Stupid is as Stupid Does

"Stupid is as stupid does" - I noticed many movies or TV shows feature ridiculously stupid people, but the show itself is actually pretty smart.  In a sense it’s wisdom cleverly hidden amidst idiocy.

The Simpsons is one of the best examples.  Although Homer himself is almost completely clueless, the rest of the cast are considerably smarter.  And Groening’s humor has yet to peak.  There are so many inside jokes, left and right, it’s like an animated version of Dennis Miller without being nearly as obscure or pretentious.  You can count on this whenever Sideshow Bob (Kelsey Grammer) makes another attempt to kill Bart (“’Vendetta’ in English is…vendetta!” and Sideshow Bob correcting the Italian villager’s pronunciation of “bon giorno”).  Futurama could be labelled the same way: despite Fry being such an idiot, the humor and plots are fairly clever.  Homer and Fry each have a sort of endearing charm despite their mental deficiencies.  I’m convinced that Groening is one of the most creative and intelligent minds in the entertainment business, in the same rank and class as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Family Guy.  I mentioned this earlier in my comparison with “Peanuts”, “Snoopy vs. Brian”.  This show tries to be a little too clever, especially Stewie.  Peter’s stupidity has NEVER reached the point where I find it entertaining, unlike Homer and Fry.  But still worth watching.  Although South Park is clearly very intelligent, I can’t include it here because none of the main characters – even Cartman – are stupid.

Forrest Gump.  I have to put this one in here because of how stupid Forrest was, but I’m ambivalent about this movie.  On one hand, the story is amazing – including his trip to Vietnam.  On the other hand, he seems to triumph not through his own virtue or bravery but due to sheer dumb luck, as if we’re supposed to imagine some virtue in dumb luck itself, personified by Forrest.  Uhh, so what is the point?

Idiocracy: the whole point was that the world 500 years from now was incredibly stupid, thanks to something like 2000 generations of incessant breeding among the idiots who can’t conceive of, much less successfully manage, birth control or zero population growth, whereas the all-too-valuable intelligent fraction of the population has perfected it all too well.  But it is a good film.  Incidentally, it makes a fairly strong argument for the otherwise discredited doctrine of eugenics, whereby – “YOU!  OUT OF THE GENE POOL!!!” – the lesser among us are forcibly sterilized (possibly through execution) so that our inferior genes can be weeded out and humans selectively bred for superior traits.  This was brought to its logical conclusion, much to everyone’s horror, by the Nazis.  Before they slaughtered Jews by the train load, their initial targets for death were the old, crippled, and mentally retarded in a euthanasia program expressly designed to eliminate undesirable traits from the overall Aryan population.  This movie makes the doctrine make sense, at least as far as targeting stupidity as a trait worthy of sterilization if not elimination.

Beavis & Butt-head.  When I first saw this I couldn’t stand it.  They were just TOO STUPID to be entertaining.  This had to grow on me.  I noticed the satire of the touchy-feely social studies teacher, Van Driessen; the uptight Principal McVicker; and my favorite, Coach Buzzcut, who shouts everything as an order, as if he’s either a drill sergeant in the Marine Corps or back in Vietnam. But even the stupidity has a certain clever edge to it:

            Beavis [watching video of vintage Black Sabbath]: “Are these guys from Seattle?”

            Butt-Head: “No, they’re American!”  or

            Beavis [watching video of Slayer…or was it Pantera?]: “These guys must get lots of chicks!”

            Butt-Head [actually thinking for a change]: “Uhh, I think they probably SCARE chicks.”

            Beavis: “Cool. The only thing cooler than bands that GET chicks are bands that SCARE chicks!”

Bill & Ted.  In “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey”, two idiots from San Dimas, California, Bill Preston (Alex Winter – where is HE now??) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves, marginally more “whoa”-y in this film than later) are assisted by Rufus (George Carlin) to save Earth from its own thoughtless cruelty and preserve a most excellent and righteous future. 

            The first movie featured them collecting various historical figures: Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, Billy the Kid, Napoleon (aka “short dead dude”), Beethoven, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, and Socrates (whose name they pronounce “So-crates”), in order to successfully complete their history project and not fail, as destiny requires them to remain together as a pair.  

In the second film, killed by an evil pair of Bill & Ted robots near the rock cropped hillside – featured in three separate “Star Trek” episodes – they go to Hell, where they experience various personal “hells” before beating Death at various kids games, an obvious homage to “The Seventh Seal”, the dark, cynical classic B&W film with Max von Sydow.  They get to Heaven and work out – carefully and none too quickly – that returning to Earth alive isn’t enough.  They need help defeating the evil Bill & Ted robots or they’ll simply be killed again.  They get the alien “station” pair to help them out, and emerge most triumphant.

With Bill & Ted, the underlying idea is "be excellent to one another". How can these two idiots somehow figure this out, yet it eludes all us smart people?  What you have is an essentially Christian message hidden inside two dolts from San Dimas.  This is the ultimate stealth moral – a clever, decent message hidden deep within what appears to be colossal stupidity.