Snowy days bring millions before television screens to binge-watch programs. What audiences ingest as images impact their minds and bodies in much the same manner as food. Some programming weakens watchers, or raises their blood pressure (promoting anxiety and anger); other programming lacks nutritional value and serves as guilty pleasures that dull sensibilities.
WHAT'S ON YOUR STREAMING LIST?
This is not an attempt to have shows deleted from watch lists. It is a plea to begin watching with a discerning eye and with a better understanding of intake. The Acumen Group begins its 2025 Pop-Eu (Popular Eugenics in Television & Film) series in February with an examination of Manhood and the Informal Economy in the work of actor Michael K. Williams. This opening session celebrates the ASALH Black History Month theme, Black Labor, and includes an analysis of Black male identity formation in period dramas. *Check the Acumen website for dates and times of Pop Eu sessions. Here are additional shows we believe capture the eugenic definitions of manhood and masculinity on screen. Take a read of the content below and then let the screenings begin!
DJANGO UNCHAINED
HELL ON WHEELS
BOARDWALK EMPIRE
A SOLDIERS STORY (FILM)
LACKAWANNA BLUES (FILM)
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (FILM)
LOVECRAFT COUNTRY
FARGO (SEASON 4)
THE WIRE
HAP & LEONARD
UNDERSTANDING EUGENICS IN POPULAR CULTURE
Determining who, among the millions of American-born citizens and immigrants counted as fit or unfit, required establishing a normative range, and classifying the population through physical measurements, aptitude tests, and visual examinations. The protection of whiteness – the genes, culture, and national standards of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants – against what Lothrop Stoddard called the “rising tide of color,” meant establishing legal (and extralegal) controls to manage the sexual and social mobility of its best. It also fastened beliefs about eugenic fitness to civility, patriotism, wellness, intellect, beauty, and power. Its counterweight made blackness (skin color, physical features, behaviors, and mores - believed to be decidedly Negro or African in origin), a genetic inferiority, a social pathology, and a sexual contaminant. Because of this approach, many well-meaning lawmakers, scholars, and pop culturists advanced racist, stereotypical, or ill-informed theories within reform efforts.
My research sections the American Eugenics movement into three categories of analysis, though there is some overlap and intersectionality -- Scientific (health, medicine, and research), Social (education, law, law enforcement, housing, finance, and religion), and Popular Culture (public performance, amusements, music, film, books, radio, television, and advertising). The primary intent of eugenics attempts to ensure the stability of fit genes from corruption, so within each of these three categories, I submit that industry leaders produce work to that end. For instance, scientists, doctors, and public health officials set determinants of fit stock and establish protocols for testing individuals and families. Measurements, historically, included intelligence quotients, Terman-Binet tests, phrenology, and craniology calculations, and numerical framing of various parts of the body – all to establish a national norm. Socially, the data of the scientific and medical communities finds buoyancy in laws that govern housing, health, employment, marriage, and education.
Legislation like the Race Integrity Act (1924) determined that only a person who had “no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian" could be classified as "white" and made normative the behaviors, characteristics, and appearance of whiteness. Unlike its reach into scientific and social platforms, the infusion of eugenics into popular culture relies heavily on mass media to dramatize and make trendy the messages of race fitness. Newspapers and magazines coined terms in the 1920s such as race hygiene and race suicide to inform a bourgeoning consumer culture about eugenic fitness. By attaching eugenics to amusements and leisure, mass media came to define good health, citizenship, and national character. Early examples of performative popular eugenics include Better Baby contests, Fitter Families contests, and later, the Miss America pageant. Unlike the fronts of yesteryear, the soil of eugenics now thrives most virulently through popular television, film, music, advertising, and social media. This, however, does not mean that Hollywood writers, directors, or producers intentionally manufacture hereditarian media. Images, storylines, and programming often grow out of replication of everyday life and the conjecture, stereotypes, fantasies, and fixations of childhood, School curricula and popular amusements may serve as a muse to scriptwriters and those covering news stories.
As you binge on telly this season, ask yourselves:
What emotions did the show or episodes produce?
What characters, scenes, or situations made you happy, angry, sad, or embarrassed?
How were women, children, and elders represented?
How were authority, manhood, womanhood, and patriotism depicted?
Which characters or situations spoke to the humanity or fitness of each episode?
If the show or film is one you've watched several times, what encourages you to watch it again?
How does connecting with that show or film impact your view(s) of yourselves and the world around you?
Happy Screening!
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