The Rise and Origins of the Freak Show:
While the golden age of the Freak Show is usually considered to be from about 1850 to 1930, its origins run much earlier than that. Humans have been publicly exhibited for millennia. There are records that ancient Egyptians would display “black dwarves” from Sudanese lands and that the Romans would exhibit “barbarians.” In the middle ages, fairground “freaks” were not unheard of.
However, the Freak Show’s true origins lie in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment movement. The Enlightenment was a period in Western history emphasizing science and reason, and brought with it a newfound curiosity about the workings of the natural world. The Enlightenment saw the development of museums, something that (apart from brief stints in Greek and Rome) had never been seen before. Human oddities were displayed in these museums from the start, and although they weren’t initially the featured attractions. Many museums would shift focus though, as these “human curiosities” began to draw more attention than “stuffed birds and dusty artifacts.” P. T. Barnum would revolutionize this industry in 1841 with his American Museum, where he charged 25 cents apiece to see attractions such as General Tom Thumb and Zip the What is it?
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Another factor in the rise of the freak shows was the success of Sara Baartman, The Hottentot Venus. A typical Khoisan woman from South Africa, Baartman was brought to England from southern Africa in 1810. She would be displayed and the announcer would draw attention to her distinctive (for England) genitalia and buttocks. In the years following her death in 1815, London would become, “the European capital of ‘exotic exhibitions,’ hosting exhibits of Indians in 1817, Laplanders in 1822, Eskimos in 1824, Fuegians from 1829 onward, Guyanese in 1839 and Bushmen in 1847.” Her success would spur more shows of human oddities than ever before. |
The Freak Show's Fall:
The traditional freak show went out more with a whimper than with a bang. Much of this can be attributed to the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s work on heritability and the subsequent rise of the Eugenics movement in the first few decades of the 20th century. The Eugenics movement was a form of Social Darwinism: the eugenicists believed that society had been impeding the survival of the fittest by coddling the weak. If left unchecked, these mental and physical misfits would "outbreed" those of better fitness, thus polluting the gene pool.
Negative eugenicists focused on trying to prevent these feeble individuals from reproducing, and they targeted many freak show performers. While what actions they could actually take were somewhat limited (though many individuals were segregated into asylums), the social aspects that went with the eugenicist mindset began to change how the performers were viewed. While once the “freaks” had been viewed with fascination, they began instead to find themselves the subject of anger; they were now seen as a danger! |
The other half of the downfall was that physicians were organizing and professionalizing. New technologies, such as the X-ray, were developed and the air of mystery that made born freaks, “freaks,” was being stripped away. Physicians began to discourage people from attending freak shows. In 1908, their first publication to represent their views on the matter, Circus and Museum Freaks, Curiosities of Pathology; professed that “A more refined and a more humane popular taste now frowns upon such exhibitions… The profession of museum freak is passing." The fall of the freak show was not, so much, a legal construct as it was a social one. As fascination turned to pity, anger, and fear; traditional freak shows simply became less and less profitable.
Referenced:
Adams, Rachel. Slideshow U.S.A. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Boetsch, Gilles, et al., ed. Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage. Paris: Actes Sud, 2012.
Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Circus and Museum Freaks -- Curiosities of Pathology. The New York Medical Journal. March 28, 1908, 222.
McGreal, Chris. “Coming Home,” The Guardian, February 20, 2002.
Spalding, Julian. “Dead Circuses,” History Workshop Journal 62 (2006): 318-25.
Adams, Rachel. Slideshow U.S.A. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Boetsch, Gilles, et al., ed. Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage. Paris: Actes Sud, 2012.
Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Circus and Museum Freaks -- Curiosities of Pathology. The New York Medical Journal. March 28, 1908, 222.
McGreal, Chris. “Coming Home,” The Guardian, February 20, 2002.
Spalding, Julian. “Dead Circuses,” History Workshop Journal 62 (2006): 318-25.