The Erotics of Ethnonationalism

Eco-Porn and Propaganda

A transatlantic examination of the eco-erotics of nationalist political propaganda. 

This talk seeks to excavate the ecological erotics of propaganda films produced by the Hitler Youth and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Core. Common across these archives is pastoral imagery of homosocial bonding: strapping young men stripped to the waist while frolicking in nature or cheerfully laboring outdoors. Arguing that these images are intended in part to titillate, and tracing these tropes through the visual imaginary of contemporary nationalisms, the lecture will engage this media history to theorize the role of arousal in an eco-imperialist politics attracted to both racial and environmental homogeneity.

Ian Fleishman is Chair of Cinema & Media Studies and an Associate Professor in the Department of Francophone, Italian & Germanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Image: Still from  “Outdoors in the Garden State” (produced by the United States Department of the Interior’s Motino Picture Unit, 1937)