unpacks this to

a a larger extent but um basically what is at the core of this movie is the concept that your iq determines your deservedness to reproduce and the idea that it's just very like essentialist and that like this movie i feel like its biggest failure is it ignores kind of with the exception of corporations every structural problem that exists and instead redirects that anger and resentment on poor people and that is so like and it's like so many things and again it's like the corporate stuff is kind of exempt which i think is an interesting reflection of like where the writers minds were at at this time because they recognize that. But they did not really like there's so many things that happened in this movie beginning with. OK, sorry, I'm just like already melting down.

But like, let's talk about IQ first, because that's where the movie starts. It implies in the opening sequence, a sequence that rivals Midsommar for opening sequences that make me want to just explode. What makes me want to reflect a recent experience of mine, put Dr. Bronner's on my vagina by mistake. Oh my God, Jamie. Look, I did not know that that you were not supposed to do that and what a horrifying lesson i'm peppermint dr brauners on my one clitoris unbelievable unbelievable a vat of acid so i'm not laughing at you i'm just laughing no you're right to laugh at me

because i got into mensa and i did that which is further proof that iq is a false metric you don't have to be smart and you don't even need to be able to read the thing is like okay but like okay iq is like it's implied in the opening sequence of this movie that people with lower IQss are being criticized for being so cautious that they refuse to reproduce and i feel like both of these takes have aged very poorly and the take towards people with lower iq is much more harmful but both of them are harmful sure so i mean whatever like i've done a lot of research in the past about IQ and like I feel like it's pretty common knowledge at this point but probably but was not common knowledge in 2006 that IQ is a deeply basically at this point useless metric on every front. It was invented by this French guy named Alfred Binet to basically like

use in schools for kids who were like to track their progress every so often. The idea is that IQ is not permanent. It was a way of sort of evaluating how schools were doing. It wasn't a reflection on the individual. Right. What it turned into was it was taken a hold by eugenicists, which is the school of thought that your intelligence can be determined by your gender, by your race, by your class. And that these are individual essentialist faults on people and have nothing to do with systemic stuff. And so it's just like without giving the history of eugenics but like IQ has been weaponized against a number of marginalized communities over the years it's been particularly black people have have had IQ weaponized against

them black Americans specifically there's a really famous book from the 90s called the bell curve that it was a very popular book that just argued white americans are simply smarter and they should be right like it's a white supremacist text but it was very popular i mean it just it goes into all this stuff like your skull shape determines whether you deserve to live or die it if you are anything but completely neurotypical you are somehow less worthy to not just reproduce but live where there have been yeah so yeah like it's just been used it's been taken so wildly out of context from the reason it was created that it has literally, it's not just marginalized and excluded people, it's killed people. And it's now just now becoming a more common knowledge thing. And it is like, that is slowing, but it's not stopping. And so

all that to say, I'm not implying that i think that mike judge knew the history of this and did it anyways based on his other work i i want to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that this was kind of just like a lazy writing choice but that as a baseline for your movie about the decline of society is just like one of the worst takes you can have. Like it's kind of stunningly bad. Here's my whole spiel about that. Don't apologize. I've made a podcast about it two years ago. I don't really want to talk about it more, but like it's a whole thing.

It is a whole thing. And it's a horrible basis for a movie like you said because there is a way to make a satirical movie about uninformed and regressive ideology spreading and leading to the downfall of civilization there's a way to do that that's thoughtful and effective as far as satire goes and that doesn't demonize marginalized communities like people living in poverty for example but this movie doesn't do that because it's just making broad statements like first of all just that like some people are smart and other people are really stupid and i'm trying to avoid like ableist language on this episode it's i feel like it's going to be difficult because

the movie just leans into it very hard yeah so it's it's doing that it is also coding those people in very particular ways where again the quote-unquote smart sensible people are coded as being upper middle class wealthy again there's like that couple in the opening sequence according to IMDb. But don't like to talk about it. Look I renounce my master's degree. They that couple according to IMDb their characters characters' names are Yuppie Husband and Yuppie Wife. So that just like gives you a sense. Which is like kind of funny because it's like, consider who is writing the movie. They would much more closely identify with the Yuppie Husband and Yuppie Wife than with the poor people. But there's still just like vitriol.

