Be Stupid?

James's recent posting of the Diesel "Be Stupid" ads really struck a chord with me. On the surface, the ads may come off as funny, or, ironically, just stupid. Deeper down, I really see a connection with them to the Matrix. They discourage people from thinking, from "getting out of the cave." This is not the first time I've noticed a wave of encouragement to be stupid. I was hanging out with my boyfriend and his brother and sister-in-law and their 8 year old son the other day. The son, Noah, was watching the Disney Channel. There was one show, about wizards (I had never seen it before so I'm not sure what it's called) in which the girl character is really, really dumb and kind of rewarded for being so. One of the lines from the show I distinctly remembered was the girl saying, "I skipped my math class; is 30% a lot?" The episode was about this girl skipping a field trip and risking repeating a class (I think she was in middle or high school). At the end, when she does not get the work done, instead of learning a lesson about attending class, the girl says that she will get her homework done "the old-fashioned way:" by cheating off of another student. These are the role models our children are looking up to; kids who skip classes, girls who are stereotypically bad at math, and people who do stupid things and are still rewarded for it in the end. People think it's "cute" when girls act stupid; there's been an ongoing argument in the Exponent about it lately. And I agree that it goes on As a woman, I've never felt like I was particularly valued in popular culture for being smart. In fact, I've noticed that the dumber I act, the more attention from men I can receive.

As time goes on, I feel like men are going through the same thing now too. With the popularity of shows like "Fear Factor" and especially "Jackass" men are being applauded and sometimes rewarded for doing stupid, dangerous things without thinking about them. People think it's funny when people are stupid. Frankly, I find it frightening that men can succeed financially just from doing stupid things.

Will intelligence ever really be a popular value? Or is all this stupid advertising and TV programming a government conspiracy to keep us all from thinking about what really matters? Are we living in The Matrix or in a Prosporo-type illusion that society or the government has created for us?