Ted Browning's controversial 1932 Freaks follows the inner workings of a circus: a beautiful woman, Cleopatra, and powerful strongman, Hercules, decide to try to con Hans, a midget, out of his inheritance by playing on his attraction to Cleopatra. She marries him and then attempts to poison him so she can marry Hercules. At their wedding dinner, the group of people Tod Browning calls "freaks," welcome Cleopatra into their group with a ritual sharing of a cup of wine. They chant, "We accept you, one of us! Goble Gobble!" She throws the wine in their faces and runs away. When they discover that she tried to poison Hans, they take their revenge on her and make her into a human duck, making her actually one of them (after she rejected symbolically becoming one of them).
The film shows Cleopatra's (and others') reaction to difference of fear and repulsion, but it also shows the reaction of the clown, Roscoe, who lovingly treats each character as human.
The film certainly does show the power and agency of even the "freaks." It portrays the "freaks" as an incredibly diverse group, and yet as a group with a shared identity that results from their common exclusion.
I'm not sure quite what to make of the film. On the one hand, it portrays the horror of treating the "freaks" as "freaks"--as circus performers exhibiting themselves for the viewer's amusement. It portrays them as multidimensional human beings who have typical concerns--marriage and childbirth and broken hearts. On the other hand, in a way, the film itself does what it criticizes--it presents circus performers exhibiting themselves for the viewer's amusement: First, it includes performances of the tricks that the circus performers who acted in the film actually did in the circus--for instance, there's a man with no arms or legs who lights his own cigarette; there's a woman with no arms who drinks from a goblet, using her feet to lift it. Second, the horror of the film's ending plays on the viewers' reactions to and fear of disability and difference.
1 comment:
I saw this one years ago and still remember some of the moments vividly, but none of them have anything to do with the plot -- rather it's the "freaks" demonstrating what they can do, as you said; it's the movie having its cake and eating it too. Then again, I don't remember exhibiting oneself per se being regarded as detrimental -- it was more the attitudes and bad treatment from the "regular" people that was condemned. The plot itself is so creaky it could be blown over in a high wind, and the "happy ending" is more spooky than anything.
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