The movie was based on the (indisputable?) fact that intelligence is heritable- but not Eugenics, which takes that a step further and advocates for people deciding which other people are inferior and superior and organizing society around that. One could argue that the movie tries to make a case for eugenics, but it didn’t directly do so. I think the movie could also be seen as looking at culture instead of genetics, and also assuming that is passed down from parents.
I agree that it does wrongly depict poverty as a major indicator of intelligence.
For better or worse, "eugenics" at this point is basically a cultural repulsion field surrounding most of practical aspects of genetics. You dare to even suggest there are measurable genetic differences between people, and someone will shout "eugenics", rounding any conversation down to "yeah nazis said the same thing".
I suspect your idea of “practical aspects of genetics” includes ideas about how people different from you shouldn’t be allowed reproduce, and very little about things like researching the function of a newly discovered microbial enzyme.
Not really. It does, however, include ideas such as "perhaps we should learn to correct genetic diseases directly in the reproductive cells", which is a rounding error away from someone saying something like you just did.
The intro of the movie makes it pretty clear that their premise is "IQ is heritable, and stupid people have more kids." It's not a coincidence that the "high IQ" couple is portrayed as wealthy and the "low IQ" people are shown as poor.
Thank you. It's astonishing to me how few people remember the text of this movie -- it is so clearly saying dumb people are breeding, smart people are not.
