Popular Culture Association in the South Return of the Freakshow: Carnival (De)Formations in Contemporary Culture Author(s): Mikita Brottman and David Brottman Source: Studies in Popular Culture, Vol. 18, No. 2 (April 1996), pp. 89-107 Published by: Popular Culture Association in the South Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23413694 . Accessed: 04/09/2014 20:15 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Popular Culture Association in the South is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Studies in Popular Culture. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Thu, 4 Sep 2014 20:15:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mikita and David Brottman Return of the Freakshow: Carnival (De)Formations in Contemporary Culture The people swarmed on the public square And pointed laughingly at me, And I was filled with shame and fear. Pushkin, Boris Godunov Circus Freaks1 The circus freakshow of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was sustained by the exhibition for profit of individuals with what we now refer to as congenital malformations, hormonal dysfunc tions and chronic disorders. Other circus freaks displayed major, minor and sometimes fabricated physical, mental and behavioural differ ences. Yet others found they merely required cultural or phylogenetic differences. Despite the fact that much of modern science is dedicated to eliminating such "blunders of nature" from the world, western society today contains more bodies that meet with one or another of these requirements than ever before. However, the exhibition and presentation of deformed, mentally handicapped or non-western people for curiosity and profit seems wholly incongruous to our current social and political perspective, our sense of privacy, propriety, and the dignity of the individual. And so the freakshow—in its original circus form, at least—no longer exists. "The concept of freak no longer sustains careers" [Bogdan, 1988:267]. Most people understand that the original circus freakshow was founded on prejudice and discrimination towards the bodily abnormal and deformed, and the contemporary notion of "handicapism": "a set of assumptions and practices that promote the differential treatment of people because of apparent or assumed physical, mental or behavioural differences" [Bogdan and Biklen, 1988:14] is as useful a term as "racism" and "sexism" for understanding prejudice to be something that is ideological in our culture, taken for granted. This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Thu, 4 Sep 2014 20:15:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 90 Studies in Popular Culture In the nineteenth and twentieth century freakshows, dwarves, hunchbacks, giants, amputees, hermaphrodites, Siamese twins and people suffering from obesity, hirsuteness and primary microcephaly were all put on display and "sold" in much the same way that today's promotion agencies sell film actors, personality vehicles, star "pack ages," and so on. Often, the appeal of this promotion relied on generally unsuccessful attempts to fake a generic merchandising of the indi vidual and his or her role as freak, as in the common "franchising" of Fat Ladies as Dolly Dimples, Bunny, Jolly or Baby., just as, for example, there are more than one set of excessively tall black basket ball players travelling under the name The Harlem Globetrotters. Henry Johnson, a microcephalic negro more commonly known as Zip or What Is It? apparently colluded with his manager as co-conspirator in a number of exotic frauds surrounding his billing as Wild Man or Man Monkey, as testified in his much-advertised "last words" spoken to his manager, "well, we fooled 'em for a long time" [Fiedler, 1978:130]. General consensus amongst freakshow entrepreneurs and their cus tomers (or rubes) seemed to be that public curiosity about unique physical abnormalities related to common human anxieties about the body. "When I look at freaks it makes me content by comparison to be less than perfect," claimed Clyde Ingalls, boss of the sideshow for Ringling Brothers [Drimmer, 1973:10], The original circus sideshows exhibited their human oddities in a variety of modes apart from that of the horrifying and monstrous. Attempts to confuse the "real" person with the constructed freak often led to the individual being exhibited in the aggrandized mode, which endowed the freak with status-enhancing characteristics. The aggran dized mode was particularly appropriate for giants and fat ladies, as in the case of Celestia Geyer, also known as Jolly Dolly or Dolly Dimples, billed as "The 'It Girl' of Fat Ladies" and "The World's Most Beautiful Fat Lady" [Fiedler, 1979:180], It was, however, also used for midgets like General Tom Thumb and his wife Lavinia Warren, and for Siamese twins such as Chang and Eng, or Violet and Daisy Hilton. Presented as "wonders," "marvels" or "prodigies," the aggrandized exhibit's elevated status was, theoretically at least, based on his or her ability to overcome disadvantages, which was considered to be a sign of moral worth: "the 'wonder' was not merely physical, it was the work of steadfast courage and perseverance" [Bogdan, 1988:217], In time, some of the freakshow's managers who used the straight aggrandized mode of presentation for their exhibits occasionally began inserting humorous twists into their pamphlets and performances. For example, a parodic wedding might be arranged between a dwarf and a giant, or a Fat Lady and a Skeleton Man, such as the widely-reported This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Thu, 4 Sep 2014 20:15:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Brottman 91 1924 marriage between Peter Robinson, The Living Skeleton, and Fat Lady Bunny Smith—a publicity stunt with the apparent function of either easing the tension some of the rubes might have felt in the presence of the freaks, or else comically amplifying the suppressed or merely tacit mismatched qualities and dispositions of "normal" couples. At its most base, this comic mode of presentation descended into straightforward mockery. Towards the last decade of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, the exhibition of fat people (usually dressed in skimpy costumes) increasingly contained elements of farce and ridicule, especially when a freak's long career needed perking up with a touch of novelty. Over time, developments in medicine and anthropological knowl edge undermined some of the wild stories proclaiming the origin and capture of people with mental retardation. Gradually, the exhibition of (for example) primary microcephalics ("pinheads") moved from straight presentations emphasizing the attraction's scientific merit to mockery and farcical displays. In such cases, the exhibit might be dressed as a child with his or her head shaved, perhaps with a beribboned topknot CAN A FULL GROWN WOMAN emphasizing the oddly slant TRULY LOVE A MIDGET ? ing features, as in the pre sentation of the pinhead TOD Schlitzie in Tod Browning's 1932 production Freaks BROWNINGS TBogdan, 1988:415] (figures 1 and 2). In the early twentieth century, a common ignorance about other races coupled with a belief in inherent ra cial inferiority and the un U/attnee of west FORD disputed superiority ern culture made the exotic Ceila HYAMS mode of presentation highly until well into the OlfA popular BACLANOVA 1930s (as with The Wild Az Rosco tec Children, or The Wild ATES Men of Borneo, or The Miss ing Link) until developments in science, medicine and geo graphical knowledge ren dered this style of exhibition Figure (1) Original advertisement for Tod Brown no longer feasible. The best ing 's 1932 production Freaks. ©1932 Turner recorded examples include Entertainment Co. All Rights Reserved This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Thu, 4 Sep 2014 20:15:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 92 Studies in Popular Culture Figure (2) Tod Browning with Schlitzie and assorted freaks. ©1932 Turner Entertainment Co. All Rights Reserved Hiram and Barney Davies, a pair of midgets from Long Island billed as The Wild Men of Borneo, and the celebrated twins Maximo and Bartola, a pair of half-mulatto, half-Indian midgets exhibited from 1851 until well into the present century and billed as The Wild Aztec Children, a hoax that was abetted by their strangely shaped head, diminutive bodies and mongoloid features [Fielder, 1979:45; Bogdan, 1988:177], Further into the twentieth century, the exhibition of people with physical and mental differences came to be seen as increasingly offensive and degrading. This growing tide of popular opinion swayed the circus sideshow into the form of counterculture we currently recognize, where tattooed people, fire-eaters and sword-swallowers fill out the list of exhibits. But the presentation of self-made freaks has not always been considered more acceptable or less degrading than the exhibition of "natural" freaks. Bogdan draws attention to the "geek" or "gloaming geek," a wild man who, as part of his presentation, would bite the heads off rats, chickens and snakes. Often, the geek was a down-and-out alcoholic who performed in exchange for booze and a place to stay. "It was this type of coarse exhibitionism," writes Bogdan, This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Thu, 4 Sep 2014 20:15:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Brottman 93 "that helped earn carnivals reputations for being sleazy and morally reprehensible" [Bogdan, 1988:262; Fiedler, 1978: 130], Historical writing about carnivals has occasionally glorified the role of the freak as a saintly creature with a marvelously stoical disposition, considerate to those in trouble, and miraculous or angelic in spirit.