Freak Show Legacies

Freak Show Legacies PDF Author: Gary S. Cross
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350145149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Freak Show Legacies

Freak Show Legacies PDF Author: Gary S. Cross
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350145149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Framing the moron

Framing the moron PDF Author: Gerald O'Brien
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526103435
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many people are shocked upon discovering that tens of thousands of innocent persons in the United States were involuntarily sterilized, forced into institutions, and otherwise maltreated within the course of the eugenic movement (1900–30). Such social control efforts are easier to understand when we consider the variety of dehumanizing and fear-inducing rhetoric propagandists invoke to frame their potential victims. This book details the major rhetorical themes employed within the context of eugenic propaganda, drawing largely on original sources of the period. Early in the twentieth century the term “moron” was developed to describe the primary targets of eugenic control. This book demonstrates how the image of moronity in the United States was shaped by eugenicists. This book will be of interest not only to disability and eugenic scholars and historians, but to anyone who wants to explore the means by which pejorative metaphors are used to support social control efforts against vulnerable community groups.

Problematic Wildlife

Problematic Wildlife PDF Author: Francesco M. Angelici
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319222465
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 613

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book provides insight into the instances in which wildlife species can create problems. Some species trigger problems for human activities, but many others need humans to save them and to continue to exist. The text addresses issues faced by economists and politicians dealing with laws involving actions undertaken to resolve the problems of the interaction between humans and wildlife. Here, the words ‘problematic species’ are used in their broadest sense, as may be appreciated in the short introductions to the various sections. At times, the authors discuss special cases while always extending the discussion into a more general and broad vision. At others, they present real cutting-edge analysis of ecological topics and issues. The book will be of interest to biologists, ecologists and wildlife managers involved in research on wildlife, parks, and environmental management, as well as to government departments and agencies, NGOs and conservation wildlife organizations. Even those in contact with nature, such as hunters, herders, and farmers, will be able to find a great deal of important information. Specific case studies are selected from among the most significant and prevalent cases throughout the world. A total of 26 papers have been selected for this book, written by zoologists, biologists and ecologists. Many have an interdisciplinary approach, with contributions by economists, criminologists, technical specialists, and engineers.

The Big Top on the Big Screen

The Big Top on the Big Screen PDF Author: Teresa Cutler-Broyles
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476671184
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 173

Get Book Here

Book Description
Circuses and film are a natural pairing, and the new essays making up this volume begin the exploration of how these two forms of entertainment have often worked together to create a spectacle of onscreen alchemy. The films discussed herein are an eclectic group, ranging from early silent comedies to animated, 21st century examples, in which circuses serve as liminal or carnivalesque spaces wherein characters--and by extension audience members--can confront issues as far-reaching as labor relations, sensuality, identity, ethics, and more. The circus as discussed in these essays encompasses the big top, the midway, the sideshow and the freak show; it becomes backdrop, character, catalyst and setting; and it is welcoming, malicious or terrifying. Circus performers are family, friends, foe or all of the above. And film is the medium that brings it all together. This volume starts the conversation about how circuses and film can combine to form productive, exciting spaces where almost anything can happen.

Media, Performative Identity, and the New American Freak Show

Media, Performative Identity, and the New American Freak Show PDF Author: Jessica L. Williams
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331966462X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book traces how the American freak show has re-emerged in new visual forms in the 21st century. It explores the ways in which moving image media transmits and contextualizes, reinterprets and appropriates, the freak show model into a “new American freak show.” It investigates how new freak representations introduce narratives about sex, gender, and cultural perceptions of people with disabilities. The chapters examine such representations found in horror films, including a prolonged look at Freaks (1932) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), documentaries such as Murderball (2005) and TLC’s Push Girls (2012-2013), disability pornography including the pornographic documentary Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan Supermasochist (1997), and the music icons Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga in their portrayals of disability and freakishness. Through this book we learn that the visual culture that has emerged takes the place of the traditional freak show but opens new channels of interpretation and identification through its use of mediated images as well as the altered freak-norm relationship that it has fostered. In its illumination of the relationship between normal and freakish bodies through different media, this book will appeal to students and academics interested in disability studies, gender studies, film theory, critical race theory, and cultural studies.

Pickled Punks and Girlie Shows

Pickled Punks and Girlie Shows PDF Author: Rick West
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing Limited
ISBN: 9780764337031
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Step down a little closer; you don't want to miss a thing. Join fifty-year sideshow veteran, Rick West, on a strange and wonderful trip through behind-the-scenes tales of his life as a showman. The strange, the bizarre, the unusual comprise this engaging memoir bursting at the seams with rare images of two-headed cows, Bigfoot creatures, pickled punks, showgirls, humongous hogs, 3,500-pound steers, and much, much more. From attending the Ozark Empire Fair at age five to revealing the true story behind Frank Hansen's infamous Minnesota Iceman, the author takes the reader into the world of America's sideshows and midway grind shows. It's all here; it's all on the inside. See it now or miss it forever. It's showtime!

Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo

Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo PDF Author: A. W. Stencell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781550228809
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The follow-up to Seeing is Believing (ECW Press, 2002) tells the fascinating story of the carnival in words and pictures. Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo follows the development of the circus sideshow with interviews and stories from sideshow workers that explain the role of freaks, working acts, managers and talkers and explores how important grift was to circuses and how it became located inside the sideshow.

Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me

Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me PDF Author: Bruce Jackson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415969963
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
Anthologizes over one hundred toasts, oral folk poems, with variants, collected from various sources, and examines their functions, themes, backgrounds, and methods of performance.

Ulysses

Ulysses PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Fred G. Johnson

Fred G. Johnson PDF Author: Fred G. Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Carnival banners
Languages : en
Pages : 68

Get Book Here

Book Description