
Mike Judge, the Bard of Suck - daegloe
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/magazine/mike-judge-the-bard-of-suck.html
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dkarl
I think Mike Judge's humor lands best with people who recognize the behavior
on the screen as driven by impulses they feel in themselves. It simultaneously
gratifies those impulses and teaches us what the world looks like without the
moderating influences of culture and experience. "Beavis and Butt-Head" is a
celebration of crudity, a lesson in empathy and humility, and a reminder that
"refinement" and "education" are not just silly, fancy things but aspects of
every person's experience. The distance between us and Beavis and Butt-Head
was created by myriad formative experiences with parents, friends, teachers,
and culture, who not only influenced us directly but also taught us which
influences to be open to. If you take perverse delight in their misadventures
then you truly know: there but for the grace of good fortune go I.

~~~
vlunkr
This may be the most intelligent paragraph ever written with the word "Butt-
Head" in it.

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creaghpatr
Interesting read, although it's mostly a (deserved) pat on the back kind of
article.

But they completely leave out King of the Hill?!?!

~~~
eplanit
>If you set aside his long-running TV show “King of the Hill,” which is much
too loving to be considered satire, Judge’s corpus of work cleaves neatly into
two pieces.

Set it aside? Having grown up in that region of Texas it certainly is
(wonderfully) satirical to me. It certainly isn't a hateful satire, but "too
loving to be considered satire" misses it. In an otherwise very good article
I'm also surprised by such a dismissal of a huge part of hit work.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It was too accurate. Growing up in Texas, I couldn't watch it for a long time
because I didn't see where the humor was - it was just a show about people who
were like my neighbors.

~~~
hindsightbias
Yeah, I don't know how it plays to out-of-staters, but there comes a point
where a weekly KotH was too much.

Sorta like it is hard to rewatch Office Space or Idiocracy. Have to be in the
right mood, every 4 or 5 years. OS was filmed in my neighborhood and until the
credits rolled I thought Stephen Root (Milton) was a former coworker (physical
doppelgänger) where we literally had a TPS form.

Going out for lunch with coworkers, "I hope Judge isn't sitting behind us"
became a thing people would say. Freakish accuracy.

~~~
hinkley
When I saw OS in the theater my jaw was in my lap the entire time, because I
had worked with a slightly taller version of Peter. Disaffected guy who
dressed the same, had the same haircut, talked constantly about leaving, took
the wall off his cube to see out the window. Same lip curl when he was about
to lose it.

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jumpkickhit
I'd love to see Mike Judge team up with Trey Parker and Matt Stone on a
project.

Id imagine it would be a instant classic, hilarious hard-hitting social
commentary.

~~~
Tloewald
It seems to me that Mike Judge doesn't actually need Trey Parker and Matt
Stone to do this (having done it several times already).

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aswanson
_He moved to Silicon Valley, where he lasted three months each at two
different jobs. In a way, he felt tricked. When he was growing up in
Albuquerque, everyone told him that if he wanted a lucrative and satisfying
career, all he had to do was get a technical degree. “Guidance counselors just
pound it into us: science, college, science,” he says. But he had a technical
degree and could barely afford his rent. His next-door neighbor worked as an
auto mechanic, and not only did he make more money than Judge, but he kept
flexible hours and seemed to be substantially happier._

~~~
doc_gunthrop
Makes one wonder if his next door neighbor was the inspiration for the
character Lawrence in _Office Space_.

~~~
bbhart
From the article: "He would serve as inspiration for Lawrence, the
construction-worker neighbor in “Office Space”"

~~~
doc_gunthrop
That's what I get for reading the comments before the article. Lawrence was a
great character, and his reaction to the hypothetical about being asked about
"having the case of the Mondays"[0] is classic.

0:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4B0pLDqYqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4B0pLDqYqI)

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CodeWriter23
Life imitates art, which makes Mike Judge more of a perpetrator than a
chronicler.

~~~
regulation_d
I never understood this, "Let's blame Nietzsche for the holocaust" mentality.

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mynameishere
One problem with satire (or cynicism in general) is that it's a cheap way to
feel smart about one's self. Idiocracy really seems to have been designed to
encourage this in people. However, the movie is divided into two parts, the
first five minutes and the next eighty-five. The first part is basically an
advertisement for eugenics, and the rest is slapstick. People always feel
smart because they "get" the second part.

~~~
defined
I disagree. Idiocracy IMHO was designed to show one possible result - in
satirical form - of the race to the bottom that we see every day.

If it's a "cheap way to feel smart", then perhaps those that feel smart merely
by watching the movie don't realize they are part of it.

Others don't need to feel smart, and simply find it funny and disquieting. I
thought it was a brilliant satire when I watched it some years ago.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _I disagree. Idiocracy IMHO was designed to show one possible result - in
> satirical form - of the race to the bottom that we see every day._

It's pretty disturbing that it explicitly endorses eugenics to do that,
though.

Edit: If you disagree, please explain how "the world is going to hell because
stupid people are breeding too much" isn't eugenics.

~~~
udfalkso
Perhaps they would encourage smart people to go against their instincts and
breed more.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
That's eugenics, yes. And, just to be clear, it wouldn't actually work,
because the whole decline-of-society thing that we're annoyed about is
cultural, not genetic, and doesn't work the way you think it does.
[https://xkcd.com/603/](https://xkcd.com/603/)

