Of Another Fashion

Recommended cultural studies blog:

Of Another Fashion: An Alternative Archive of the Not-So Hidden But Too Often Ignored Fashion Histories of U. S. Women of Color.

Zombies

What’s up with all the zombies? An interesting analysis of the zombie trend at Pop Matters.

Windowing Off Criminal Minds

In Zizek’s discusses in his chapter, The Hitckcockian Blot, about a “fantasy window” (92). He explains it by saying, “In short, the meaning of what the hero perceives beyond the window depends on his actual situation this side if the window he has just to “look through the window” to see on display a multitude of imaginary solutions to his actual impasse” (92-93).  What this basically means is the person sees a situation as if through an imaginary window able to look in on what is to happen or what is happening. This is really shown in Hitchcock’s film Psycho. For Norman Bates, when he is peering into the peephole through the wall to see the female character undressing. This of course is due to a sexual desire he has for the female character. When he looks through this peephole he has made, the audience sees through his eyes as if the audience themselves are looking into the motel room as the woman is undressing for her shower.

An episode of Criminal Minds actually mirrors Pyscho in several ways. First the main character is very similar to Norman Bates, the killer, Rhett Walden, in the episode has some mother issues that help to cause the death of others. Also, Rhett has kept his mummified mother around, both acting as if their mothers were very much alive. Along with some very uncanny resemblances the movie and the episode shows the Hitchcockian fantasy window. Below is a clip I have chosen which shows the perspective of the fantasy window of both Rhett and the police who are ready to arrest him.

In the beginning when we see Rhett talking to his mother we see him looking into a mirror fixing his tie and getting ready to face the outside word. While he continues to talk, he moves away from the mirror but the camera stays and frames this sort of weird intimate talk he has with his mother before they move outside. Rhett and his mother seemed to be windowed off, before leaving the confines of their home.

From the clip, we see two different things. First we see a black and white version of the scene but instead of being arrested, Rhett and his mother walk into the midst of paparazzi signing autographs. The camera in the beginning is aimed up and behind Rhett and his mother as if someone is watching this scene from behind them. This shows the given “imaginary solution” through the window.

The second version is in color and shows a very different scene. The police, along with us, see Rhett carrying a mummified body down the front stairs. The police are not really sure how to react to this scene they see coming towards them but drop their guns a little and the camera singles in on several different parts of the mummified woman. The scene in itself is horrifying, but the most horrifying is the way Rhett seems to be stuck behind his imaginary window, only seeing his dead mother alive while paparazzi capturing this moment, as if him and his mother were famous movie stars. But when the camera returns to the reality the police have windowed we see the paparazzi are nothing more but gun men to shoot Rhett down if he tries to attack. Towards the end of the given scene, Rhett is framed off while his eyes are closed laughing like a madman. Having his eyes closed could mean he is not ready to give up his imaginary scene of walking down the red carpet. The framing off of just his head shows a little of the insanity of Rhett grinning and laughing like a madman, which is like many horror movies, with the sadistic menacing laugh from the killer.

Queering Santa’s Workshop

Queering Santa’s Workshop: Gender, Difference, and Elfnicity in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

How does one account for the popularity of the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Clearly, this rather absurd tale of a ruddy-nosed quadruped speaks to us on some deep level, but what is it saying? and why are we listening?

As you will no doubt recall, Rudolph is “the most famous reindeer of all,” made famous not by his heroic nose-glowing sled-guiding as the story would have it but rather by the fictional account of that feat in a song called “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” first recorded by Gene Autry in 1949, a song that became so popular that, according to Wikipedia, it has now sold more copies than all the editions of the Bible ever published combined with the total record sales of the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Madonna.

However, I should state from the outset that this essay is not concerned with the Gene Autry version of the story. Rather, my discussion will privilege the Rudolph story as presented in the 1964 claymation animated television special (the Burl Ives Rudolph, as a number of scholars call it). I recognize that such privileging of one text over another needs justification, and perhaps extensive footnoting, if not excessive use of parentheses, brackets, and colons [and be rest assured: I plan to use all three (3)].

I certainly would agree that the song deserves serious critical discussion, not only the famous Autry interpretation of the song, and particularly the performative elements of that interpretation [not to mention how Autry’s persona as a “singing cowboy” might have shaped the audience’s response (particularly if we consider the narrative within the context of the genre of the western) to that performance], but also the song itself as text, as ecriture, not just as a piece of music waiting to be performed but as an always already complete yet infinite piece (and, by “piece,” of course, I mean “whole”) rich and rewarding in itself before the first note is played. However, although the song pre-dates the animated special, I feel that the combination of visual and musical motifs make the television show the richest text for critical examination.

To refamiliairize ourselves with the basic “story” of Rudolph, we should note that Rudolph, from the beginning, is marked by his difference, by his red nose. As the text of the song states, “you could even say it glows.” The other reindeer do not have such noses, and although we might argue that in a more enlightened society, such a minor physical difference as a glowing red nose would be hardly more notable than, say, a sixth finger or an extra horn growing from the forehead, the culture of the North Pole is not so enlightened as our own.

As Rudolph himself asks, “just because my nose glows, why don’t I fit in?” And it’s a darn good question, but Rudolph’s difference is viewed as a deformity so extreme as to justify his exclusion “from all their reindeer games.”

Life at the North Pole (and we should note that the “pole” is just the first of many phallic signifiers in the masculinized culture of the, er, Pole) is dominated by several patriarchal figures: a grouchy Santa—the Father figure whose name gives meaning to the symbolic order he has founded at the North Phallus, er, Pole; the Head Elf, who essentially runs an elven sweatshop and inculcates the other elves into the dominant ideology (teaching them to sing, for example, “We are Santa’s Elves,” in which they cheerfully embrace their subaltern status: can the subaltern speak? we might ask instead, can the subaltern carry a tune?).

Then we have Donner, Rudolph’s uptight father, who hopes to attain approval from his symbolic father (Santa) by providing Old Saint Nick with another male “descendent,” a continuation of the patriarchal line; and Comet, the coach and testosterone-infused leader (“My job is to make bucks of you”) of the so-called “reindeer games” (and it should be noted that engaging in these games, according to Rudolph’s young companion, Fireball, will “make antlers grow”—all in keeping with the phallocentric culture of the North Pole).

All these patriarchs work to suppress difference. “You’ll be a normal buck just like everybody else,” insists Donner, recognizing that within the symbolic order of the North Pole Rudolph’s nose will signify a lack of masculine control and power. Thus he instructs Rudolph to hide his nose beneath a layer of mud and repress his difference.

Donner hopes Rudolph will be “a chip off the old antlers,” but he finds the red nose unmanly, a distraction from the visible sign of masculine status (antlers), and a symbol of his own failure to father a proper male and thus please his own symbolic father.

The suppression of Rudolph’s red nose is the suppression of what the patriarchs perceive as a feminine characteristic. The glowing red nose is in fact a symbol of the feminine jouissance that the patriarchs have renounced in order to join Santa’s symbolic order, is the very sign of the being they have exchanged in order to have meaning within that order. Rudolph’s red nose endangers patriarchy itself for it reminds the patriarchs of what they’ve lost, the “pure substance of enjoyment,” the dangerous irrepressible femininity (“you could even say it glows”) that they must guard against—within themselves and within others.

Because his red nose represents all those terrible / wonderful uncontrollable things that the patriarchs have excluded from their identities in order to focus exclusively on one type of marker of identity (antlers, poles, etc.), Rudolph, abject figure that he is, likewise must be excluded from the reindeer games that form the very fabric of Santa’s patriarchy.

Like the does, Rudolph can only watch as the bucks compete with each other for status, as playing “reindeer games” is merely a prelude to competing for Santa’s favor and being chosen to pull his sleigh. When Clarissa seeks to join with Mrs. Donner to hunt for Rudolph, they are both told, “This is man’s work,” and they are left behind while the men wander aimlessly and uselessly in search of the runaway reindeer (although Clarissa and Mrs. Donner ignore the male orders and demonstrate that does can wander just as aimlessly and uselessly as bucks).

