Quinn Angstrom
Is it just really easy to accidentally make movies about eugenics
Quinn Angstrom
Cars 2, Idiocracy, Sky High, Bee Movie
Master Chieve
Bee Movie?
Quinn Angstrom
as bluecanary pointed out
moontouched
it definitely is if you do not think about the repercussions
moontouched
so it seems to me
Quinn Angstrom
the bees win the rights in court to not be exploited by the honey industry
Quinn Angstrom
and then immediately become so lazy that it causes an ecological apocalypse
Quinn Angstrom
and it turns out bees are only happy if they're being exploited, because it's their nature
Master Chieve
is THAT what Bee Movie is about???
Quinn Angstrom
it's one of various things bee movie is about
EsperBot
I don’t think that’s really eugenics, although it is a line of thinking that’s very popular with the sort of people who are also into eugenics
Quinn Angstrom
Idiocracy is the most egregious one I think
Quinn Angstrom
the entire plot of the movie is about the fear of inferior breeding stock overcrowding the world, causing the downfall of mankind
GAY TENNA?
yeah idiocracy is literally just a movie about eugenics
Quinn Angstrom
it's a movie where the ideal course of action would be to go back in time and institute government policies to cull the poor
Rama
Considering that superpowers are genetic and non-superpowered individuals are either useless or villainous, I'm gonna throw in the Incredibles movies here too
Quinn Angstrom
Brad Bird just generally has a weird fixation on Special Individuals
Quinn Angstrom
Ratatouille's "anyone can cook" theme even in its end of movie uplifitng version is "natural cooking geniuses are super real but can come from anywhere"
Quinn Angstrom
Tomorrowland was about a guy seeking indigo children to pave the way for a glorious future
Quinn Angstrom
Incredibles, well, "We keep finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity but when someone is TRULY SPECIAL"
GAY TENNA?
i feel like "some people are naturally talented" is like, not specifically eugenics, the issue is just that people then take the additional step of somehow making it genetic
GAY TENNA?
at which point it becomes eugenics
Quinn Angstrom
yeah
GAY TENNA?
and it's just interesting how many people TAKE that step
Quinn Angstrom
Brad Bird probably isn't a eugenicist
Quinn Angstrom
but his fixations lead to a lot of eugenicists nodding their heads in agreement
Doctor Ansem
Yeah
~Lamiamon~
Knuckles in the Archie Sonic comics
Doctor Ansem
People seem to enjoy the concept of 'naturally talented'
Quinn Angstrom
oh boy
Quinn Angstrom
tell me about knuckles the eugenics
Doctor Ansem
Just... maybe stop linking it to ~gEnEs~
moontouched
its like an easy thing to be like "look at this special boy" but apparently very hard to think about it for more than five seconds and not make the Special bloodline/genetic/etc related
moontouched
like i get WHY because 'special secret family powers' is a great plot hook but also............please think about the repercussions.............
moontouched
the implications............thanks
tutorials georg
oh boy yeah archie knuckles was... yeah
tutorials georg
okay so a big part of that was penders's ideas for the main series would often get vetoed by sega, but then the same ideas would be approved if they weren't about sonic
tutorials georg
which is why he wrote so much about knuckles and gave him his own spinoff for a while
~Lamiamon~
tutorials georg
: let me handle this
tutorials georg
got it
tutorials georg
you can probably tell it better anyway
~Lamiamon~
Quinn Angstrom
: so basically Knuckles' dad Locke had a nightmare that was a vision of the future
~Lamiamon~
where Knuckles would be facing this horrible unimaginable threat
~Lamiamon~
to prepare him, he took Knuckles' egg and bathed in in Chaos energy radiation so he would be born a living Chaos Emerald
~Lamiamon~
Then throughout his childhood made sure he would be exposed to the best learning and training, which involved a lot of keeping him from his mother and abandoning him and making him think he was the last of his kind
~Lamiamon~
flashforward to years after Penders got off the book
~Lamiamon~
An evil echidna scientist takes advantage of all of this to turn Knuckles into a super-energized knight templar he can manipulate into burning down the world he thinks is corrupt
~Lamiamon~
Locke has to sacrifice his life to undo the hex that is controlling Knuckles after getting an earful from Knuckles' OTHER mentor and girlfriend that this happened because Locke had a bad dream and then decided to microwave the baby
~Lamiamon~
~Lamiamon~
anyway that's the story of Knuckles and eugenics
Quinn Angstrom
I always did wonder about the context of microwave baby
RobotApocalypse
stories about people with super special talents and stories about bloodlines are both very common types of stories to tell, and then people just....combine them, without thinking about it
AzureChrysanthemum
Yeah the big issue is that eugenics, like racism, are heavily baked into European/American culture
AzureChrysanthemum
Divine right of kings and all that
AzureChrysanthemum
Even though America was ostensibly a rejection of that we still go hard on it because it justified the slavery and racism
Be Maki-Mine 🌈
I'm having trouble verifying that the creators described The Incredibles as a commentary on "Gifted Children", but certainly a lot of people described it that way on their own, which really pinches as the discourse on academic tracking has continued to develop
Rama
America got the Enlightenment version of that
Rama
Which is Divine Right of Money
A Grinning DM
I feel like X-Men is somehow simultaneously anti and pro eugenics
Rama
X-Men has run for so long under so many authors it has taken every conceivable stance on its basic premise