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
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“Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance ... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
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