Each subordinate group in Santa’s patriarchy has its own version of “reindeer games,” a system of practices and rituals through which the individual elf, reindeer, or toy is interpellated as the subject of Santa’s ideology.

Akin to “reindeer games” is “elf practice,” where the elves, among other things, practice “ear wiggling.” However, the very idea of “elf practice” points to the circular reasoning of ideology. Elfnicity is supposedly natural to one’s being as an elf, so why would an elf need to practice being an elf? In practicing what is supposedly innate, one becomes the elf that he already is. Like gender, elfnicity is a cultural construction rather than a product of nature. Otherwise, nature would take its course and both “elf practice” and “reindeer games” would be unnecessary, but Santa’s patriarchal order needs Elves and Bucks, and he must make them by suppressing and excluding other identities—and thus the cruel rituals of “elf practice” and “reindeer games” as a means of reproducing those identities and winnowing out the “misfits.”

We might articulate in abstract form the structure of Santa’s symbolic order by means of a schema from Jacque Lacan’s Encore.

The arrows in this schema, as Slavoj Zizek observes in Looking Awry, mark “the process of symbolization of the imaginary,” with the three objects on the sides of the triangle operating as “nothing but the three ways to maintain a kind of distance toward the traumatic central abyss,” the absence of meaning that always threatens to erode the symbolic systems we create to cover over that abyss (135).

As Zizek writes, the “object small a is thus the ‘hole in the real’ that sets symbolization in motion; the capital phi, the ‘imaginarization of the real,’ is a certain image that materializes nauseous enjoyment; and, finally S(A), the signifier of the lack in the big Other (the symbolic order), of its inconsistency. . . . The abyss in the middle (the balloon encircling the letter J—jouissance) is of course the whirlpool of enjoyment threatening to swallow us all” (135).

Applied to the social order at the North Pole, we might adapt Lacan’s schema thus:

Of course, the “whirlpool of enjoyment” at the center of the narrative (without it, there’d be no story) is Rudolph’s red nose, the jouissance that threatens to swallow us all—at least, that’s the way Santa and his patriarchs respond to Rudolph’s glowing difference. For the capital phi we substitute the abominable snowman, whose “nauseous enjoyment” is exemplified by his salivating mouth; for the S(A), we substitute S(A)nta, who is the signifier of his own lack. He institutes tyrannical oversight and a blustery management style to conceal his own inefficiency and inability to perform his duties without a vast force of elves and reindeer—who do all the actual labor while he broods and complains. S(A)nta’s lack necessitates the creation of the hierarchical social structure that he erects to conceal that very lack.

As Rudolph’s story is an allegory of gender difference, his friend Herbie’s story is one of sexual difference. Although one might interpret Rudolph’s red nose as a sign of queer subjectivity, Rudolph is precociously heterosexual (and bonded with Clarissa shortly after entering puberty). Herbie, on the other hand, bonds exclusively with other males, not only Rudolph but also Yukon Cornelius. But Herbie’s queerness extends far beyond a preference for male companionship. Not in the least bit interested in closeting his identity, Herbie skips elf practice, hates being an elf, disparages making toys, and makes no secret of his unacceptable desire to become a dentist.

Herbie also expresses his sense of difference through his physical appearance. While all the other male elves are completely bald, this misfit elf has blonde wavy hair (much like the female elves) and red full lips (whereas the other male elves seem to have found a way to constrain such expressive lippiness in favor of thin black lines for mouths; perhaps they have surgically altered their lips to remove any sign of feminine voluptuousness, or perhaps part of the cruelty of elf practice involves body-altering exercises to produce lip-thinning).

Herbie is a Lacanian hero in that he refuses to cede his desire (to be a dentist) to the desire of the big Other (that he be a proper thin-lipped hairless toymaking elf). He refuses to integrate into North Pole society on its terms, and, whereas Rudolph is excluded from the games he wants to join, Herbie has no interest in joining Santa’s games and practices, and he refuses to take up the subject position that the symbolic order demands that he occupy, refuses to subject himself to the Name of the Father [aka, S(A)nta], and leaves the North Pole to seek out a place more accepting of dentistry.

