A staple of American popular culture during the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, the freak show seemed to vanish after
the Second World War. But as Rachel Adams reveals in "Sideshow
U.S.A.," images of the freak show, with its combination of the
grotesque, the horrific, and the amusing, stubbornly reappeared in
literature and the arts. Freak shows, she contends, have survived
because of their capacity for reinvention. Empty of any inherent
meaning, the freak's body becomes a stage for playing out some of
the twentieth century's most pressing social and political
concerns, from debates about race, empire, and immigration, to
anxiety about gender, and controversies over taste and public
standards of decency.
"Sideshow U.S.A." begins by revisiting the terror and fascination
the original freak shows provided for their audiences, as well as
exploring the motivations of those who sought fame and profit in
the business of human exhibition. With this history in mind, Adams
turns from live entertainment to more mediated forms of cultural
expression: the films of Tod Browning, the photography of Diane
Arbus, the criticism of Leslie Fiedler, and the fiction Carson
McCullers, Toni Morrison, and Katherine Dunn. Taken up in these
works of art and literature, the freak serves as a metaphor for
fundamental questions about self and other, identity and
difference, and provides a window onto a once vital form of popular
culture.
Adams's study concludes with a revealing look at the revival of the
freak show as live performance in the late 1980s and the 1990s.
Celebrated by some, the freak show's recent return is less welcome
to those who have traditionally been its victims. At the beginning
of a new century, Adams sees it as a form of living history, a
testament to the vibrancy and inventiveness of American popular
culture, as well as its capacity for cruelty and injustice.
"Because of its subject matter, this interesting and complex study
is provocative, as well as thought-provoking."--"Virginia Quarterly
Review"
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