Photo // IMDb movie poster
Opinion
By: Michael SalisburyWebsite Manager, Staff-Writer
The costume designer chose Crocs as the shoe of the people in “Idiocracy” (2006) because they never in a million years thought that people would wear such an ugly shoe – but here we are. In much the same way, while this movie was meant to be a satirical prediction of the future of America, it seems to have become a documentary.
Moving on from shoes, let’s look at the way the government is run in the movie. President Camacho, played by Terry Crews, was voted in because he was a “WWE Superstar” and knew how to entertain people, coming out to the stage/House of Representin’ with a machine gun and firing it off into the ceiling, while putting on a whole show with fireworks and flare, so that became the basis of how we select our leaders in the fictional future.
As you may have noticed, the last presidential election was pretty similar in spirit. Trump put on a big show at many rallies, and at one point Elon Musk came out on the stage with a chainsaw and started flailing it about, with fireworks going off in the background. Of course, Trump also has a long history of ties to the WWE, and his new Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, was once its CEO. So, there’s that.
Terry Crews’ character as President Camacho is a perfect combination of both Musk and Trump. I think their combined IQ could fall somewhere near Camacho’s.
We also must look at the “brilliant” cabinet members that were introduced when Luke Wilson’s character, Joe, learns he’s the smartest man in the world. The recruits are unqualified, with one being a teenager (actually, pretty close in age to some staffers at the new Department of Government Efficiency) who secured his position by winning a contest. Three more cabinet members are just as clueless as the first, and after all, President Trump just nominated the first person without a medical degree for CDC director since 1953.
Needless to say, I think that there are too many similarities to count between this documentary and what is going on in today’s government to list here, but if we can laugh and learn from this work of art, I think we can overcome a lot of tragedy by simply educating ourselves and fixing things now instead of waiting 500 years for the “smartest” average man to fix them for us.