Eugenics has an enduring presence in popular culture, and is reflected in our everyday speech and media. Eugenic themes first began to appear in popular culture over a hundred years ago, and were later reinforced though the eugenics movement, which created large amounts of propaganda. Popular culture reflects changing trends in public knowledge of eugenics, while simultaneously reinforcing and shaping view of eugenics and related topics, including villainization after World War II, and eugenic exploration of nuclear technology, genetics, and transhumanism. Media exploring eugenics include novels and books, movies, television series, comic books, video games, and the Internet, especially through the genre of science fiction.

Over 100 years of eugenics and popular culture
Eugenic themes in popular culture appear in Victorian literature at the end of the nineteenth century, but were experienced full force throughout the world by the start of the twentieth century. This is in large part due to the extensive use of propaganda by the eugenics movement in the forms of better baby contests, exhibits and tours, magazine and newspaper articles, books, radio shows, films, self-improvement literature, educational lectures, and even apparent in the reception of “Jazz Age” music (Johnson, 2011), and popular art in the 1930s (Currell & Cogdell, 2006). The strong presence of eugenics in popular culture and propaganda during the height of the eugenics movement has helped create a collective memory of eugenics, even if the term itself fell out of favour.

After the Second World War, eugenics took on different connotations as countries tried to distance themselves from Nazi Germany. This was reflected in popular culture (Anders & Jackson, 2012), as Nazi supporters, scientists, and by extension, overt eugenic ideas and practices, were portrayed as a blanket “evil”. However, while rhetoric shifted, eugenic themes persisted under the framework of scientific and genetic advancement towards the end of the twentieth century. Popular culture therefore shaped and reinforced public opinion on eugenic themes in many ways and under many guises.

These themes have persisted within popular culture in a variety of mediums, and examining this continued influence offers insight into the transmission and reception of eugenic messages by the general public (Winfield 2007). In this regard it is worth nothing that not all eugenic related media is propagandic—popular science fiction has notably explored potential negative effects of eugenics.

Books and Novels
At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, many major Western works of literature dealt with themes of science, degeneracy and sanity, the roles of women, social class, industrialization, and the evolution of man. These works were often influenced by propaganda, popular reports, and scientific research of the time. Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, and when Sir Francis Galton first coined the term eugenics in 1883, a great deal of public conscience was already captured and fascinated by science and descent. These impacted much of the literature written at the end of the nineteenth century. Notable works associated with these themes include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (1859), and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847). Early science fiction such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), and Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) could be read as cautionary eugenic tales where “good” traits were not encouraged in humans.

With the rise of the eugenics movement in the early twentieth century, eugenics supporters published extensive publications and propaganda, thereby also entering popular consciousness and influencing other forms of popular culture, including literature. Examples include Charles Davenport’s 1910 booklet, “Eugenics: the Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding” in the United States, and numerous reports and books written by major eugenics supporters and advocates in Canada such as Tommy Douglas, Helen MacMurchy, Emily Murphy, and George Hoadley, among others. These same figures influenced popular culture as they often wrote newspaper articles, providing the public with constant eugenic updates and thoughts (some of these works are explored more extensively in the propaganda entry).

One of the most popular venues for prominent scientists, doctors, philosophers, intellectuals, and literary figures to disseminate eugenic themes to an educated audience was the To-day and To-morrow series. This series ran between 1924 and 1931, and was essentially over a hundred essays published in pamphlet form by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co (Schraner, 2009). The goal of the series was to analyze important topics related to cultural, historical, and popular representations of science. The series sought to predict and assess the repercussions of science on society (Ferreira, 2009; Schraner, 2009). Often, these important concepts were illustrated alongside examination of popular culture including film, literature, fashion, and music (Schraner 2009). Eugenic topics were often discussed, such as Mendelian genetics, Darwin’s theory of evolution, mechanical extensions of mankind, the family, marriage, motherhood and pregnancy, birth control, sexual relationships, race, disease, crime, psychiatry, and even the future of Canada (Holman, 2013). (A full list of titles is available at http://airminded.org/bibliography/to-day-and-to-morrow/.)

Although most popular essays written on eugenics promoted the theory, significant anti-eugenic essays also circulated. Most famous is Eugenics and Other Evils: an argument against scientifically organized state (1922), written by G. K. Chesterton, an English writer, during the eugenics movement openly critiqued the eugenics movement, ranking it one of the great evils of society. Chesterton argues that eugenic laws are a means of suppressing the poor, and predicts the abuse of eugenics. The book was influential enough that the British Parliament began to question eugenic legislation (Sparkes, 1999).

The reports and popular papers generated by the eugenics movement, significant pieces of work in themselves, also influenced contemporary literature. Many reputable authors were eugenics supporters, including H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Virgina Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and W. B. Yeats (Childs, 2001), whose works were all influenced by the eugenics movement. Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald also explored eugenics in their own works (Currell & Cogdell, 2006), and both make reference to Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race; or The Racial Basis of European History (1916), a book which advocated scientific racism and a eugenics program to preserve “Nordic” racial purity.

