When a pun - a tired one at that - on the word "jeans" ignites a discourse on eugenics, you get the sinking feeling that some folks are more interested in inventing imaginary problems than solving real ones.
Sydney Sweeney, a popular actress, appears in an American Eagle campaign with the slogan "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans." It's a denim pun. She models denim. Jeans. But one of the ads leans into the wordplay, showing her "painting over" the word "genes," which has led some to declare the campaign a dog whistle for white supremacy.
What?
The historical tethering of "good genes" to eugenics is not a fiction. Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin and author of the term "eugenics," helped spawn a movement that, among other horrors, inspired sterilization laws and immigration restrictions in the United States. The phrase "good breeding" once had both agricultural and human applications. There were fairs in the early 20th century in which children were judged on genetic fitness, often filtered through race, class, and disability. That history should not be forgotten.
Yes, we are seeing a right-wing resurgence. I won't argue with that.
But we are not, at this moment, in the middle of a eugenics revival. There is no scientific journal called Genetic Purity Monthly launching a spread on American Eagle's fall denim line. What we have instead is an ad that deployed a painfully obvious pun, and a few too-online reactionaries who, having seen the word "genes," connected it to Nazism with all the causal rigor of a wet cheeseburger.
The over-reading of advertising is not new. Roland Barthes famously dissected an ad for Italian pasta to uncover latent messages about national identity and culinary authenticity. But Barthes was doing cultural criticism, not Twitter moral panic. There is a difference. The panic model of interpretation assumes that every corporate message is encoded propaganda. That if Sydney Sweeney, a white woman, is praised for having good "genes," the implication must be that whiteness is being valorized.
But advertisements are neither subtle nor theoretical. They aim for the blunt instrument of attention. If this ad had starred Zendaya or Awkwafina, no one would have blinked. So is the outrage about the phrase, or about Sweeney herself? If so, what is the standard? Do we now read every casting decision as a statement of racial ideology? Are all puns subject to genealogy audits?
There is work in interpreting symbols, and then there is the parasitic labor of searching for offense. The latter often crowds out the former. When we blur the lines between eugenics and a mall brand, we don't elevate discourse; we cheapen memory.
If everything is a fascist echo, then nothing is.
If every attractive blonde in an ad campaign is a nod to Leni Riefenstahl, if we no longer know how to read a billboard without invoking Nuremberg, something has gone very wrong.
Sydney Sweeney, a popular actress, appears in an American Eagle campaign with the slogan "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans." It's a denim pun. She models denim. Jeans. But one of the ads leans into the wordplay, showing her "painting over" the word "genes," which has led some to declare the campaign a dog whistle for white supremacy.
What?
The historical tethering of "good genes" to eugenics is not a fiction. Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin and author of the term "eugenics," helped spawn a movement that, among other horrors, inspired sterilization laws and immigration restrictions in the United States. The phrase "good breeding" once had both agricultural and human applications. There were fairs in the early 20th century in which children were judged on genetic fitness, often filtered through race, class, and disability. That history should not be forgotten.
Yes, we are seeing a right-wing resurgence. I won't argue with that.
But we are not, at this moment, in the middle of a eugenics revival. There is no scientific journal called Genetic Purity Monthly launching a spread on American Eagle's fall denim line. What we have instead is an ad that deployed a painfully obvious pun, and a few too-online reactionaries who, having seen the word "genes," connected it to Nazism with all the causal rigor of a wet cheeseburger.
The over-reading of advertising is not new. Roland Barthes famously dissected an ad for Italian pasta to uncover latent messages about national identity and culinary authenticity. But Barthes was doing cultural criticism, not Twitter moral panic. There is a difference. The panic model of interpretation assumes that every corporate message is encoded propaganda. That if Sydney Sweeney, a white woman, is praised for having good "genes," the implication must be that whiteness is being valorized.
But advertisements are neither subtle nor theoretical. They aim for the blunt instrument of attention. If this ad had starred Zendaya or Awkwafina, no one would have blinked. So is the outrage about the phrase, or about Sweeney herself? If so, what is the standard? Do we now read every casting decision as a statement of racial ideology? Are all puns subject to genealogy audits?
There is work in interpreting symbols, and then there is the parasitic labor of searching for offense. The latter often crowds out the former. When we blur the lines between eugenics and a mall brand, we don't elevate discourse; we cheapen memory.
If everything is a fascist echo, then nothing is.
If every attractive blonde in an ad campaign is a nod to Leni Riefenstahl, if we no longer know how to read a billboard without invoking Nuremberg, something has gone very wrong.