Idiocracy and Refuting Brawndo

The above videos are an advertisement for the beverage Brawndo and a discussion that roots out the cause of a fictional future America’s widespread dustbowls. In Idiocracy’s dystopian United States, corporate advertising (along with rampant reproduction, a broken education system, etc.) has led the people, both base and noble, to believe Brawndo is the ultimate source of liquid nutrient for anything and everything. They even literally believe in the drink’s slogan, “It’s got what plants crave!”, and have applied it to their crops for years thus causing the deterioration of once fertile soil and the nation’s shortage of food. In Gorgias, Plato’s Socrates says the bad rhetors “strive for gratifying the citizens and, for the sake of their own private interest, make light of the common interest, and associate with the peoples as if with children, trying only to gratify them, and giving no heed to whether they will be better or worse because of these things” (502e). The US in Idiocracy functions in intemperance and those in charge, the unrestrained and profit-hungry manufacturers of consumer goods like Brawndo, encourage this lifestyle to secure their own financial gain. Socrates would look at the marketing of Brawndo, its consequence, and the state of the nation with contempt, blaming it all on the shameful flattery of the bad kind of rhetoric.  

Although Socrates spends much of his time in Gorgias criticizing the sophists, he does not believe rhetoric is completely useless. Like it is primarily used, it is abused for selfish reasons in the way Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles describe to pursue/preserve power and to defend oneself. Rhetoric’s proper use is not a matter of might or superiority or security, for these all partake in hiding what is true... according to Socrates, the just use for rhetoric is “to not hide the unjust deed but bring it into the open” (480c). For the rhetor to be useful to the people, he/she must be like a doctor to a body. Socrates suggests this when he asks Callicles, “Is it that of fighting with the Athenians so that they will be as good as possible, as a doctor would do, or as one who will serve and associate with them with a view to gratification?” (521a). Callicles’s choice to serve is wrong. One must fight and refute what is not good regardless of whether this will please or not.

Luke Wilson’s character in Idiocracy functions this way when he is continually confronted by the effects of abused rhetoric in the future. When he challenges the use of Brawndo, he challenges a convention developed over time by the drink’s manufacturer. He does not care about what pleases the people of this future because he recognizes Brawndo’s exploitation of their indulgence in pleasure is utterly wrong, unhealthy, and unjust. Wilson, then, is what Socrates would consider a good rhetor not because he can speak well and persuasively but because he is adamant on what will be best for the people despite being discordant to popular opinion. 

Plato. Gorgias. Trans. James H. Nichols Jr. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. Print.