There's just like a complete void of empathy for anyone but luke wilson in this movie and sorry to say his name like i was like saying a slur but like i why i just whatever i just it just doesn't work for me right so so it's this coding where you know it's like the smart sensible people are rich and the quote-unquote unintelligent people who multiply rapidly are clearly coded as being poor and again on imdb that couple in this like opening montage their characters names are trashy guy and slutty girl there's a whole conversation that we'll have about like the way women are like disenfranchised or not included at all which which i will argue could be solid satire

on a view of a dystopian future but it doesn't seem like that is what they're doing exactly it is hard because this could easily be an episode that is like five hours long and i don't want it because it's a short movie mercifully and we're trying to make episodes that are not longer longer than the movie yeah but this movie is hard because it's loaded with a lot of stuff and so i think the main things and i would say that the people who are poor in the opening sequence and basically most of the people from the future are coded in the opening sequence and basically most of the people from the future are coded in the same way to different degrees of aggression right so i'm just sort of talking about everybody there but it is like bizarrely very american in that it's making all of these

like bad quote-unquote choices seem like they are made completely by the individual and so that they can be held complete. And so that is like where the systemic, but it like that ranges in so many different ways where it's like, it's not addressed that poor people have less access to birth control, to sex education, to abortions if they want them and in terms of religion like tend to be rather religious communities and so it's like huge elements that are completely wiped and it's just made to seem like oh well no they are just so chaotically horny that they cannot help but proliferate like it's just like it's so frustrating it's it's like it's very i don't know yeah it's very 2006 and then when you fast forward to the future and then you see people who first of all i just am

like as a reality tv watcher i object and also i think that that again like ignores it's like oh people want to see people get kicked in the nuts which first of all yes none of your business second of all does nothing to address why those programs appear and why they're the most easily accessible programs in the fucking country and it's like you have to pay to watch the fucking sopranos or whatever or like whatever the grad school crowd is watching and so it doesn't address any of the systemic like why are these programs so popular could it be possibly because they are the most accessible programs and that is not the fault of the people who cannot afford to pay for 500 other channels like it's just it ignores things on every single level

truly and then we'll get to like fucking prisons and government where it's like oh yeah uh we are just simply not smart enough to know how prisons work and it's like no that's how prisons are designed to work yeah like yeah it just makes me it just ignores that so many of these issues are by design and not out of individual failings from people that are being intentionally disenfranchised that is the entire premise of the like that's the commentary this movie is making and it's so yeah backwards because yeah it like you said it just fails to recognize the lack of access and opportunities you experience when you live in poverty. It fails to recognize that poverty is a cruel cycle that is nearly impossible to escape because of things like capitalism and racism and ableism and all these other systemic issues. it suggests that again like poor people multiply for fun and not because there are multiple structures designed to keep poor people poor so that their labor can be exploited by the ruling

class like well and then women i mean and it also like doubles down on and this feels slightly more intentional at least but like women are sex objects only yeah and i feel like that's maybe a more arguable point because it feels like they're at least more consciously making that point and they're just not doing it very well but like it it just kind of on all fronts it's just recasting systemic issues to be personal failings is just like the shittiest kind of satire for me. And it doesn't even mean that like, you know, it's not to say that like individuals who are being actively marginalized and

othered can't hugely fuck up. That's obviously true. We've all got parents, but that's not, but but but that is not the rhetoric of this movie at all it's like the systemic issues are not at the top of this movie it's like people are just not smart enough to know better it's a very 2006 way of looking at the world. So yes, instead of there being any of that recognition of systemic oppression, and there being any thoughtful commentary on, you know, the capitalist machine and all of its repressive systems. Again, this movie just makes fun of poor people and relies on

ableist language and homophobic slurs, mostly for the humor of the movie. And it's like, that sort of stuff is very, like, very 2006. And I feel like it's mostly used for shock value. It just doesn't feel satirical remotely. And it's just like, can you believe that we're using these slurs over and over and over? And it's because poor people suck. You're just like, I hate every part of this.

I hate every part of this. It's real crummy. Let's take a quick break and then come back for more discussion. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

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Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place

will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks.

President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of this right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground.

Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer. This is Rip Current. Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So, sorry, I yelled out a lot of my frustrations with this movie. Jane, don't apologize. of the so we've talked a lot about at this point how the lower classes are made to seem like the

source of all evil which okay that is the place from which we're coming yeah but in the future it seems like the issues that the writers have with poor people in 2005 have become the entire culture. And so now people with all levels of money and power behave exactly like how two writers in 2005 who were rich at the time of writing it perceived poor people. And again, it's like like i really like mike judge and i think that he's made great stuff before this and after yeah and this is just a really frustrating piece of work to look at this was his flop era i guess this was his flop era but it was later we'll get to this in a second, but like it was later spun to seem like his, his, his, what's the opposite of flop? His masterpiece. Yeah.

And it's like because there were genuinely a lot. His top era. Sorry, I just thought of that. His top era. whatever the history of this production was like it became a cult classic like a lot of mike judge stuff because it was considered too offensive into like specific audiencey to release widely and so i feel like it it got this like you know kind of like punk credibility before it even came out because it was like oh this is the movie studios don't want to release and i understand that element of like that is a really quick way to make a cult classic especially from someone who's already made cult classics but then you watch it and you're just like

not to you know whatever like it's it's it's pointless to have an argument of like i agree with the studio because i'm sure the reason the studio had for not wanting to release it widely i would not agree with but i'm also like not upset that this wasn't the most popular movie in the world right because i don't like its politics are very dated yeah anyways fast forward to the future everyone has the exact opinions of ethan cohen and mike judge's opinion of poor people in 2005 right okay so what this does is i feel like in the upper classes of the future it further erases again with like the bizarre exception of corporations which they seem very aware of ignores everything else examples being the house of representing where it's portrayed that the amer it's not that the american government is designed to oppress people it's that the people in the american government are just not smart enough to know how to provide justice to people which is

again basically no one was talking about this in 2006 because it was like these two writers were considered to be on the cutting edge in 2006 and they clearly didn't know right so again it's like don't punish yourself in the past but in the present moment it's like well that is not true like yeah they're very glaring it's intentional that they are taking our rights away there is an end game in mind it's not that they're not smart enough to know better yeah and that that same ethos is applied to the prison system which is again egregious because it's like you don't need us to tell you how implicitly and intentionally racist and classist the prison system is in the u.s but again it the way that it's portrayed is like well we don't know we don't know any better like we're just

we're just we didn't get enough math classes like Like to, you're just like, this is ridiculous. And the same applies to the way the police are like, the police are of the three. I feel like at least they are shown as like absurdly violent and absurdly reactionary in a way that I would agree with. Yeah. But again, it's like portrayed not because that is like endorsed and always has been in

the, in American policing. It's like, Oh, it's because the individual people are so ridiculous. And you're like, no, but it's right.

They are empowered to act that way. Like it's just, there's no systemic criticism except for corporations. And so the corporation stuff weirdly, for the most part works for me. It works. corporation stuff, weirdly, for the most part, works for me. It works. Yeah. So I think that,

and that is best exemplified by the Brondo thing. Yeah. But there's also like, Carl's Jr. is now running like child protective services. And I thought that was kind of funny. Like, and the whole,

like the, the drive through has like a gas they can shoot in your face to like dissociate you. Like that kind of stuff. I was like, I thought that that was like more effective. And it felt very, very intentional. Like you are an unfit mother. Your children will be repossessed by Carl's Jr. Like that for 2006 satire, that worked for me.

Right. But then there's other stuff where like you can go to starbucks and get like an erotic massage which felt like shamey of sex work and there's the whole conversation to be had about that well and also like implies that the lower classes or just like poor people in general are again it like goes into what we were talking about earlier of like the way the opening sequence divides classes is like people with more education and money not horny people with less education and money so horny they cannot help but have a trillion kids which is again unfair to both parties right like you know we start like it's like you know

people of all classes who are all manners of horny like it's so like well obviously reductive of people like to say that your class determines how your sexual like how much you want to reproduce like it's just like it feels like silly to even say out loud because it's so ridiculous and and i feel like the future furthers that logic of like what mike judge and ethan cohen thought of poor people in 2005 which is that they are like so uneducated that they cannot control themselves which again you're just like right that goes into the future of like oh they just are so horny they want they want hand jobs at starbucks and it's like not only like you're saying that's shamey to sex work but it's also just like reductive

of poor people in the way that the movie is from moment one. Like it's just, just reinforces that. Yeah. So, so some of it works, some of it doesn't, but the Brondo thing I think works the best where there's voiceover that I'll basically just like say verbatim here where it is said that water was considered a threat to Brondo's profit margin.

