Last week I saw a film which happened to fit in very well with Bacon's Four Idols. The movie trailer is linked for your reference.

 Dale and Tucker vs. Evil
 (Plot spoilers to follow!)

The film Dale and Tucker vs. Evil centers around two poor, uneducated "hillbillies" who recently bought a fishing cabin, sight unseen. On the way to the cabin for the first time, Dale and Tucker run into a group of college kids who are heading into the woods to camp for the weekend. Immediately upon seeing the two dirty, overall clad, rough-looking men, the kids hypothesize they must be psycho killer hillbillies. When Dale attempts to talk to the young group, his social awkwardness only perpetuates the group's initial reactions.

The groups meet again in the woods, and through an unlikely series of events, Dale and Tucker take an injured girl to their cabin, while her friends run screaming into the night. The college kids assume the worst and try to attack Dale and Tucker to save their own lives and free their friend. Instead, they end up accidentally killing themselves. Dale and Tucker think the kids have formed a crazy suicide pact and are worried the police won't believe their version of events.



It can be argued that nearly all of Bacon's idols are presented in the movie.


The film is ripe with the Idol of the Tribes. Nearly every major plot point has the group of college kids fitting Dale and Tucker's actions to what they believe the two to be. When Dale pulls the unconscious girl from the water, her friends assume he is abducting her, in order to torture and kill her. They don't look for evidence of Dale and Tucker's actual motives. They have already decided that the men are dangerous madmen and can't see their actions as anything otherwise.

One of the young men in the film grew up hearing stories of how his parents were tortured and murdered by hillbillies. Thus the negative view of all hillbillies was passed onto him, despite the fact that he had no experiences with hillbillies, himself. This preconception he has formed fits into Bacon's Idol of the Cave. Because he has been taught that hillbillies are evil, he can't see Dale and Tucker for who they really are.



The most humorous depiction of an idol is the Idol of the Marketplace. In the film, Dale and Tucker pull the injured girl from the water and yell to her friends, "We got your friend!" It's a sentence of four simple words, with unambiguous meanings and still it is understood to mean two completely different things. Their intention is to call her friends over to help her. Her friends interpret it as a threat, hearing it almost as if they had said "You're next!"


The only idol I was unable to identify was the Idol of the Theater. But maybe you can help with that...