In Popular Culture
- The science fiction film Idiocracy (2005) portrays the U.S. as a greatly dumbed-down society 500 years from now. This cultural condition was achieved by dysgenics, the rate of over-reproduction, by people of low intelligence being greater than the rate of reproduction of the more intelligent people of the society, i.e. the educated. The concept of Idiocracy derives from the science fiction short story The Marching Morons (1951), by Cyril M. Kornbluth. The novel Brave New World (1931), by Aldous Huxley discussed several ways their society was effectively dumbed down to maintain stability and social order.
- Music groups The Divine Comedy, Ugly Duckling and Lupe Fiasco have songs titled "Dumb it Down". Chumbawamba has a song titled "Dumbing Down".
Read more about this topic: Dumbing Down
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)