All the accepted ignorance and universal dumbing-down, all the pop culture foolishness and great-unwashed breeding have taken their toll in the world of Idiocracy, a 2006 film by Mike Judge.

A science experiment goes wrong:  an otiose soldier (Luke Wilson) and a cynical prostitute (Maya Rudolph) placed in artificial hibernation end up awakening in the year 2505, soon discovering that the entire human race is pitifully dumb.  Education is nil, though handed-down technology exists; stupidity, obscenity and certain forms of violence are everywhere.  National problems go unsolved.  It is hoped, even so, by the fun-loving President of the United States that Wilson’s soldier, who has the highest I.Q. in the world now, will save the country from future starvation.  Crops fail to grow because the citizens are stupidly watering them with a sports drink.

As one can see, there is satire here.  The humor, though hopeful, is barbed and frank—and funny.  Consider that a character’s favorite TV show is titled (profanity alert) Ow, My Balls!   How’s that for an attack on commercial entertainment?  But this leads me to mention that this film which focuses on so much societal vulgarity, especially sexual vulgarity, is itself rather vulgar.  And it is not always smoothly written; the movie sputters here and there.  But no matter.  Idiocracy has a raison d’etre.  It’s serious.  We’re better off with it than without it.  Duh! anyone?

Cover of Idiocracy

I’m glad I never saw the deeply leftist films, if that’s what they are, of Paul Haggis.  But his The Next Three Days (2010), a thriller that means business, I did happily see—and do recommend.  It’s a remake of a French picture I’m unfamiliar with, so, yes, it’s lacking originality; but what the heck?  The action is a grabber, Haggis directed with panache and, despite a story which strains credulity, wrote the screenplay acceptably.

The world Steven Spielberg creates in Lincoln (2012) truly does not seem far removed from the one in which no one saw slavery as a moral issue:  the world of colonial America, for example.  It’s the nineteenth century, however, and President Lincoln insists on the passage of the slavery-extirpating 13th Amendment—the subject of  Spielberg’s and screenwriter Tony Kushner’s film.

I don’t care for the director’s sentimental hyperbole, but Lincoln is a quite good historical drama (however much license it takes).  Though the theme lacks profundity, the writing is intelligent, and by saying this, I am obliged to point out what the theme is:  that dishonest actions are sometimes needed for producing perfectly just and noble political ends.  Nothing profound, or original, about that; although fortunately there is much more going on in the picture than this element.

The talk is clever, the debate exciting.  Costumes, production design and Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography are remarkable and captivating.  Kushner is a homosexual, but Abe Lincoln here is not gay.  Not openly, anyway, and probably not at all.  Period.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays him appealingly, although other actors, such as Sally Field and the poised David Strathairn are more memorable.  Outstanding.

Lincoln is no John Adams, but it is one of Spielberg’s best films.

Abraham Lincoln (Photo credit: George Eastman House)

It was a funny comic strip, Peanuts was, even if it relied too heavily on eccentric Snoopy for its humor.

The first of all the Peanuts TV specials, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965) was so painstakingly written by Charles Schulz that it ended up being a comic masterpiece which didn’t need any heavy reliance on Snoopy.  It  just needed a lot of imagination and some top-notch jokes.  To Schulz it needed to be meaningful too, and with Linus quoting the Gospel of Luke (and the singing of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” at the end) it did become meaningful in a way other Christmas cartoons on TV never did.

Vince Guaraldi’s music is famous now, with its hooks and charm, and the voices—Peter Robbins as Charlie Brown, Kathy Steinberg as Sally, etc.—are unbeatable.

A Charlie Brown Christmas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the John Updike short story, “Made in Heaven,” written in the Eighties (and from the collection titled Trust Me), something important is concentrated on.  The piece chronicles the years of marriage between Brad and Jeanette Schaeffer, and it begins with the words, “Brad Schaeffer was attracted to Jeanette Henderson by her Christianity . . .”  Christianity, or something like it, is there, to be sure, but it doesn’t last.  The “something important” which happens is that unbelief masquerades as belief, for a long time.  It’s an unbelief afflicting both Brad and Jeanette, who seem unable to do anything about it, and I myself certainly suspect they can’t.  Can it not be said their minds are being blinded—yes, blinded—to the light of the gospel?  (See II Cor. 4:4.)  To me it can, notwithstanding this is hardly a point Updike is making.

What is doubtless true is that “Made in Heaven” reflects the erosion of Updike’s own recognized faith in orthodox Protestant doctrine.

It’s in a story such as “Augustine’s Concubine” that Updike introduces us to true believers, converts.  A 1970s work included in the collection, Problems and Other Stories, “Concubine” revolves around the love life of Augustine and of his married lover before Augustine’s conversion in the fourth century.  And before hers.  Updike makes it seem inevitable that Augustine will surrender to God, but not that she will.  Yet she enters a cenobium.

What comes about after all the illicit sex is not only chastity but also asceticism (“She, too, could taste the dry joy of lightness, of renunciation”).  A tribute to the former concubine concludes the story:  “She was a saint, whose name we do not know.  For a thousand years, men would endeavor to hate the flesh, because of her.”  What comes about, then, is a history of (Catholic) chastity and asceticism, something Updike, with his understanding of people’s faith in orthodox doctrine, sympathetically presents.

Cover of Problems and Other Stories