This dissertation focuses on the social structures, laws, and censorship bodies that attempted to limit access to representations of bodymind variation in the first half of the 20th century. It begins by reading into the ways that disability and human variation is stigmatized through connections to queerness, colonized nations, and race. This dissertation focuses on three distinct media–pulps, film, and comics–and the laws which attempted to regulate them– “ugly laws,” The Hays Code, and the Comics Code Authority. I argue that these regulatory strategies had a threefold impact on the representation of disability across media. First, they attempted to constrain and domesticate representations of disability as a private matter. Second, they created a spectacle of bodymind variation by continuously amplifying the threat of mutants on normative humanity. Third, they created a desire for mutant representation in audiences which blurred the line between a disgusting other and a desirable subject position. This dissertation follows the ways in which mutation and difference pivoted from the horrific and disgusting to a desirable identity among science fiction fans. The mutants of the pulps created a space in which bodymind variation shifted from a stigmatized subject position to a mantle of power–a threat to those who seemed not to understand. Science fiction films rely on the introduction of anxieties–through multiple sensoria–that are connected to social and cultural values which must then be resolved by the conclusion of the film. Science fiction comics intertwine fear, disgust, and potential to circumnavigate the Comic Book Code of 1954, maintaining a space for bodymind variance through fraught practices. While mutant media between 1904 and 1964 rendered human variation as something to be sought out and consumed for pleasure, they also amplified eugenic assumptions about its threat to normative reproduction.
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