Todd Browning's FREAKS (1932) could be especially useful, especially in light of its production and distribution history and various governmental and other reactions to it.   A much more muted example, but interesting in its WWII context, is the circus caravan scene in  Hitchcock's SABOTEUR (1942).
 
Don Larsson
 
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"Oh!  Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!"
                                         --Herman Melville
Donald F. Larsson
Department of English, AH 230
Minnesota State University
Mankato, MN  56001
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Office Phone: 507-389-2368
 

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From: Film and TV Studies Discussion List on behalf of Johnson Cheu
Sent: Sun 6/11/2006 6:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SCREEN-L] Films about Eugenics (Early 20th Cent) inquiry



Dear List:

I'm planning a course about the Eugenics movement in America, covering,
race, disability, and sexuality. I'm trying to confine most of the readings
and screenings to pre-1945, except for a look at genetics, a la Gattaca,
and probably X-Men (if Last Stand's on DVD by late Fall). Besides Birth of
A Nation, and In The White Man's Image, can anyone think of good films to
use that have eugenics as theme either at forefront or as undercurrent, in
relation to race/dis/sex pre-1945? The course is a thematic freshman
composition course, not a film course, so I'm more interested in things
they can discuss more thematically, rather than within a trajectory of film
studies discourse.

Thanks,

Johnson Cheu
>[log in to unmask]

Dr. Johnson Cheu
Visiting Assistant Professor
Dept. of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures
Michigan State University
235 Bessey Hall
East Lansing, MI 48824
(517) 432-2553 (Office)
(517) 355-2400 (Dept.) (517) 353-5250 (Fax)

Poetry/Fiction Editor
Disability Studies Quarterly
http://www.dsq-sds.org/

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