Idiocrasy – White Magic for our time

In one of the essays in the Weight of Glory collection, CS Lewis interrupts himself to break the “fourth wall” of literature and confront the reader with this question: (And I paraphrase,) “Do you think I am trying to charm you? Even so, remember that there is black magic, and there is also white magic, whose purpose is to undo the spells that have kept you in slavery.”

Mike Judge‘s latest film, Idiocrasy, is a scathing satire of modern American culture, and an excellent example of just such white magic. It is an insightful, outrageously funny and incisively clear reductio ad absurdem, akin to Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos. We are continually being charmed as a culture, and intentionally so, by large groups of intelligent men and women who wish to make a buck. Idiocrasy will likewise charm you — but to wake you up.

Or, if you dislike the analogy from fairy tales, consider the fact that there is some beautiful music which tends to lull one to sleep, and some awkward or dissonant music which startles one awake. This movie, whose title puns on Idiocy, Hypocrisy, and Democracy, is art of the latter sort.

Rather than go into the details of the satirical razz (what better way of ruining a joke than by explaining it?), I’ll just tell you the premise. If you think it sounds funny, rent it. (If it does not, then you probably need to see it even more than the first person, so rent it anyway, and take notes.)
The premise: Private Joe Bauer, the ultimate mediocre ARMY soldier whose life motto is, “When you either gotta lead, follow, or get out of the way, then get out of the way” is chosen for a highly dangerous and top-secret military experiment having to do with Carbon freezing. He and a randomly chosen “lady of the night” are successfully frozen, but before their resurrection, the operation is shut down and the two guinea pigs are forgotten. They awaken 500 years in the future. Now, through a series of comical misadventures, Joe discovers that, since smart people have stopped having kids and dumb people have bred like rabbits, he the smartest human being on the planet.