Society has long been fascinated with the freakish, shocking and
strange. In this book Gary Cross shows how freakish elements have
been embedded in modern popular culture over the course of the 20th
century despite the evident disenchantment with this once
widespread cultural outlet. Exploring how the spectacle of
freakishness conflicted with genteel culture, he shows how the
condemnation of the freak show by middle-class America led to a
transformation and merging of genteel and freak culture through the
cute, the camp and the creepy. Though the carnival and circus freak
was marginalised by the 1960s and had largely disappeared by the
1980s, forms of freakish culture survived and today appear in
reality TV, horror movies, dark comedies and the popularity of
tattoos. Freak Show Legacies will focus less on the individual
‘freak’ as ‘the other’ in society, and more on the audience
for the freakish and the transformation of wonder, sensibility and
sensitivity that this phenomenon entailed. It will use the
phenomenon of ‘the freak’ to understand the transformation of
American popular culture across the 20th century, identify elements
of ‘the freak’ in popular culture both past and present, and
ask how it has prevailed despite its apparent unpopularity.
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