So Brondo came to replace water everywhere water everywhere basically except for like in toilets it seems which is also pretty funny but the brando corporation bought the fda and then the fcc enabling them to say do and sell anything they wanted which is you know pretty i think a pretty effective commentary on the way that, like, corporate takeover is constantly happening in this country and how, you know, capitalism is going to be the death of us all. And then because the way it manifests in this movie is that they are watering crops with brondo, which is full of electrolytes which is basically just pumping salt into the ground where plants can no longer grow and then it's leading to this dust bowl where everyone's going to starve to death so and i appreciate that it took the further step of like even if you resolved that issue by using water that would collapse the economy because of how the economy was built around one corporate

entity right and like yeah that kind of like the corporate stuff worked really well and it's it it's just wild that they took that energy to specifically one sector but again i feel like that that is very indicative of bush era satire where and and i do think that george w bush who is you don't need me to tell you he's a fucking war criminal he's a war criminal but at the time and even i remember my perception of him as a kid was that he was not smart and so right his decisions that were actively harming people in america and people outside of america certainly he started fucking wars yeah but it was because he couldn't say nuclear correctly it wasn't because of all these systemic issues and so I feel like that is a lot of the logic and energy that this movie is drawing on. Is like how people perceived George W. Bush specifically at this time.

Which is like he is abusing people in and outside of his country because he doesn't know better. When the reality is he knew exactly what he was doing because he was a nepotism piece of who was continuing the war that his father started and so it's like there is no question that like he knew what he was doing you know but but it was but what the satire of the time focused on more was like it was it was just like kind of picking on southern americans of like oh i don't like how he says this word versus like he is continuing a war that has nothing to do with what he says it like he knew what he was doing whatever this is not a controversial opinion like no we're saying this here in the you heard it here

first on the back to cast beloved american president george w bush and beloved american painter while we're at it um they're uh obviously he's a piece of shit but i just think that the way and he was he was considered a piece of shit by a large portion of the country throughout his presidency. But it was like the ways that people made fun of him that I feel like informed the direction of the satire of this movie. And it just feels like while it's like the rage at him couldn't be more justified. The like the vantage point people are coming in at is like very misdirected and i feel like we sort of had a resurgence of this a lot during the trump presidency where it was and it's like i'm sure we fucking engaged with this to something like we were certainly there of like

trump is like not a smart person. I would say very true. But does he know exactly what he's doing when he's perpetuating systemic issues? A hundred percent. And so it's like not the question of like, I don't like this guy because he don't talk smart enough for me. It's like, like take a step back. And this movie doesn't take a step back except for Brando. It's so weird.

Sorry. It is so weird so yes the kind of biases that the movie is leaning into as far as like being anti-poor extends to other things such as sexism and racism because because like, I would homophobia and homophobia, right? Yeah, I think a lot of the characters who are, you know, quote, unquote, idiots who are populating this idiocracy in the year 2505 are playing into again, not only classist stereotypes, but racist stereotypes and sexist stereotypes stereotypes because a lot of the women that you see not that there are many on screen but the few women with speaking roles who are in this movie usually are characterized as bimbos like the attorney general or like the women who are hanging around the president they are right like dressed provocatively and you know just again this like quote slutty bimbo type and that is like again

the the filmmakers just well bias against any sexually liberated woman or sex worker. And this is, this is an element of the movie that I think could have worked like implying that the future of America is wildly sexist and hateful towards sex work is, I don't even think a controversial take that is where the law is currently headed but unfortunately the way the movie is written just seems to like say like yeah this society treats women like bimbos who deserve no respect because that is what they are and like that is how they are behaving and it seems like they have no cognizance of

how they're being marked it just doesn't feel like it's satire like it just feels like doing the thing i feel like especially with my rudolph's character like yeah so it's it's weird because i could see someone making the argument that well yeah the characters are using all this homophobic and ableist language because you know that's what a devolved society would do and that's the satire that's the commentary but you don't get to have that happen and then i just feel like the commentary isn't actually being made i mean it's not and it's like i understand why they thought it was maybe but it's also like you're operating from like even the found the foundation of the premise is so flawed that it's like you can't really

address specific issues based on the idea of like well no one is smart enough to realize what they're doing and it's like well how could you address any systemic issue if this movie does not recognize systemic issues as a concept exactly like it just recognizes all systemic issues as being the fault of poor as it applies to poor people and then it's like oh well women are treated as bimbos because they're bimbos yeah because that's justos. Yeah. Because that's just. And like Maya Rudolph is not like the other girls. But also she's kind of like the other girls.

