Science Fiction Parody and Satire
I didn't get a chance to read or listen to Hitchhiker's Guide, but I have watched a couple things that are parody works related to sci-fi, these being Idiocracy and Spaceballs, though I guess Spaceballs might count more as space opera parody rather than science fiction since it parodies mostly Star Wars. Both of these films however touch on topics that relate to real life and what could happen if we're not careful.
The whole premise of Spaceballs surrounds the idea that planet Spaceball is all out of fresh air and the only fresh air they have left is in cans that they have to almost snort like drugs. Deciding to kidnap a princess from a planet that has fresh air to get them to give you the password for the planet's shield so you can steal their fresh air is a pretty wild and absurd idea, but desperate times call for desperate measures. This movie is funny and ridiculous because of the fact it is so absurd, but it could be a little less funny when you realize we're actually heading in that direction. If we don't start taking better care of Earth we could very well end up in a similar situation to the problem planet Spaceball had or worse. If the global temperature continues to rise overall, aka global warming, we will mostly likely have to put up with much more regular natural disasters and extreme weather. Both of these concepts usually result in people dying, and it's pretty common for people to die in normal thunderstorms, how could we manage if there were suddenly horrible floods along every coastline in the world and more?
Much of comedy focuses on making fun of negative things which these two movies do well, Idiocracy focusing more on how humans operate as a whole rather than just our effects on the environment. While a movie about the state of Earth 500 years in the future where only painfully stupid people exist and English can barely be spoken while all concept of human rights and decency are lost is funny now, it won't be funny when we actually fall into that state of existence. I'm not saying we will but sometimes I wonder, especially when there are already people so profoundly stupid and disgusting in their minds that they think rape is okay or even support it. That may be a little extreme but it's an important thing to note. I talked about all the sexual assault stuff recently in my last blog post I believe so I won't go into all of that again, but it's people like those perpetrators that scare me and make me worry about the future of humans.
Luckily I don't think we'd ever actually get to the point of Idiocracy, but sometimes I wonder. I feel like humanity is deliberating trying to make me lose faith in it. My faith in humanity took a pretty big blow when Trump was elected. No Hillary's not perfect but she's at least a decent human being, though that's just my opinion. It will NEVER be clear to me how America could vote a raging garbage dump like Trump into office when pretty much anything else was a better alternative. I'm reminded of the famous quote from Men in Black, "A person is smart, people are dumb." The problem is, we can have tons of smart individuals but if people collectively are dumb and nothing gets done we might as well all be stupid and ignorant like in Idiocracy. I'm nice to pretty much everyone by default unless given a reason not to be, but I'm honestly not the biggest fan of people in general. I think I need to rewatch Idiocracy again just to feel a little better about the real world and remind myself it's not quite that bad yet, haha.
The whole premise of Spaceballs surrounds the idea that planet Spaceball is all out of fresh air and the only fresh air they have left is in cans that they have to almost snort like drugs. Deciding to kidnap a princess from a planet that has fresh air to get them to give you the password for the planet's shield so you can steal their fresh air is a pretty wild and absurd idea, but desperate times call for desperate measures. This movie is funny and ridiculous because of the fact it is so absurd, but it could be a little less funny when you realize we're actually heading in that direction. If we don't start taking better care of Earth we could very well end up in a similar situation to the problem planet Spaceball had or worse. If the global temperature continues to rise overall, aka global warming, we will mostly likely have to put up with much more regular natural disasters and extreme weather. Both of these concepts usually result in people dying, and it's pretty common for people to die in normal thunderstorms, how could we manage if there were suddenly horrible floods along every coastline in the world and more?
Much of comedy focuses on making fun of negative things which these two movies do well, Idiocracy focusing more on how humans operate as a whole rather than just our effects on the environment. While a movie about the state of Earth 500 years in the future where only painfully stupid people exist and English can barely be spoken while all concept of human rights and decency are lost is funny now, it won't be funny when we actually fall into that state of existence. I'm not saying we will but sometimes I wonder, especially when there are already people so profoundly stupid and disgusting in their minds that they think rape is okay or even support it. That may be a little extreme but it's an important thing to note. I talked about all the sexual assault stuff recently in my last blog post I believe so I won't go into all of that again, but it's people like those perpetrators that scare me and make me worry about the future of humans.
Luckily I don't think we'd ever actually get to the point of Idiocracy, but sometimes I wonder. I feel like humanity is deliberating trying to make me lose faith in it. My faith in humanity took a pretty big blow when Trump was elected. No Hillary's not perfect but she's at least a decent human being, though that's just my opinion. It will NEVER be clear to me how America could vote a raging garbage dump like Trump into office when pretty much anything else was a better alternative. I'm reminded of the famous quote from Men in Black, "A person is smart, people are dumb." The problem is, we can have tons of smart individuals but if people collectively are dumb and nothing gets done we might as well all be stupid and ignorant like in Idiocracy. I'm nice to pretty much everyone by default unless given a reason not to be, but I'm honestly not the biggest fan of people in general. I think I need to rewatch Idiocracy again just to feel a little better about the real world and remind myself it's not quite that bad yet, haha.
Comments
Post a Comment