The citizens of Napoleon Dynamite’s town of rural Preston, Idaho, exist in personal bubbles created by single homes isolated by wide-open farmland. They are free to exist in their own eccentricities while also in constant danger of falling into states of loneliness and delusion.
In 2021, this is all the more relatable with a mass pandemic to keep people indoors and social media becoming the main mode of communication rather than a supplement. Facebook groups and Discord servers allow people to hyperfocus on the communities that pertain to their interests while Google’s algorithm is quick to hide anything we wouldn’t normally want to see. Just as wide open spaces isolate the people of Preston, social media divides people in the real world.
This is highlighted with Napoleon’s brother, Kip, who maintains most of his socializing through the internet. Alone in the house all day, he chats with his girlfriend and friends as he maintains futile aspirations as a cage fighter.
This leads to a scene with martial arts instructor Rex of Rex Kwon Do, with who Kip takes a trial class and leaves when he realizes that Rex is a fraud. In the large, open space of rural Preston, Idaho, behind the glass bubble of his television commercial, Rex can portray himself as the expert. In front of an audience, however, Kip (and by proxy, the viewer) has a chance to scrutinize Rex as a pathetic individual.
Later, Kip meets his internet girlfriend, LaFawnduh, for the first time, creating a relationship with someone outside of the Preston bubble. Rather than end the film following his Uncle Rico, who is too entrenched in his own self-destructive habits encoded into him by his hometown, Kip leaves with LaFawnduh. Although Kip’s new hip-hop attire is played for laughs, it is a genuine symbol of change compared to his start as a perpetual internet surfer.
As the country starts to increase vaccination rates and open up again, perhaps it is time to truly evaluate the way people engage and spend time in digital spaces. Many jobs and subcultures had to adapt to the pandemic and some of them even thrived with the conversion to a purely digital medium (such as Dungeons and Dragons).
However, there are other things, like graduations, birthdays, and weddings, that simply work better in the real world. Like Napoleon’s triumphant dance scene or Kip and LaFawnduh’s wedding, certain things deserve to be witnessed in person for all their strange, awkward beauty. It is something to consider the next time one has the instinct to reach for their phone for a moment of digital escape.
Danger Wonka 