Demolition Man is the tale of a really awesome violent cop that is frozen to wake up in a future where radical political correctness has changed the culture and even the physical infrastructure. He may be too tough and traditional to exist there but is needed to arrest Dennis Rodman. Things may not be what they seem.
A really interesting fun fact that you probably didn't know was, in different countries, the restaurant is not Taco Bell; surprising I know. It was replaced with Pizza Hut for the UK release, and no other details were changed. I've found all the foreign Taco Bell replacements.
There are more interesting questions that arise from this movie aside from how the three seashells work. What is the rest of the country like? The rest of the world for that matter. Is the setting of San Andreas all that remains of California? Is it a state to itself? A country to itself?
The idea of San Adreas' geographic situation is "the big one" that gets used in other "not too distant future" sci-fi scenarios. A big earthquake causes some of California to sink, and what was LA is now an island. In such a scenario WHERE does that land go? There are ideas of how the landscape would change in an IRL "big one, and where the displaced land ends up, but Demolition Man bravely throws anything resembling real science in the toilet to create its own unique future landscape.
What seems to have happened is: some kind of earthquake just sort of “sunk” a bunch of land surrounding the “Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego Metroplex” turning it into an island. This event created some kind of power vacuum in regional government where Dr. Raymond Cocteau was allowed to become the governor / mayor for life and implement strict laws of social engineering. The result is a regional dictatorship, where the US still has elected presidents and some semblance at least of representative democracy.
What remaining semblance is frustratingly unknown. As of 1996 there were 27 constitutional amendments total, and Sandra Bullock refers to the “61st amendment” which does imply some shit changed on the national level, but what we are not fully sure. Are the rest of the country’s laws similar to those of San Andreas? Or, what? Are the bans on tobacco and physical sex, and salt and all other stuff national, or is it San Andreas specific? They don’t really say. The underground people have bottled beer on offer. The beer Sylvester Stallone is served appears to be a Bud Light; presumably smuggled in from a less restrictive part of the country.
How did they forgor? Is 40 years enough for everyone to be this different? No. The transition to the world they live in was not instant. LA was a war zone in 1997, and there was a major natural disaster in the interim. The museum shows the city was normal and violent as late as 2010. The city section under the museum has a working fire hydrant. The setting seems to be a "new" city built OVER an "old" city. Is San Andreas a midgar plate? if so, why? They say, "merged in 2011", which means the full change didn't set in until not long before the movie. Of the seemingly soft coddled cops that don't know how to do rough police stuff, some of them would have had to have been veterans of a hard pacification and have experience dealing with Simon Pheonix types for the timeline to make sense.
Just tell him how to use the fucking seashells! It is very cruel for these supposedly more peaceful politically correct people to just not give him a way to wipe his ass. They need Demolition Man to stop this murder guy. Why do they want him to have a shit rash? Also, the seashells are buttons that operate a bidet. There you go. It is answered. Now we can shut up about it.
Another matter of speculation. No, Sandra Bullock is NOT his daughter. She is obsessed with 90s nostalgia, she would know this, or at least make mention she was adopted AND would have to be about 50 years old for it to work chronologically. It doesn't add up. The reason the sex helmet doesn't work right is not some incest error. It is because his brain is gunched from "rehabilitative programming" and as a way for the film to demonstrate he is a meat and potato cave man that won't easily conform to the social norms of future times.