Does the above advertisement ring of eugenics? I am fascinated by the obsession that this nation — and Great Britain and Europe — had with “discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits” during the late 1800s through to World War II, when it disappeared for obvious reasons (see above). In fact, when it comes to eugenics, America has a very dark secret. We Americans, anyway, have an obsession with better, smarter, and stronger.
I hate eugenics and I don’t think it is funny.
There is enough threat of breeding ourselves like Race Horses already through partner-selection and so forth, that I really don’t find the implication of this ad campaign at all.
I have been seeing this all over my news feed but thanks to AdFreak for finally saying something smart on the subject, Use a condom, thwart that evil Hitler sperm:
Do condom ads reflect the mind-sets of nations? In the U.S., we get faux-patriotism and soft-core porn, while the French have safe sex on the beach. Now, from Germany, comes a dour dose of angst via Grey in a campaign for Doc Morris Pharmacies. The message: Use a condom, and be sure you’re not bringing the next Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler or Mao Zedong into the world. Of course, you’d have to sleep with one of those three to risk that—and I imagine most would abstain, especially in the case of Hitler, since he’s been dead for almost 65 years. Or maybe the ads are just generally likening sperm to invaders and terrorists. The bad hairdos should be enough to frighten anyone away. Via Ads of the World.
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Hey Chris – no, it’s not funny, especially when ancestors were pinpointed for mass sterilization (thank goodness that didn’t work, or I wouldn’t be here!). You are a little short on the date for final eugenics movements in the U.S., though. Walter Plecker, an avowed white supremacist and advocate of eugenics, was quite active with his program in Virginia until 1945. I’m sure there are other examples after Plecker, such as the ads you show above.
Well, even the Bellamy Salute, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute , was commonplace before WWII.
Post WWII, the United States had an intentional makeover. I mean, I think the makeover was a good thing, for sure.
I mean, isn’t racism — any sort of racism against any sort of people, including blacks — a form of eugenics?
The “makeover” wasn’t absolute after WWII – think about McCarthy, Cold War and, yes, Civil Rights. Think about all the folks we saw on TV during the Presidential Election Campaign ’08 who carried monkeys around with the Obama sticker on that monkey’s forehead…I agree – any unwillingness to integrate socially, to cut off (whether consciously or subconsciously) from social interaction or to try to block from social participation (such as voting) is a form of eugenics. It’s all designed to eliminate that person’s identity, his or her participation in society and, hence, that person’s “being.”
Amen, sister!
I recently saw a movie about the trials of Hollywood under McCarty. It was offensive. Watching that makes me more compassionate about the last 8-years. No matter what the Bush White House did or didn’t do, they didn’t play “loyalism” witch hunts, even though they really could have done to Muslims and immigrants from traditionally Islamic countries, like we did post Pearl Harbor with the Japanese.
I am still so totally embarrassed by J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy and the Hollywood blacklist conspiracy.
“I am still so totally embarrassed by J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy and the Hollywood blacklist conspiracy.” Why don’t you create a Google News alert for Michele Bachmann? You’ll relive the fear of the McCarthy years all over again. She’s about fifty years behind her time.