People who tend to think that they’re “above” us normal people think we’re all fucking retards.
The more clever individuals among you may have guessed what spawned the title of this editorial. Last night, I watched “Meet The Spartans.” When I say “watched,” I really mean “tried to endure but failed.” I managed to get through almost half of it, and it was the longest half-hour of my life.
If you thought “this’ll be great” after seeing this trailer, you should be punished.Is it just me, or do the film makers not give us a lot of credit for our intelligence? Seriously, did they think that people laughed at the endless stream of played-out pop-culture references and gay jokes? Whatever happened to subtle humour? You know, humour that you don’t have to spell right out. It seems that these filmmakers are playing us for idiots.
It’s not just the writers though. It’s the studio as well. The fact that “Meet The Spartans” was green-lighted means that studio execs watched the movie and felt that it would be profitable. Basically, they said “yeah, people are fucking stupid. They’ll laugh at this lame movie and will pay money for the DVD.” They think we’re retards.
“Meet The Spartans” is only the tip of the iceberg. Last night I saw something even more demeaning in the form of a McDonalds commercial. In an ad for McDonalds new lattes, the actors remark that since McDonalds now has lattes, they don’t have to go to coffee shops and listen to “jazz music” to get a latte. Wow. So basically, the folks at McDonalds are telling us that since we’re all uncultured heathens, we’ll be delighted to know that we can get a latte from McGarbage so as not to be exposed to a real coffee shop with that hideous “jazz music.” I swear, when I saw this commercial I was tempted to slam my head against a metal rail to beat off some of the stupid that I might have collected from watching.
Script writers, producers, studio execs and ad agencies all think we’re idiots. Fortunately, governments think we’re stupid too. You all know about the sham that lead America into Iraq. All they had to do was dazzle us with fearmongering and bullshit intelligence reports (complete with satellite pics of who-knows-what, all labeled with big fat captions) to trick Americans into supporting the war. It worked, too.
Remember this?You may have heard a saying that goes something like “You’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” I don’t know who originally said that, but the above mentioned people and organizations have taken it to heart (only remove “American” from that quote). For some reason, stupid sells. There apparently are people who eat this shit right up. So what can we do?
Well, we can punish people for assuming we’re stupid. Next time you hear about a movie written by Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, DON”T GO AND SEE IT. The only reason these two idiots can keep making movies is because people keep paying for them. Epic Movie should have been a warning. There is no excuse for buying the “Meet The Spartans” DVD, especially if you’ve seen Epic Movie. Also, don’t buy coffees at McDonalds. Take your business to a place that plays jazz music. And for the love of God, if your government outright lies to you as a pretext for fucking war, don’t re-elect them. I can’t enforce that enough.
If you’re tired of movies, ads and government who think you and I are mentally defective, start supporting the opposite., Go see movies with clever, subtle humour (if any actually get made). Show people that there’s a market for clever, well-thought-out shit and they’ll start making it. Hold your government accountable. If they fuck you over, don’t vote for them again. If you hate being talked down to, show them you’re not an idiot.