Stupid!

Stupid! was a British television comedy sketch show aimed at children of primary and secondary school age, which was first broadcast on CBBC and subsequently BBC One.

Main characters

King Stupid (played in Series 1 by Marcus Brigstocke, and Series 2 by Phil Cornwell), an immortal who is the instigator of all stupidity. King Stupid has files on every human and can make them behave stupidly using an advanced computer system. The King resides inside his castle in the Etherworld, a pan-dimensional realm with upside-down wall sockets, which is home to many Deed Monarchs, each of which rule over different aspects of human behaviour. Queen Sensible, King Angry, Count Cruel, and King Wonderful all have unique personalities. The Ether World is also home to a myriad of ogres, imps, banshees, witches, boggarts and many other mythical creatures. Stupid is served by his gremlin butleries Goober.

Stupid’s work (or rather, play) is made all the more difficult by his annoying purple gremlin butler Goober (Rusty Goffe), whom he constantly refers to as a "bog house rat". Goober goes out of his way to make the King’s life miserable. Goober is normally given a variety of boring tasks by Stupid such as going to the supermarket and taking out the rubbish. The love-hate relationship between the King and Goober provides a sitcom-style element to the show with a self-resolving story arc throughout each episode.

Stupidity

Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, wit or sense. Stupidity may be innate, assumed or reactive – a defence against grief or trauma.

Etymology

The root word stupid, which can serve as an adjective or noun, comes from the Latin verb stupere, for being numb or astonished, and is related to stupor. In Roman culture, the stupidus was the professional fall-guy in the theatrical mimes.

According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, the words "stupid" and "stupidity" entered the English language in 1541. Since then, stupidity has taken place along with "fool," "idiot," "dumb," "moron," and related concepts as a pejorative appellation for human misdeeds, whether purposeful or accidental, due to absence of mental capacity.

Definition

Stupidity is a quality or state of being stupid, or an act or idea that exhibits properties of being stupid. In a character study of "The Stupid Man" attributed to the Greek philosopher Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BC), stupidity was defined as "mental slowness in speech or action". The modern English word "stupid" has a broad range of application, from being slow of mind (indicating a lack of intelligence, care or reason), dullness of feeling or sensation (torpidity, senseless, insensitivity), or lacking interest or point (vexing, exasperating). It can either imply a congenital lack of capacity for reasoning, or a temporary state of daze or slow-mindedness.

Stupid (art movement)

Stupid was a short-lived grouping of constructivist artists, formed in Cologne in 1919. The founding members were Willy Fick, Heinrich Hoerle and his wife Angelika Hoerle (1899–1923), Anton Räderscheidt and his wife Marta Hegemann, and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert.

The Stupid group aimed to address sociopolitical issues through an art of proletarian character. Seiwert and Räderscheidt had previously been active in the Cologne Dada scene, along with Max Ernst. Ernst later described Stupid as "a secession from Cologne Dada. As far as Hoerle and especially Seiwert were concerned, Dada's activities were aesthetically too radical and socially not concrete enough".

Räderscheidt's studio was their base of operations, but by 1920 he had abandoned the constructivist style. The group exhibited together and issued a publication, "Stupid 1", before disbanding.

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