Idiocracy and WALL-E

After watching Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, I wondered if the creators of Pixar’s WALL-E had watched it too. Both movies share a common vision for the future of humankind: stupid, lazy, illiterate, barely functioning. The big difference between the movies is that in WALL-E, computers were taking care of everything, to the point they were taking OVER everything. In Idiocracy, civilization was merely crumbling back to the Stone Age.

I found Judge’s movie to be more to the point about humankind. I like the notion that natural selection can’t work on people. Since we have no predators, nature can’t weed out the smart, fast, strong from the stupid, slow, weak. Everyone survives. In Judge’s twisted world, stupid people procreate in greater numbers than smart people, creating a kind of reverse natural selection that eventually threatens thousands of years of human evolution. Judge makes clever use of professional wrestling, a Gatorade drink, monster truck rallies, and the restaurant chain Fuddruckers to make his point.

In WALL-E, technology is more the threat. The movie guesses that people are going to slowly cede more and more responsibility and power to machines. The most poignant moment in the movie is when the captain struggles to read a manual about returning to earth and growing crops. With machines doing everything, people had lost the ability to even read. There’s some natural selection ingrained in that scenario, which again makes me wonder if the Pixar people used Judge’s movie as a springboard to their own.

Idiocracy came and went in the theaters with little to no fanfare. I didn’t even know the movie existed until I saw it my cable guide. Since it is so obscure, I’m willing to bet there are legions of potential fans out there. I highly recommend the movie, especially for fans of Team America and other modern, dark satire.