Ack! "Science" Versus Black Women: Another Sad Chapter in the History of Aesthetics/Eugenics

Raquel Welch, Planet 9 and More: The Ethnic American Body in Science Fiction Cinema

I wonder if Mandingo was a work of science fiction--perhaps the whole experiment of human slavery is an episode of the same; predatory exploitation of subjected populations (i.e., ironically, populations that have been objectified) always bring with them some legitimizing argument of justification: deeming groups of folks inferior is one of the tropic (trope + ic) moves of science--from Lindbergh with his eugenics fantasies to Dobbs with his fear of "Mexican" leprosy, the sciences have always been there (and not in a small way) to buttress the pangs of hate that throb within the dark soul of homo sapiens.

There are no shortages of ethnic bodies when it comes to the history of science fiction film. From Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. to William Allen Young in District 9, this fruitful cinematic terrain in bestrewn with talented and not-so-talented actors. On the left and right, some classic images from the internet of Raquel Tejada, aka Raquel Welch.

Of course, the most important film in this genre is John Sayles Brother from Another Planet. Joe Morton is brilliant in the titular lead role:



...More on this to come after I re-screen District 9 later this week.

Channel Your Inner Eugenicist

Michael Wyatt Harper is back in the house with a link to a site that basically allows you to design your own human. I don't know if this posting belongs here or on the Obscene Machine, so I am going to post it at both blogs.

Updated Post from January 5, 2007 | Holy Mengele! or Cesar Chavez Rolls in His Grave on the Way to the Orthodontist

REPOST (original) "Holy Mengele! or Cesar Chavez Rolls in His Grave on the Way to the Orthodontist"

It is a given that I will be pilloried for posting this, but if we are going to traffic in comments on stereotypes, race, gender, and ethnicity, and if we are to do so with no little particular emphasis on the manifestation of these beasts in popular culture and the humanities, then we also have to come clean as well about Mexican, Latina/o, and Chicana/o figuration when it comes from our be-lab-coated hermanos y hermanas trafficking in the hard sciences.

Hence the following academic delight from The Angle Orthodontist: An International Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics authored by Martha Mejia-Maidl, Carla A. Evans, Grace Viana, Nina K. Anderson, and Donald B. Giddone (html or pdf, pick your flavor), that finds, among other things, that "Mexican Americans...preferred upper or lower lip positions to be less protrusive than the Caucasians, particularly for female computer animation images." Which may mean, among other things, that Edward James Olmos may not be dating Meg Ryan--at least not in the short term, and that Mexican-Americans have discerning taste, when it comes to visually-stimulated, fetishistic attachments to ersatz Botox-injected chicos y chicas--Miranda Martinez fans, notwithstanding.



More seriously, while said article may just be the result of test subjects confronting badly Photoshop™-mangled images, it also shows how the "hard-sciences" continue to traffic in the concretization of race and ethnicity--Eugenics may well be primed for a comeback if these wacky dentists have their way.

FINAL UPDATE

Apparently, Ryan now will soon star in a film that features a "wild" trip to Baja in search of next-wave cosmetics.