film screening: the idiots

cork | arts and media | event notice Monday April 19, 2010 10:09 by Anarkitty - wsm

at 8pm in solidarity books, douglas street

The Idiots (Danish: Idioterne) is a 1998 Danish film directed by Lars von Trier. It is his first film made in compliance with the Dogme ’95 Manifesto, and is also known as Dogme #2. It is the second film in von Trier’s Golden Heart Trilogy, which includes Breaking the Waves (1996) and Dancer in the Dark (2000).

The film is about a seemingly “anti-bourgeois” group of adults who spend their time seeking their “inner idiot” to release their inhibitions. They do so by behaving in public as if they were developmentally disabled. The members of the group refer to this behaviour as “spassing”, a neologism derived from “spasser”, the Danish equivalent of “spaz”, which has the same connotations in Denmark as in the United Kingdom. (The Idiots is not concerned with actual disability, or with distinguishing between mental retardation and physical impairment.)

The “spassing” is a self-defeating attempt by the group to challenge the establishment through provocation. The self-styled idiots feel that the society-at-large treats their intelligence uncreatively and unchallengingly; thus, they seek the uninhibited self-expression that they imagine a romantic ideal of disability will allow.