The growing popular conscious of eugenics encouraged by writing and propaganda generated by the eugenics movement led literature and science fiction to deeper and more explicit exploration of eugenics than its early counterparts of the nineteenth century. Famous pro-eugenic novels such as Eduardo Urzaiz’s Eugenia: A Fictional Sketch of Future Habits (1919) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915) were written during this time (Anders & Jackson 2012). Other early fictional accounts of eugenics include Edward Payton Jackson’s The Demigod (1886), Tygaeus’ The United States of the World: an Utopian Essay Towards a Better Ordering of the Affairs of Men (1916), Charles Binet-Sanglé’s The Human Stud-Farm (1918), and William Margrie’s The Story of a Great Experiment: How England Produced the First Superman (1927) (Anders & Jackson, 2012). Such popular culture was influential in the eugenics movement. For example, Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road (1932) explores the physical degradation of poverty (Lombardo, 2011) and although the novel was controversial, it influenced Georgian eugenic laws at the time (Lombardo, 2011).

In the 1930s and 1940s, “superhumans” became a popular theme (Anders & Jackson 2012). Novels featuring superhumans include E. E. “Doc” Smith’s popular Lensman series (1934), Olaf Stapledon’s First and Last Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future (1930) and Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest (1935), as well as Robert A. Heinlein’s Beyond This Horizon (1942) and Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) (Anders & Jackson, 2012). Satires also arose exploring eugenic themes in the early twentieth century (Anders & Jackson, 2012). These include Rose Macaulay’s What Not (1918), Charlotte Haldane’s Man’s World (1927), and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1931)(Anders & Jackson, 2012).

After the mid-nineteenth century, eugenics continued to take a prominent role in science fiction. Cyril M. Kornbluth’s The Marching Morons (1951) featured a futuristic world inhabited by morons – a result of intelligent people not reproducing enough. The Marching Morons was voted one of the best novellas of its time (Anders & Jackson 2012). John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids (1955) was also published during this time, and later would help inspire the X-Men comic book series (Anders & Jackson, 2012). Novels of enduring popularity, such as Frank Herbert’s Dune series (1965) and Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (1985) also portrayed worlds affected by eugenics.

Eugenics continues to be explored in modern popular literature. The world-famous children’s series Harry Potter (1997 – 2007) by J. K. Rowling, features an antagonist obsessed with “pure-blood” wizards. This antagonist seeks to eradicate all “inferior” wizards, born with non-magical parentage. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005), shortlisted for the Booker Prize, outlines a futuristic world where institutionalized clones are created to provide humans with organ transplants, and thus have no right to live. The recent Alastair Reynolds novel, House of Suns (2008), shortlisted for the Clarke Award, also features clones and eugenic themes (Anders & Jackson, 2012).

Movies
Many early movies dealing with eugenics were propaganda. In the United States, this included The Black Stork (1917) and in the same year, The Garden of Knowledge and Married in Name Only (Pernick, 1999). Later, A Eugenics Catechism (1923), and Tomorrow’s Children: The Goal of Eugenics (1934) were also created as eugenics propaganda films. Nazi Germany created To Prevent is Better than to Cure (Vorsogen ist besser als heilen) (1939), and Canada produced Dangerous Lives (1938), which also became a source of revenue for the Canadian Social Hygiene Society and the Health League of Canada (Pocock, 1938).

Propaganda movies helped bring eugenics to public consciousness and were one of the most effective ways to do so (Pocock, 1938). Mainstream movies also began to feature eugenic themes: Victorian novels such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were soon adapted into movies (often with even more eugenic emphasis than their novel counterparts). A notable example is Island of Lost Souls (1933), a movie based on the H. G. Wells novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), where eugenicist Julian Huxley was consulted for scientific accuracy of the film (Anders & Jackson, 2012). Eugenic parodies were also created, such as College Holiday (1936), a musical comedy. In this movie, eugenic beauty pageants, Greek Gods practicing eugenics, and a Eugenics Mating Headquarters all are made to look deliberately ridiculous (Anders & Jackson 2012).

After World War II, movies tended to portray eugenic experiments in a negative light, reflecting public opinion of the time. However, the scientific advancement reflected in movies continued to explore eugenic themes: in the 1950s and 1960s, movies explored the idea that radiation from nuclear testing could affect human DNA (Anders & Jackson 2012). In the 1970s, movies suggested human DNA might need to be genetically modified in order to survive ecological disasters (Anders & Jackson, 2012). By the 1990s, genetic engineering was a common theme in popular culture movies, due to the mapping of the human genome and the introduction of cloning in 1996 (Anders & Jackson, 2012). One of the most famous movies about genetic manipulation is Gattaca (1997), depicting a society driven by eugenics. The movie also explores the idea that genes cannot always guarantee or predestine success in human beings. Eugenics themes surfaced in diverse movies genres, as in the action/adventure movie Blade II (2002), and the comedy, Twins (1988).