Okay. Can we talk about Maya Rudolph's character? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Because I do appreciate that by the end of the movie, and I mean the end of the movie, she is more motivated. She rests, you know, in the terms of like classic special cast

discussion sure she saves the male protagonist of the movie you know like she is active in helping to resolve the conflict of the film right at least the one that ends up getting presented because like halfway through the movie it's like and now the conflict is crops and it's like okay yeah but for most of the movie that isn't even the issue so she becomes involved in what eventually ends up like you're just like becoming the issue of the movie and it would have been interesting if that was the whole premise of the movie because that was giving me Mary-Kate and Ashley passport to Paris vibes um okay if you thought I was part at any point in this episode you were wrong because that I was like okay they more effectively resolved a national water crisis issue than

anyone in it like I mean I've been waiting to bring up a movie like don't look up as being more effective i don't want to talk about don't look up because i didn't like it i want to talk about passport to paris because i did like it i'm so sorry and mary kate and ashley resolved france's water access issues in the and they got to kiss their crushes like perfect story could you even in your entire life say that no i can't all i did was put dr bronner's directly onto my vagina i can't do what they do dr brando dr brando's fucking acidic waste onto my green and it's he felt the injury with the dr bronick's issue because the bottle is covered in words and then i i looked after after the the robbing had stopped and i will say i was taking a

shower with someone who i like whoa sexy oh i mean speaking horniest time, we're all having a horny time. I mean, look, when I when I say when I tell you this was not recent. But anyways, I read the bottle hours later. And the word the warning I needed was there, but it was buried in like weirdo garbage. Anyways, where was that in idiocracy? Could have been helpful all that to say like this movie it starts to make a criticism but then says like well but insert a press class here is basically like that anyways so right and then you're just like i don't like it's just bizarre it does feel like i don't know i i and if you are older than us which might not be possible we're quite old um but if you are older

than us feel free to weigh in on like my interpretation and a lot of his reflection because i was like whatever kid throughout the bush years but my interpretation of a lot of his reflection because I was like whatever kid throughout the Bush years but my interpretation of a lot of this just based on like I whatever grew up watching Jon Stewart with my aunt like my aunt was very into this brand of comedy and so that was like primarily through her that I would see it and it felt very like allied with Democrat senators and lawmakers in a way that is largely for a lot of leftists no longer true. Is like at this point, I feel like it's very I mean, it was like not that it wasn't known by people in the mid 2000s, but it's larger known now that like Democrats, senators and lawmakers are also largely fucking you over but they're just like smiling while they do it right but at this time it felt like democrats or just generally center to left-leaning politicians were not on the chopping block to be criticized and that's

because that it doesn't really come up like you do i i thought you got like a pretty effective like fox news early fox news commentary here of like it's just like sexy naked people talking nonsense which is like that's a lot of what fox news is and like it's it's not based in facts it's very visual medium um but you do not get the other side of that because i think at the time the writers of the movie would have agreed with like centrist propaganda msnbc vibes you know stuff i'm i'm de-radicalizing my mommy from wow wow jill it's not working uh no it is working she no longer brings out her msnbc mom mug when i am visiting oh good i think she's starting to be embarrassed of it and rightfully so she listens to the show hi jill hi jill um i wanted to go back to Rita real quick.

