I am somewhat baffled as to the purpose of reading the article “Popular Culture”. Now I have a vague idea as to the history of the words “culture” and “mass”, but why is that important to know? The reading was also complicated and confused by seemingly random and meaningless numbers and letters.
Also, the article “From Pulp Hero to Superhero” was a good overview of what we talked about in class so far. It was also much more interesting than the above mentioned “Popular Culture”. The article brought up the topic of eugenics in the United States, a topic that I have not heard much about. It seems like the subject is probably a taboo. The topic of eugenics as expressed in the article reminded me greatly of the Nazis. The article suggests that the American public was afraid of the degeneration of the white race (as seen in comics like Tarzan) and that people voluntarily set up programs to “promote efforts to civilize urban masses and impart values”. It seems that this fear and set up of programs to measure whiteness is not that far off from the genocide of all but the “Aryan Race” Hitler had planned. Indeed, the article also mentions that the Supreme Court upheld a statute which instituted the “compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded” in the interests of a “pure gene pool”. To keep a gene pool “pure”, it seems that this situation could have easily escalated to the sterilization of the parents and close family members of the mentally retarded. The beliefs of superiority of the white race, as reflected in the comics, causes me to question why the United States did not join Hitler’s side in WWII.