Towards the 2000s, many comic books with eugenic themes were adapted into movies, including X-Men (2000), Spiderman (2002), Superman Returns (2006), The Incredible Hulk (2008), and Captain America (2011). This premise of a future inhabited by “stupid” people, as seen in novels like The Time Machine (1895), and The Marching Morons (1951), has been recycled and praised many times, including most recently in the 2006 movie, <>Idiocracy, whose protagonist finds himself in a future where he is the smartest man on earth. Idiocracy (2006) has been described as the “new cultural touchstone for discussing America’s cultural and educational decline” (Novak 2014, para. 2), and is cited frequently in social media, even almost a decade later (Novak, 2014). Original movies touching on eugenic related themes have also continued to appear, as Elysium (2013). Transhumanism has also emerged as a theme in movies, as in Robocop (1987), I, Robot (2004), and cyborgs (or the Borg) in Star Trek. These themes continue in movies today.

Television programs
A significant number of television shows have featured eugenic themes over the years. The most known of these is probably Star Trek, which first began in the 1960s. One of this series most famous villains is Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically enhanced superhuman, and a veteran of the fictional “eugenic wars” of the 1990s. Attempts to “improve humanity” are also featured by the species called the Borg, who turn humans into cyborgs. These pursuits – either through transhumanism or genetic engineering, are presented with significant downfalls. The character of Khan was also featured in the Star Trek revival movie, Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013), a blockbuster success. Eugenic themes continue in more modern series of Star Trek, such as in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where one of the main characters, Dr. Julian Bashir, is a genius created through illegal genetic manipulation.

Another famous series with great impact on popular culture and featuring eugenics themes is the BBC’s Doctor Who, which began in 1963. The primary villains of the show are the alien species known as the Daleks, who are obsessed with racial purity and exterminate anything “different”. The Daleks were in fact created through genetic engineering, with the goal of removing the “weakness” of emotions. These themes persist even in modern episodes of Doctor Who. Another great enemy of the Doctor are the Cybermen, who take ordinary humans, and improve them by turning them into cyborgs, but also take away their free will.

Other notable series with eugenic themes include: Orphan Black (2013), X-Files (1993-2002), Dark Angel (2000 – 2002), and Dollhouse (2009-2010), among others. Transhumanism continues to also be present, as in the series Almost Human (2013) or Bionic Woman (2007).

Comic Books and Video Games
Another notable source of popular culture comes from comic books and video games, which also feature eugenic themes. Comic books in particular have a long history with eugenics. Superman was created at the end of the 1930s, during the eugenics movement (Anders & Jackson 2012), and represents a culmination of eugenic ideals as an ultimate “superhuman” (although Superman himself is an alien). In the 1970s, eugenics was a strong presence through the discussion of DNA in comic books such as the X-Men (mutants live among humans, whose genetics grant them superpowers. A common theme in X-Men is the eradication and policing of mutants both good and bad to protect “normal” humans), Captain America (a supersoldier created through a serum that changes a human to the best of possible outcomes during World War II), The Hulk (a man who turns into a monster based on radiation exposure), and Spiderman (a boy whose DNA was altered by combination with a spider’s DNA), among others.

Modern Internet comics also continue to explore eugenics. For example, the popular series XKCD has touched on eugenics. Video games also play on these themes. For example, Master Chief from the successful series of Halo game (2001 – present) is a genetically modified superhuman.

Eugenics and its lasting effects in popular culture
Eugenics continues to have a lasting effect in popular culture. Outside of modern novels, movies, television series, comic books, and video games, people often engage in recreational activities that were made popular through the eugenics movement. For example, tracing family genealogy is a popular pastime, but was first emphasized in eugenics exhibitions. Providing genealogical information remains one of the more important roles of historical archives today, and genealogy can be researched online now too.

On the Internet, eugenics persists in forum discussions, blogs, Facebook groups, and the writing of articles, among other forms of presence. Several recent documentaries examining eugenics have also been created, including Homo Sapiens 1900 (1998), the BBC’s Mixed Britannia (2011), The Sterilization of Leilani Muir (1996), and Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement (2013). Oral histories have also been captured and showcased on the Living Archives website (see Our Stories).

The Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada project and its members have created media examining eugenics history. For example, the plays The Book of Jobes, Aleugenta, and Invisible Child: Leilani Muir and the Eugenics Board have been showcased in Edmonton, Alberta at the Fringe Festival. The annual Alberta Eugenics Awareness Week in Edmonton, Canada, has featured artwork and exhibits such as CRIPSiE, and public lectures on various topics related to eugenics. The recent independent publications, Hear My Voice: Stories Told by Albertans with Developmental Disabilities Who Were Once Institutionalized (2006), and Leilani Muir’s biography, A Whisper Past (2014) have also added to the body of work on eugenics in Western Canada available to the public.

Eugenics has become so pervasive in popular culture it is impossible to go through a day without alluding to it in some way. For example, when hearing someone make the comment or joke that people should be licensed to have children (or that they are too stupid to reproduce), it is important to be conscious of the message society is reinforcing, and to reflect on such themes in modern popular culture.

-Colette Leung

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