So as you said, she's absent for a large chunk of the movie, but then she does become active in the resolution and she helps to, again, resolve this crop thing. She has agency in those few scenes but prior to that she is almost indistinguishable from the other characters who are also supposed to be the quote-unquote idiots because she for example she cannot grasp the idea that her pimp, this guy named Upgrade, would be dead and would have died 500 years earlier kind of thing. She spends so much of the movie looking for this character. It's so frustrating because the movie, I think to its credit, does introduce Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph as like characters with very different backgrounds

who are of equal intelligence that is why they're being selected right and so to fast forward 500 years and have him be able to understand the fact that time has passed and her not be able to understand that is ridiculous it doesn't make any sense and it's also suggesting i i feel what's being stated here by the filmmakers is well of course she's not smart she's a sex worker like it's just casting judgment on well yeah and it's like and also the only thing that's on her mind is her loyalty and or fear of her pimp right and it's like and and this like slowly disappears throughout the plot but it's not motivated by anything like it's just slowly but or if it's motivated by anything it's by the fact that she's developing a crush on luke wilson for no reason right so that's the other thing where she becomes joe's love interest pee pee poo poo

because if a man and woman are the two leads of a movie they legally have to get together by the end if you were alive in 2005 you have to get married 2005 heads have to fuck yeah initially they're just acquaintances because they're both participating in this experiment and then when they're both in you know 2505 they link back up he's trying to basically rescue her and bring her along so that they can time travel when he thinks that's possible. I would say this my favorite scene of this movie is when Joe is trying to make sense of time travel that was commentary on time travel narratives that i thought was the right that was funny that was good i like that a lot this movie does have its moments which almost makes it more frustrating when you're like i would keep like a solid seven

minutes of this movie and then the rest is trash um but yeah so they they link back up and they're they're trying to escape and then things start to get flirty when they're at the white house and well for before that he has to pretend like they're going to have sex with each other so that they can actually go off and plan their escape and that to me that worked because he's not actually trying to like exploit her have sex with her anything like that didn't work for me because i felt like it was implied that he was inherently of like he's a good guy because he's not trying to assault her you're like that doesn't mean that it makes any sense that they would be together like right right right that doesn't justify why they end up together right i mean in terms of the plot right that makes sense but then things do start to get flirty like when they're at the white house and she's like you know you don't have to sleep on

the floor you can sleep in the bed with me and he's like and he so his whole thing he never understands that she's a sex worker through the entire movie and possibly through their entire marriage question mark unclear yeah he thinks that she's a painter so maybe you could make the argument like yeah she's not smart enough to understand that her pimp has been dead for five centuries sure he's not smart enough to notice that rita is a sex worker question mark none of it worked i did just no none of that worked for me but eventually they get married and Rita becomes his first lady because he becomes president. And it's just like, of course, this would happen in a movie from 2006 where a man and a woman have to romantically end up together at the end. I think it would have been more.

I mean, there's so many more interesting ways to take that where it's like if you're the only two like even if you are going from the fucking baseline weirdo eugenicist logic that this movie depends on to happen i just think it'd be more fun to see two characters who are from the same era and are like considered intellectually superior like in conflict with each other which these two never are they're never in conflict with each other i understand that it's like they have a vested interest in banding together but it just like her character is never taken seriously enough to really develop any sort of side plot of her own like if you just like let go of the fact that like if you just allowed her to understand where she was things could have become so different like she could have allied with a different side of the fucking future conflict than luke wilson did they could have

been political rivals they could have been like so many different things could have happened other than like she has no idea where she is and then at the last second she's like i have a crush on you like that's like the most boring thing that could possibly happen that said luke wilson's character like you're just implying is also very boring and hard to root for and he's like such a straight i mean it's not luke wilson's fault but it's like that character is such a straight man that you're like who fucking cares right gives a shit this man is so boring and then there's this like running joke where she is tricking this guy into giving her money on the promise that sometime in the future she will do something sexual with him which just makes her seem kind of like deceitful and i mean

i don't i'm dishonest that didn't really bother me I'm just like yeah she's like conning a future man I don't really care because she has to like survive it only bothered me because I think that you could someone watching this might draw a connection between because she's a sex worker like oh like this is what sex workers do they try to like i don't know cheat you out of your money or they're dishonest or they're you know something like that and i say that's what rubbed me the wrong way yeah yeah i feel like there's there's a few ways to come at that because i was also like well sure she's money and this person is um has money and

she needs to survive yeah i wanted to quickly talk about how my judge talks about this movie now. And by now, I mean sort of like the way that in the Idiocracy is a Documentary era. So the last like eight years. Sure. So he said this in an interview with the Daily Beast. Let me just quickly track the year on this. 2017. Okay. Early Trump era. the daily beast let me just quickly track the year on this 2017 okay early trump era and this is him commenting on what then was already a very common idiocracy as a documentary tweet vibes right god so boring okay uh so he he says in 2017 quote three or four years ago i

started getting comments about it people discovering it and it just keeps building now every other twitter comment i get is about idiocracy and how it's a documentary now at first i was thinking yeah that's nice to hear but then very specific things like carl's jr announcing that they were going to have a completely robotic non-employee store and that's carl's jr in the movie then there's this thing called the fellatio cafe in switzerland where you get blowjobs with coffee and we had the starbucks thing in there and then donald trump being in the wwf before and talking about his penis size it's just one specific thing after another unquote now i will not argue with the like technical factual truth of what he's

saying but like i feel like the reason people say idiocracy is a documentary has more to do with hyper specifics like that versus the foundation of the world that's built in the movie that has i would argue little to nothing to do with what we are dealing with now and also oh, oh, also, I mean, this is the beginning of the episode. Hilarious to think that we're going to exist in 500 years. But, um,

I kept having that thought. I'm like, we're all going to be fucking dead. The environment will not sustain life because of how badly we fucked it up. Awesome. Uh, but you know, whatever.

Appreciate the optimism. Um, but ultimately, you know, know like i i just think it's it's a bummer because i i do appreciate the the filmmaker that it's like and i wonder if in the future he will push back on this very persistent idea because i feel like people are repeated like i wouldn't really care as much if this was like a movie that no one saw in 2006 and people still like, no one really saw it. Cause then you're just like, well,

right. It's a victimless crime, you know, like, but because people are continually pushed to this movie as an example of like, this is what's wrong with America. When it,

when I just outside of the corporate criticism, was not getting a lot of what appears to actually be wrong. It just feels like an annoying, distracting, victim-blamey approach to cultural criticism. And I wonder if, and it's one thing, it's like, okay, if you were a filmmaker in 2006, just just reflect on that that's all you can really do at this point and i would i would be interested to see if he ever kind of reflects on the criticism of right it yeah because it's very frustrating to be living today in a society where period period end of thought no but like our rights are actively

being taken away there's talk of how the supreme court is going to continue to keep taking away the right to get married like the right it's just all this stuff i was talking about this with my best friend recently about how like good news days from the past like couple decades have if only been good news days because it's just like wow this right that people should have had all along it finally is a right that people have it's officially it's been codified right so like but then you've got your bad news days where it's like oh yeah roe v wade overturned and now abortion is criminalized and gay marriage might be criminalized and you just like all these horrible things and um what was my point so it's just like so frustrating to like i mean and that's just the fucking tip of the iceberg just like systemic racism and policing and all just every societal

ill well stuff that has never been like significantly legally challenged no right it's just like we're getting a lot of rights overturned but there's also a lot of rights that were never even gotten right there's a whole slew of like oppressive societal issues that we're dealing with every day and then for people to compare that to this movie which just blames poor people for the decline of civilization it's very of the age. And I know that like, sometimes we get criticism for like examining older movies from a current lens,

but I mean, even in the 2006 lens, like this was very much again, it's like, we're not saying that this movie was unusual for its time. And I do very strongly feel that like this type of comedy, it's totally, it's not whatever there's like art isn't useless right it's not like but i do think that you can trace this era of satire's role in a kind of like

unproductive energy right with people that a lot of people now recognize and are like not engaging with there's not a ton of like i feel like i mean even just like the fact that bill maher is the only person from this era that is still doing the same shit he was in 2006 and now most of his original viewers fucking hate him right so i feel like that like he is the case study for like people don't like this anymore and the people who like this are like weirdo doubling down assholes like yeah this type of comedy doesn't really exist anymore in a popular sense right but the fact that this was popular in its time does leave a legacy and the way that like the comedy that we were doing you know five to ten years ago and the comedy we're doing now will leave a legacy and it's not all going to be great and it's like you know the older i get the more it's like you can't i mean you can't take back your fuck-ups yeah all

