ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we redefine the collection of films by Edgar Ulmer aimed at involving African Americans, Latin Americans and Native Americans in timely health examination and treatment against tuberculosis, as an extension of the semantic structure of the films produced for the periphery in Eastern Europe. We explain why in each of Ulmer's films, regimes of authenticity are forged as multilayered constructions that encompass the official rhetoric of inclusion, namely, benevolent paternalism, which varied from film to film. Presenting the periphery in each of three films not as a particular region but as a social milieu, or even a reservation to which the particular ethnic group belongs, leads to a connection between health films and the reproduction of racial hierarchies. Finally, we explore The Light Ahead (1939) by Ulmer, a film about cholera in an imaginary Eastern European town, as a consistent deconstruction of the canon of health films for the periphery.
