American Experience The Eugenics Crusade

2018

Action / Biography / Documentary / History

2
IMDb Rating 7.9/10 10 127 127

Plot summary

The Eugenics Crusade tells the story of the eugenics movement and its long history in the United States, from its beginnings in the study of heredity, to its rise as a popular movement promising to uplift the human race through state sponsored sterilization, to its influence on immigration laws designed to close our borders to groups deemed genetically inferior.

Director

Michelle Ferrari Photo
Michelle Ferrari

Top cast

Corey Stoll Photo
Corey Stoll as Narrator
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
1.02 GB
1280*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 53 min
Seeds 1
1.89 GB
1920*1080
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 53 min
Seeds 1

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by JurijFedorov 7 / 10

Decent anti-eugenics documentary

This is only about USA and how they saw eugenics. They go over how eugenics was just a movement without a political leaning. Used to protect USA overall from ill immigrants, criminals, and people with mental disorders. And used to spread reproductive rights too as it was the moral foundation for it.They do say quite a lot of nonsense here as they get too biased at times. Like one pundit claiming that an IQ test thousands of people took was pseudoscience as you can't even define or measure intelligence as such. This claim is of course pseudoscience. While you can criticize IQ tests just dismissing them is foolish. And the documentary never corrects it. I think there are actually a ton of valid criticisms towards the WW1 IQ test given to potential recruits. And some are close to what the documentary gets into. But overall the critique is terrible here. The same pundit pulls out a single IQ item as an example of how bad the test was. And documentary points out another item. But they fully overlook that a main part of the test did actually measure intelligence. Sure some items were terrible, but you can pull out any modern test and find a few terrible items in that too. That's just how ANY test works. They are clearly trying to mislead viewers by not explaining that a main part of the test was valid and quite useful to predict performance in the military.Later they fully join the nurture camp. So that suddenly genes matter none, and that everything is just created by culture. Crime? Explained by culture. Children inheriting personality traits from parents? Culture. And so on. There is no middle ground as the documentary just attacks everything about eugenics without thinking about where it ends up. The documentary kinda just jumps head first into this "new" idea that culture explains all and hence old White men supporting eugenics are just unscientific and outdated. Again, this was close to a valid point to a small degree. Some pundits did touch on valid counter-claims like saying that the eugenics movement was not founded on scientific principles, but kinda just used them over time. And that National Socialists didn't create the movement, but did fully bury it after it was already basically out of style in 1920's USA.This furthermore makes it weird. As of course the documentary starts and ends with explaining how bad and awful Nazis were. Then you suppose it would explain further socialist eugenics movements in other cultures and nations. But nope, this is only USA and Nazi Germany nothing else. Which is a shame as that's the 2 movements most already know quite a bit about. All other socialist regimes have practised genocide and mass selection too to some degree.Overall it's a decent documentary for the anti-eugenics point of view. But it leans so heavily into this point that it misses a ton of valid points and becomes unscientific at times. And furthermore one feels it's incomplete without another point of view. Either a more scientific one or maybe even a short documentary pro eugenics. I don't think this can stand by itself as by itself it is propaganda that will mislead you. Of course they may feel like this moral standpoint is warranted and that misleading viewers is fine if it's for a good cause. But one has to note that they are doing this and be extra critical when watching it. I would not recommend it to people who know nothing about the topic. But if you can remain critical and understand that about 20% of the documentary is directly wrong I think you may enjoy it.
Reviewed by planktonrules 9 / 10

Sadly, the notion of 'inferior races' and their elimination was not created by the Nazis.

One aspect of American history that might shock you is that the same eugenics movement used by the Nazis to justify the extermination of 'inferior' races was actually originated by Americans. A wave of scientists used dubious scientific methods to justify the notion of sterilizing folks for the good of society as a whole. Such notions, while abhorent today, were VERY popular during the eugenics movement in the early 20th century...and these notions led to forced sterilizations of various groups of people. This show is about the history of this sick movement and shows the evolution of this sick pseudo-scientific thought.Like nearly all episodes of "The American Experience", this one is constructed using interviews with various experts today combined with photos, film footage and evocative music....and comes off as expertly crafted...even if the subject matter is repellent. Well made...captivating....and incredibly sad.One aspect of this episode I really appreciated was how it spared no one. It mentioned how many churches and politicians were behind the movement as well as folks still admired today, such as Margaret Sanger and WEB DuBois. In other words, the show seemed more interested in telling the true story instead of any political agenda. Overall, captivating and horrifying at the same time. Well made and worth seeing...though it is NOT something I'd show to children.
Read more IMDb reviews

4 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment