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. . .