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Constructing Otherness in the Odditoriums of Ripley's Believe It

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Constructing Otherness in the Odditoriums of Ripley's Believe It University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2016 A Spectacle Of The ddO : Constructing Otherness In The dditO oriums Of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Sarah Haughenbury University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Haughenbury, S.(2016). A Spectacle Of The Odd: Constructing Otherness In The Odditoriums Of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/3993 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A SPECTACLE OF THE ODD : CONSTRUCTING OTHERNESS IN THE ODDITORIUMS OF RIPLEY ’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT ! by Sarah Haughenbury Bachelor of Arts Cornell College, 2013 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2016 Accepted by: Terrance Weik, Director of Thesis Marc L. Moskowitz, Reader Jennifer Reynolds, Reader Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School © Copyright by Sarah Haughenbury, 2016 All Rights Reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, without the emotional and financial support of the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina, the scope of this thesis would not have been possible. Cat Keegan and Claudia Carriere are always there to make sure everyone in the department has what they need and that we do not miss important deadlines. They truly keep the department going! In particular, Claudia ensured that I had a room and all necessities for my thesis defense, and Cat helped secure funding for me when I realized I would be working on this thesis a semester longer than initially intended. Dr. Terrance Weik, my thesis chair, was the first person who I met in the department, and he has since then offered me academic support and kind words. Despite my changing research interests, Dr. Weik took it upon himself to make sure I had the support I needed to be successful at USC. I am equally grateful for the patience of Dr. Jennifer Reynolds and Dr. Marc Moskowitz, my other two committee members. The wisdom and diverse specializations of my committee have helped me become a well- rounded anthropologist with a thesis that can be a model of how the subfields of anthropology can work beautifully together. I have discovered that even when instructors in the department were not on my committee, they did not hesitate to help. Dr. Gail Wagner and Dr. Sherina Feliciano-Santos were two of the first instructors in the department who helped me transform my interest in Ripley’s into a viable research project. They offered countless suggestions for literature iii and theory. Dr. Wagner also made sure I was prepared for the thesis writing process before it ever began. Moreover, I owe a big thanks to my fellow graduate students whose incessant invites to hang out served as a reminder that I need to have fun and enjoy life among the chaos of academia. They were always there to reassure me that I was never alone in the graduate school journey. The research for this thesis also would not have been possible without the support of Brandon Thompson who drove me to all of my field sites and offered unwavering encouragement throughout the entirety of my time at graduate school. His companionship, love, and humor brought sunshine to my life that has served as a reminder to find the best in each day. I think fondly of my friends and family who offered their listening ears and positivity throughout the research and writing process. I especially want to thank Stephen Gardner, Matthew Bresette, and Persephonae Velasquez for always asking about the progress of my thesis and offering their assistance in editing. Just showing interest in my academic life made me feel supported and acted as the driving force to keep me moving forward. Stephen Gardner and Remy Thomas kindly posted my surveys on their social media which accounts for most of the results I received. Thus, I am indebted to them as my surveys would not have been as successful without their time and assistance. Additionally, I am indebted to Ed Meyer and Kim Kiff for taking time out of their extremely busy schedules at Ripley’s to provide me with their expertise and stories. They helped me become aware of the biases that I was imposing onto the research, and because of this, my thesis has been immensely enriched. I owe a great thanks to my other iv interviewees whose different perspectives gave my thesis a broader look into the Ripley’s experience. Finally, I want to thank those unsung heroes, my furry and heartwarming pets, whose cuddles and silly antics provided the most relaxing respites during the making of this thesis. v ABSTRACT Since Robert Ripley’s inception of the concept behind Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in 1918, Ripley Entertainment Inc. has continued to capture the attention of the public with their display of purportedly strange and unbelievable people, animals, and artifacts from across the globe. Using theories of categorization, Othering, materiality, the grotesque, the carnivalesque, and the gaze, this ethnographic study examines how persons and things in the company’s odditoriums are constructed as odd through the arrangement and decoration of exhibits and odditorium space and through the language used in advertisements and information panels. I argue that Ripley’s uses similar techniques as sideshows and cabinets of curiosities in the construction of their exhibits as Other. Sideshows and other similar amusement attractions, such as world’s fairs and ethnographic expositions, were amusement attractions where live human persons were displayed in order to emphasize differences in bodies, cultures, and abilities. Cabinets of curiosities, precursors to the modern museum, were exhibitory spaces where the wealthy kept a variety of human, animal, and natural materials that they collected from around the world. Oftentimes, the contents of cabinets of curiosities were not thoroughly contextualized. At Ripley’s odditoriums, it was common to find an assortment vi of objects from differing cultures of origin and time periods arranged together with little contextualization. While there is extensive scholarship on sideshows and cabinets of curiosities, there has not been an intensive study conducted on how comparable techniques of displaying persons and things manifests at Ripley’s. Furthermore, within studies of sideshows and similar attractions, there has not been a detailed examination of the role of materiality and space in the process of Othering. Thus, this study offers a holistic view of Ripley’s exhibits accounting for language, visuality, materiality, immateriality, space, and the play with senses. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ iii ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................ xii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................1 1.1 OTHERING IN HISTORY AND SCHOLARSHIP .............................................................1 1.2 ARGUMENTS AND GUIDING QUESTIONS ..................................................................3 1.3 THESIS OVERVIEW ..................................................................................................7 CHAPTER 2: HISTORY TO THE PRESENT DAY .........................................................................11 2.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................11 2.2 RIPLEY ’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT !: EARLY YEARS .......................................................12 2.3 RIPLEY ’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT !: PRESENT DAY .......................................................14 2.4 HYPERMEDIATION AND INTERMEDIACY AT RIPLEY’S ...........................................18 2.5 EXHIBITING THE HUMAN OTHER ...........................................................................23 2.6 CABINETS OF CURIOSITIES AND THE MODERN MUSEUM ........................................28 2.7 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................31 CHAPTER 3: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY ..........................................................................32 3.1 A POST -STRUCTURAL STANCE ..............................................................................32 3.2 CATEGORY CREATION : DISABILITY AND THE SAVAGE SLOT .................................33 viii 3.3 BINARY OPPOSITION , THE CARNIVALESQUE , AND THE GROTESQUE ......................36 3.4 INSTITUTIONAL POWER AND SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY ...........................................39 3.5 AGENCY OF THE MATERIAL AND IMMATERIAL WORLD .........................................41 3.6 THE GAZE , THE REVERSE GAZE , AND PANOPTICISM ..............................................44 3.7 THE PROCESS OF INTERPRETATION AND THE PUBLIC ’S AGENCY ...........................47 3.8 METHODOLOGY AND POSITIONALITY ...................................................................49 CHAPTER 4: MATERIALITY
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