Freaks Part 1: Myths or Monsters?

There are a handful of scholars that would situate the freakshow at the apex of American culture. Some cogent objections may be raised, but I think it safe to say that anyone happening upon this blog will have some sense of what both a freak and a freakshow is. It's a word that seems intrinsic to our language. As Rachel Adams has said, "freaks keep coming back." But just what is it that makes this malformed and marginalized group so fascinating? They haunt our fiction. Writers as diverse as Carson McCullers (The Member of the Wedding) and Charles Dickens (The Old Curiosity Shop) made room for them in their prose. And who could forget Katherine Dunn's infamous love letter to miscreants, "Geek Love." Famously, they have emerged in our cinema, most notably and infamously in Tod Browning's nakedly titled "Freaks."
Freak, an undeniably pejorative title, may initially appear somewhat anachronistic. But, as the inimitable Leslie Fiedler has noted, only the word freak carries with it the whole mythology built around these, as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson calls them, "extraordinary bodies." What mythology? For Fiedler, Freaks are the culmination of humanity, an abundance and an excess of organs, flesh and tissue that leave us with both a sense of longing and exaltation. Here we see that Fiedler has a peculiar conflict of interest that frequently interferes with his analysis. Invariably Freaks lead him down the road of introspection. It is Rachel Adams with her book Sideshow U.S.A: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination, that presents an analysis that is both fair and balanced.
In Sideshow U.S.A., Rachel Adams notes "With its heterogeneous assemblage of bodies, the sideshow platform is both a source of entertainment and a stage for playing out many of the century's most charged social and political controversies, such as debates about race and empire, immigration, relations among the sexes, tastes, and community standards of decency." Such a sweeping statement covers considerable sociological territory. But here we catch a glimpse of the freakshow's role in mediating between those who establish and conform to the social mores of the times and those that stand distinctly outside of those standards. Initially, it was necessary to emphasize the "otherness" of the performers to assure the audience that it in no way resembled the travesties before it. But interaction between the audience and freaks often ensues and this inevitably serves to collapse the boundary set between the two. Acknowledging the performer is, after all, a form of affirmation. At the very least, it demonstrates that you think the freak capable of entering into discourse with you.
Perhaps a big reason why the history of freaks flies under the radar is that it constitutes another piece of the nation's "dirty laundry." As late as 1906, an african pygmy named Ota Benga was presented as the missing link between man and ape and was housed in a cage with an orangutan in the Bronx zoo (Adams 31-32). Certainly, this is one among many such sordid tales. Tragically, Ota Benga's life ended in suicide. Exploitation plays one of the most integral roles in the history of freaks in general.
Freakshows certainly play a pivotal role in illustrating our ambivalence towards "otherness" and ambiguity. Yet, it is the spectacle of the whole affair that has resonated throughout the various mediums of our culture. On television we are confronted with shows that bear a close resemblance to their circus counterparts. But for the heartbroken Fiedler they represent an irreversible schism, "But the loss of the old confrontation in the flesh implies a trauma as irreparable as the one caused by the passage of the dialog between king and fool from the court to the stage."
But have they really gone?
More to follow. . .

