Abstract
This chapter examines the disabled body as a sight of spectacle and identification in film through a lengthy discussion of Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks. The discussion frames the chapter because Freaks serves as an example of how film has interpreted the freak show and the freak body and has provided a groundwork for both creating and understanding future melodramas and horror films. The chapter also examines horror staples Rosemary’s Baby and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , as well as The Funhouse, and the melodrama The Elephant Man . Each discussion unpacks the human monsters who exist at the center of the films, how the monstrous body is portrayed, and how these films work either in or against the tradition of the freak show.
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Notes
- 1.
Here, Church uses the term “fantastic films” to combine the genres of horror and fantasy.
- 2.
It is worth noting that these disabled characters are nearly always played by non-disabled actors, except in cases when it is unavoidable such as when the character is a little person (although there is the notable exception of the 2003 romantic comedy Tiptoes in which Gary Oldman plays a dwarf).
- 3.
Examples include Rachel Adams ’ Sideshow U.S.A., Robert Bogdan ’s Freak Show, Thomas Fahy ’s Freaks Shows and the Modern American Imagination, and Leslie Fiedler ’s Freaks.
- 4.
Known as the Doll Family, the siblings, Harry and Daisy Earles, were probably the most successful of all the performers in Freaks. Along with their sisters Gracie and Tiny, the Doll Family traveled the USA and Europe performing in various circuses, sideshows, and vaudeville acts from the 1920s until the 50s when they retired their act (Fiedler 63–64). Of the siblings, Harry had the most successful film career, and it was Harry, in fact, who urged MGM to buy the right to “Spurs” in the first place (Larsen and Haller 166).
- 5.
These are striking examples of the supercrip paradigm, a trope that sees people with disabilities as inspirational for doing everyday tasks that were it not for the individual’s functional limitations, would not be seen as extraordinary. While this may seem at first like a positive image of disability, it is just as harmful as paradigms that see people with disabilities as needing fixing or objects of pity. Many disability scholars feel that such stereotyping “remain[s] the most significant obstacle to normal interaction between nondisabled and disabled people” (Shapiro 16–18). I offer a lengthier discussion of this concept towards the end of this chapter.
- 6.
Before its initial release, Freaks was heavily edited by Irving Thalberg, MGM’s production supervisor. In the unedited version, Hercules and Phroso fight until a wagon falls and crushes Hercules’ legs; Hercules almost escapes but before he does the freaks close in on him. As for Cleopatra, “lightening topples a great tree and Cleopatra is caught under it!” The freaks swarm and attack and, though we do not see them maim her, we hear murderous screams. The drivers of the caravan soon discover her mutilated body and “cry for a doctor” (Freaks: Script Synopsis). Most fascinating, is that “the deleted shots showed a passing implication that [Hercules] was deprived of his manhood … With the story's return to the dime museum, Hercules is found singing in a tenor falsetto, perhaps some love song to his mutilated Cleo” (Savada).
- 7.
Although an excellent article, Larsen and Haller somehow make the error of referring to Cleopatra as Venus throughout almost the entirety of the piece. While such a tremendous oversight calls into question the overall academic value of the essay, I feel that it is quite a good piece—and a valuable one—in every other regard. I will be altering direct quotes from the article to correct this error.
- 8.
The reprieve from the world of the freak is a plot device that I have noticed in many other texts. Examples include the telekinetic abilities of Chick in Geek Love, the mummified Egyptian who comes to life in Annette Curtis Klausse’s Freaks, the ridiculous psychological explanation given at the end of Psycho , and of course the freaking of Cleopatra in Freaks. These instances are the only unrealistic or otherworldly devices in otherwise realistic narratives. They are used, I believe, to offer a reassurance that the freak body is a distant reality.
- 9.
See Chap. 1, pages 7–8 for a lengthier discussion of the use of the word “monster.”
- 10.
Fiedler capitalizes the word “freak” throughout his study. I will not note this preference with [sic] repeatedly.
- 11.
See page 47, footnote 8.
- 12.
The fear of people with disabilities reproducing is a historic one; it was given a name, eugenics, in 1865 by Sir Francis Galton. In the mid-1890s, it was illegal in over half of America for people with disabilities—physical or intellectual—to marry. World War II saw the Nazi T-4 Euthanasia Program systematically “eradicate people with physical and intellectual disabilities through mass murder.” Eugenics and euthanasia had their supporters in the USA as well. More recent high-profile instances such as Dr. Jack Kevorkian and Terry Shiavo have made it a very public and controversial issue that has left many Americans with disabilities “on edge” for fear that one day “society will offer euthanasia as an option to save a loved one with a serious disability from financial ruin, remove family members from stressful care giver roles, and as an option to cease being a financial burden on the state” (Accordino et al., 80–84).
- 13.
Hitchhiker has a facial disfigurement, Leatherface is monstrously large and wears grotesque masks, the Cook, though physically normal, is portrayed as evil through his dirtiness and ugliness, and Grandpa is grotesque—barely alive and, indeed, barely human.
- 14.
This is, of course, “borrowed” from Halloween (1978).
- 15.
Diane Negra ’s article, “Coveting the Feminine: Victor Frankenstein , Norman Bates, and Buffalo Bill,” puts Frankenstein and Bates in direct conversation, as seen in her title. Negra provides an excellent Freudian reading of the ambiguous gender identities represented in the three texts.
- 16.
As in Texas Chainsaw, Gunther is a freak killer who does the bidding of a father figure. The presence of the morally corrupt father figure misguiding or mistreating the childlike freak is a common trope, also seen in The Elephant Man.
- 17.
This mirrors the scene in Texas Chainsaw in which Hitchhiker is rejected by Franklin. In this parallel, the disfigured Hitchhiker is the monster and the disabled Franklin the feminized victim.
- 18.
For example, the documentary Sideshow: Alive on the Inside ! (1999) provides numerous interviews with ex-sideshow performers including Percilla the Monkey Girl who says “what could be more fun for a child” than being raised at the circus? Similarly, Jeanie the Half-Girl loved being a sideshow freak because people paid attention to her and brought her gifts and she was able to be the main financial supporter of her family.
- 19.
Odd rumors abound on the internet about how Michael Jackson was obsessed with Merrick and tried to buy his skeleton from the London Hospital for an undisclosed amount in the 1980s. Whether factual or mere rumor, this struck me an interesting example of how a self-made freak tends to identify with a “born freak.”
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Williams, J.L. (2017). Horror Movies, Horror Bodies: Blurring the Freak Body in Cinema. In: Media, Performative Identity, and the New American Freak Show. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66462-0_3
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