[ndneighbor]

I think the intent of Mike Judge's joke was less so an outright promotion of eugenics and more so mocking the upper crust of American society's approach to family planning. (That of which Judge was intimately familiar with during his time in SV when he worked for a graphics card company.)

A lot of his work with KotH analyzed the same dynamics of educated and uneducated America and the interplay and I think Idiocracy is essentially the terminus of the observations he would make where if the idiots got their way. (A semi-common plot point with Hank in KotH where he would be pit against rediculous circumstances.)

[Froztnova]

I mean yes but the point at the end of the day was that the people who were breeding in Idiocracy had genetically inferior intelligence.

[anonymars]

Did the movie ever say anything about genetics or IQ?

[Froztnova]

It does explicitly reference IQ and, at one point, shows an adult taking an intelligence test and trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

There is nothing in the movie that suggests that the decline in average intelligence is a result of cultural factors or education.

[wiseowise]

> There is nothing in the movie that suggests that the decline in average intelligence is a result of cultural factors or education.

Have you skipped start of the movie or did we watch different editions? They literally open the story with redneck family breeding and spreading their redneck ways through family ties while “smart” family waits for the perfect moment.

[Froztnova]

I think that the movie makes it really, really obvious that the intellectual degradation goes beyond just culture. The people are presented as being borderline mentally disabled.

https://youtu.be/jbmq9P-8FiM

[anonymars]

I rewatched the intro, and it is true that they label the character IQs. That said, I still don't think that the particular mechanism is the most important part

[Froztnova]

I disagree. I can't imagine any sort of cultural influence that can make grown adults incapable of performing basic tasks that a child could do.

https://youtu.be/jbmq9P-8FiM