Millhauser's Latest

There is a remarkable consistency to Steven Millhauser's short stories. Critics seem unanimous on the fact that the thread running through these manifold missives is a phenomenal clarity. Indeed, Millhauser's world is rendered with such acute precision that at times, he seems more scientist than author. Look no further than "A Game of Clue." The story is an elaborate parallel between two worlds. The one involves the group gathered around the board game, and the other, the characters within the game. Throughout the story, the narrator transports the reader seamlessly from world to world, the focal point of the story being the board game itself, for it is the gateway that allows access to both worlds, and it is no surprise that Millhauser describes the game as if it were an organism, noting its many cracks, those portions that are now attached with adhesive, and the cards that have been lost and replaced with those of a poker deck. In a sense, the game is one of the characters; it is the mediator between the two worlds. Adding to these layers are the inner worlds of each of the characters, which play out respectively throughout the story. So, the line between object and observer becomes blurred and what emerges is a world where everything is potentially animate.
And this is so in "The Invasion from Outer Space," Millhauser's latest story to appear in the Feb. 9 & 16 edition of the New Yorker. The name itself is a cliche, and it is ideal for Millhauser's purposes. Because this title carries certain connotations, namely vignettes of poorly executed scifi films like "It, the Terror from Outer Space," or "Attack of the Saucer-Men," it allows the author to pull the rug out from under our feet. No green men enter the picture, no flying saucers descend from the heavens, no sinister plan to enslave the human race, no communist undertones, just a purposeless yellow substance, with the consistency of dust, that covers everything and reproduces rapidly through binary fission.
We feel somewhat disappointed and this is the point. And here we come upon a theme quite dear to Millhauser's heart. Namely, the demand for spectacle. We've seen it before, most notably in the "Knife Thrower," and "Paradise Park." Consider the following lines from the present tale: "We had wanted blood, crushed bones, howls of agony. We had wanted buildings crumbling onto streets, cars bursting into flame." But all that has happened is the arrival of an anonymous empty specimen; "We have been invaded by nothing, by emptiness, by inanimate dust." And somehow, even mass-murder and carnage is preferable to this mysterious lifeless powder.
If you've ever read Millhauser you'll no doubt recall his rather ominous invocation of the plural pronoun, his use of "we." In a fascinating interview the author shared a few thoughts on the matter, "What interests me is the way moral indecisiveness or questioning may be given more weight or significance by attaching itself to a multiple being. A single narrator might have multiple interpretations of an event, or might try to evade moral choice in numerous ways, but the same kind of uncertainty in an entire community becomes public, societal, even political, and carries a different weight." In other words, "we" are all indicted. These stories remind us of our own all-too-human bloodlust. This hunger permeates Hollywood and even primetime. From Jerry Springer to Nip Tuck, our insatiable appetite for spectacle seems to be rivaled only by our need to placate this desire by adding to it ourselves, to throw ourselves to the dramatic wolves.
"Invasion from Outer Space" may not frighten on a visceral level, but it will leave a definite sense of foreboding in the heart of anyone who's ever slowed down at the scene of an accident.. .

On the Efficacy of this Blog

I fit the description of Flannery O' Connor's "displaced person" with one qualification, I'm Austrian. My family moved to America in the summer of 1998. This fact has afforded me, as is the case with most immigrants, a peculiar vantage point into American culture. To be sure, I'm not exempt from the many human social conventions that commonly pull the wool over our eyes, but I move amidst a people with whom I share very little in the way of values. True, if pressed we will all answer to the same needs: love, acceptance, personal freedom etc. But my private life, my inner world, those thoughts and compulsions that shape my endeavors most deeply, I guard as though they had immeasurable value. This, my intangible property—a pastiche of ideas, values, and tastes that are, on a graded scale of utility, useless—still has the quality of being irrevocably mine, and I like that.
But here people seem to flaunt whatever runs through their fevered psyches as though it were some strange currency. We all trade confessions and thus validate our existence. Whatever earns the most pronounced reaction is of highest value. If you've got a skeleton in your closet, put a hat on it and hurl it at an audience. It seems strange that this kind of narcissism masquerades as honesty. As if proclaiming to the world through a loudspeaker that you have syphilis, enjoy child pornography, and like to "rip the legs off of spiders" somehow elevates you to a seat of moral grandeur.
My initial posts will concern what I believe to be at the root of this phenomenon. These are the thoughts of a layman and I do not claim the credence of an expert. Little of what you see here will be original and I will try as best I can to render credit where credit is due, though it is of little interest to me whether my thoughts overlap those of greater men. Suffice it to say, the thinkers that have exercised the greatest influence on me are, in order of ascending social deviancy: Soren Kierkegaard, Hans Urs von Balthasar,Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Flannery O' Connor, Walker Percy, Cormac McCarthy, and Leslie Fiedler.
More to follow...