you can do is address and not endorse them and it feels like that is kind of like what the filmmakers of this movie have done by not pushing back against the idiocracy as a documentary thing right yeah they're just kind of patting themselves on the back for being like yeah awesome movie probably stream i predicted a coffee shop that gives out blow jobs which what's wrong with that yeah anyway not an indicator of the downfall of society right um do you have anything else to talk about no i i think this movie had its heart in the right place but it like it just i i really think it's aged extremely poorly and i don't like it at all agree and right yeah like we understand the cultural landscape informing the media and the satire at the time and sometimes it does feel weird to

criticize a movie that's a product of its environment from like almost two decades ago. But that's also our job. Anyway, the movie I don't think passes the Bechdel test. I don't think so either. I don't think women interact at any point and if they do i didn't notice it yeah but what about our nipple scale in which we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on do think it gets the kind of like capitalist consumerism commentary more right than anything else but that should have been one of many things that gets acknowledged and commented on that the movie ignores and instead blames the downfall of society on poor people yeah and that

sucks so and then again just like all of the the classist, the ableist, the racist, the sexist coding of the characters is really shitty. One half nipple. I'll give it to Maya Rudolph, whose talents in this movie are squandered because she is far better than what this movie suggests she's the best um i'm gonna give a zero because i didn't like it it pissed me off um so i guess i have nothing else to say i just like i do i do agree that the corporate criticism is valid there were jokes in this movie that made me laugh like there are jokes in this movie that i'll probably return to it be like that was a funny thing but it's just the premise of this movie is so frustrating to me that i and i have no nostalgic attachment to it so sure i'm gonna give it zero so i have no nipples to give and i um if anything to end on a positive note i do feel like you're like oh there is actually a huge market right now for effective satire um and there's i think most of it is happening currently in tv but there is a lot of good satire of american politics and american dystopia that are coming out i do want to say that like it's not that you know idiocracy being like kind of

shitty means that american satire is dead it just means like this one aged very poorly yeah but the genre has continued there's no you know lack of inspiration to pull from and it is a genre that is like kind of gone on i think to to develop and grow in a very interesting way. And also I think that satire has everything to do with the point of view of who's writing it. And so having more satire that is not written by already powerful straight cis white guys is always going to be a good thing. And that we have a lot more of that now.

And there's still obviously room for more certainly but i i do think that this genre like is a very like satire like good satire and like timeless satire is like really really hard to do um true because which is why this movie didn't do it it worked at the time it does not work now doesn't work now work now. So Zero Nipples hated it. Let's end the episode. Let's do it. Happy 4th of July. Just kidding.

Woohoo. Abolish the Supreme Court, bitch. Fuck this shitty country. Anyways. And watch Z-Way. I think Z-Way is doing some of my favorite satire. She's doing some of the greatest American satire right now. Yeah. Like, she's the best.

Yeah. Yeah. With that in mind, satire historically does not age particularly well this is not a personal attacker indictment on mike judge this movie did not age well yeah at all i don't think it's any any longer really like valuable satire to reflect on where america is at and it probably wasn't at the time either but that's kind of no one's business at this point because it's the future so with that in mind uh we love you keep fighting keep taking care of yourself and uh we will be right there with you doing the same the fourth of july is a waste of your time but if you want a hot dog by

all means get one i also think this episode comes out like three days after well then fuck you no there look there's no wrong time to eat a hot dog is what i'm saying and so for the fourth of july to have co-opted hot dog culture in this way i think is a net negative but you know whatever all press is good press for for for her for the hot dog yeah of course so you can follow us us online at Bechtelcast on Instagram and Twitter. You can follow our Patreon, aka Matreon, at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast. It is currently Minions March, aka what was the Gruella Steve-Ville? Cruella Steve-Ville. There's two options.

Yeah. It's either Gruella Steve-Ville or Cruella Steve-il. There's two options. Yeah. It's either Gruella Steve-il or Corella Steve-il. Yeah. We're doing two Steve Carell movies. So we're doing 40 year old virgin, a very, very popular request. People wanted to hear us get upset about it.

And boy, did we, did we. And we are also doing a minions episode, which is just, Oh, I can't wait. So go over there and we have over 100 bonus episodes to listen to.

Just me and Caitlin shooting the shit, having fun. And also our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast for all of your merchandising needs. And otherwise, yeah, take care of yourselves and water your crops with toilet water. Exactly. Bye water. Exactly. Bye-bye. Bye. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated.

Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself?

There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about this, kids? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits.

I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white and print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.