But they keep coming back... Fiedler's ego-centric, forensic foray into freakdom is not the only instance of an individual identifying with sideshow performers. This is the other extreme that characterizes our reaction to these "extraordinary bodies."
On the one hand, there is an outright rejection and on the other, a sort of whimsical self-identification. The line between the spectator and the spectacle has completely collapsed in this age of the self. Rachel Adams is quick to point out that we must not view Freaks in symbolic terms. To do so is to relegate them to a conceptual prison in which their actual personhood and humanity will remain encumbered.
We may delude ourselves and think that tolerance has finally won out. True, there are no longer any Ota Bengas languishing behind the bars of the Bronx zoo. Those who were formerly called Freaks now refer to their craft affectionately as "performance art." It's how Jennifer Miller makes her living. She has freely chosen to make a spectacle of herself and to use the stage as a platform for feminism and education. We no longer learn from Freaks; Freaks teach us.
However, our ambivalence still gets the best of us. Deformed people are simply consigned to a different category: the handicapped, the disabled, the challenged. We often have similar views of older people who are now invalids. They are left by family members to the care of strangers in "convalescent" homes--a euphemism if ever there was one. In fact, we have specialized programs, institutions, terminology, and conduct for nearly every kind of biological and mental deviancy, and all of them are ingeniously designed and conceived to keep them out of sight and out of mind, or at least to keep them in their place. . .
We have yet to relinquish our symbols.
