Mocking Eugenics: American Culture against Scientific Hatred

Mocking Eugenics examines how American artists in the 20th century used humor to challenge and destabilize eugenic discourse, highlighting the conflict between scientific and metaphysical truth and the satirical treatment of eugenics. It analyzes the films of Charlie Chaplin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Anita Loos, and Wallace Thurman to dismantle the rhetoric of perfectionism, white supremacy, and nativism that shaped mainstream expressions of American patriotism and normative white masculinity.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 178 pages
Publication date: 31 May 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Mocking Eugenics delves into the vehement opposition to eugenic discourse that emerged among twentieth-century American artists, driven by their desire to challenge and undermine what they perceived as a perilous and harmful belief system. By examining their strategic use of humor to target both the contemporary science of heredity and the totalitarian mindset underlying it, this book directly confronts the clash between eugenic theories that are presented as grounded in scientific and metaphysical truth and the satirical portrayal of eugenics as not only absurdly illogical but also antithetical to democratic ideals and detrimental to humanistic values. Through in-depth analyses of the films of Charlie Chaplin, the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Anita Loos, and Wallace Thurman, Mocking Eugenics explores how these artists employed laughter to dismantle the rhetoric of perfectionism, white supremacy, and nativism that shaped mainstream expressions of American patriotism and normative white masculinity. As such, this book holds significant appeal to scholars engaged in the fields of cultural studies, literature, cinema, sociology, humor, and American studies.

Weight: 340g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032000909