Stacey Jean Barron

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The Sideshow Freaks, Geeks, Monsters

• Stacey Jean Barron
• Spring 2005

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What Does Freak Mean?

• Human anomalies
• Oddities
• Mutants
• Mistakes of nature
• Strange people
• Defects
• Malformations
• Phenomena

• Extraordinary bodies
• Special people
• Prodigies
• Wonders
• Deviants
• Omens
• Human curiosities
• Monsters

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History

• Pre-19th century most cultures viewed birth
  defects (as opposed to accidents in life) as
  monstrous, lusus naturae.
• Most human anomalies were called
  monsters,coming from the Latin moneo, to warn,
  to show, to sign, to demonstrate.
• In some fashion, a signal/omen from the
  Divine/supernatural.
• The differently formed bodyis always an
  interpretive occasion (Rosemarie Garland
  Thomson, 1).

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Interpretations

• the singular body has been alternatively
  coveted, revered, and dreaded (Thomson 2).
• Coveted Royalty (Egyptian, Roman, European) kept
  dwarfs (Little People) as jesters, pets,
  advisors.
• Revered signs of Gods pressence, power, and
  teachings.
• Dreaded signs of Gods anger, impending doom,
  lessons against vices and crimes, non-human.

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Examples

• Multiple digits suggests the people of the world
  will be injured.
• No penis nose suggests a strong army.
• Deformed tongue warns against slander and lewd
  talk.
• Animal-like babies suggest bestiality

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History Cont.

• 19th Century the formally organized exhibition
  of people with alleged and real physical, mental,
  or behavioral anomalies for amusement and profit
  (Robert Bogdan, 10).
• Darwin
• Colonialization
• Start of teratology (study of monsters)
• Travel made easier
• Cities

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History cont.

• Freaks no longer omens, but were a part of Gods
  great oreder of creatures subject to scientific
  study and classification (Bogdan 27).
• Scientists displayed freaks as evidence of
  scientific work the wonders of science.
• Entertainment industries (all kinds) spread Dime
  museums, circus sideshows, traveling exhibits,
  medical collections, carnivals, amusement parks,
  world fairs. (P.T. Barnum Robert Ripley)

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Types of Freaks Displayed
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Hairy People
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Siamese Twins
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Parasitic Twins
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Fat Ladies
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Dwarfs
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Pinheads
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Others

• Albinos
• Non-whites (Africans, Polynesians, Native
  Americans, etc.)
• Living Skeletons
• Hermaphrodites
• w/ Skin conditions

• Elephantiasis
• Strong men and women
• Limbless
• Skeletal deformities
• Mental Illness
• Cysts, tumors, fibroids

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Geeks

• Self-made freaks, i.e. no birth/genetic defects.
• Tatooed people (especially women), w/ full body
  art
• Ingestors
• Contortionists
• Snake handlers, charmers, etc., (especially
  women)
• Self-torture nails in the nose, hooks, knives,
  etc.

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History cont.

• Decline of Freaks
• Mendels Laws of Genetics, genetic discoveries
• Negative Eugenics keeping the bad gene carriers
  from breeding, through counseling, sterilization,
  and incarceration (Bogdan 62).
• Medicalization of defects
• The thought that such entertainment was lowly and
  improper, morally bankrupt (Bogdan 67).

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Fascination of Freaks

• Humans are voyeurs, gawkers, watchers, viewers
• Freaks confuse comforting distinctions between
  what is human and what is not (Thomson 1).
• By challenging the boundaries of the human and
  the coherence of what seemed to be the natural
  world, monstrous bodies appeared as sublime,
  merging the terrible with the wonderful,
  equalizing repulsion with attraction (Thomson
  3).
• Corporeal otherness defies our own sense of
  self and normal.

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Fascination cont.

• The Freak stirs both supernatural terror and
  natural sympathy, since, unlike the fabulous
  monsters, he is one of us, the human child or
  human parents, however altered by forces we do
  not quite understand into something mythic and
  mysterious, as no mere cripple ever is (Leslie
  Fiedler 24).
• Brings to mind our basic uncertainty about the
  limits of our bodies and our egos (Fiedler 27).
• Freaks inspire fear, curiosity, attraction,
  revulsion
• Them and us brought into question.

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