Oddly enough, the most seemingly masculine character in the television show, Yukon Cornelius, with his whip, gun, and facial hair, may provide the most important model of an alternate identity for the young misfits. He has not subjected himself to S(A)nta’s Law; he respects the otherness of the other, accepting both Herbie’s dentistry ambitions and Rudolph’s nose. He provides community, companionship, and nurturing (feminine qualities, all of which are notably absent or present only in highly masculinized forms at the North Pole). Although he does defeat the abominable snowman (with the help of Herbie), he does not kill the beast but tames it, in effect encouraging the snowman to abandon its violent hypermasculine ways in favor of a more feminized, less abominable, snowpersonish identity.

Yukon Cornelius has learned the value of both masculinity and femininity, and, by the end of the episode, S(A)nta seems to learn something about the value of difference as well. However, only when feminine difference offers an important way—becomes the only way—that patriarchy can carry out its functions does the patriarch recognize the value of Rudolph’s difference. Only then does S(A)nta state those famous lines: “Rudolph, with your nose so bright / Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight.” We should note, finally, that it is only when Rudolph is accepted into the patriarchy, when he subjects himself to the Name of the Father by answering S(A)nta’s hail, that he is told, “you’ll go down in history.”

It’s (Not) a Wonderful Life

So if we’re going to ‘ruin’ any Christmas movies with a Zizekian interpretation, it simply must be the Frank Capra’s classic It’s a Wonderful Life.  (Notably, James Stewart is the lead actor in this film and in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, a Zizek favorite.) 

The clip (shown above) shows life as if George Bailey, the film’s protagonist, had never been born.  Clarence, George’s guardian angel, in a last ditch effort to gain his wings, shows George life in Bedford Falls (which has become Pottersville, named after the evil antagonist banker of the film, Ben Potter) without him.  (A Marxist reading of this film would be delightful were it not for the confines of time, so Real during the week before finals.) As George walks through town, all that was once beautiful and familiar is no longer.  Everyone and every place become unheimlich; what’s worse is that George is a mere observer…the man who knows too much and so all of his interactions with people are rendered uncanny.  The tree he hit with his car after a night of collegiate-level consumption? Gone.  The barkeep named Martini?  No, his name is Nick and the only thing he’s serving is a black-eye to George Bailey.  And his wife, Mary?  The horror: “a spinster, George!”

Interestingly, the softly falling snow seems to signify the oral stage, increasing, we move into the anal stage, and by the phallic stage, it’s a blizzard.  The camera work follows the stages as well; the anal stage is a “montage,” according to Zizek, and as such, the scenes become increasingly fragmented; what was once a bizarre scenario of life without George Bailey has become a frightening series of short clips consisting mainly of George running about town in panic.  (I might also point out that, excepting the happy ending, American Psycho ends in a similar vein with Patrick Bateman running direction-less, full of dread and despair.)

Squibs and Disability Studies

I would like to discuss a group that seems to go largely undiscussed in disability studies and by the wizarding world—squibs, or in their muggle incarnation, the learning disabled. Characters such as the custodian Filch, Harry’s neighbor, Mrs. Figg, and even a character such as Neville Longbottom, struggle with the essential skill in being a wizard, performing magic, though they are born into the wizarding world. This lack of an essential part causes the “normal” wizards to react to squibs as one might react to someone with a physical deformity. For example, in The Deathly Hallows, an aunt of Ron’s makes an interesting comment about squibs and their place in the wizarding world, stating back in her day, those with minimal or no magical powers, but were part of a wizarding community, were often sent off to muggle schools and seemed to be largely ignored by their families. One can compare this to the institutionalizing we non-magical people do to our most mentally ill or intellectually or even physically disabled children and adults. There is even a sense of shame that is discussed within the books in regards to squibs. Take, for example, Neville’s own story of how impatient his family was for his magic to manifest itself and the great relief they felt when it finally did (I think of this in comparison to a speech delay in some children)  or the presumed tale of Dumbledore’s sister and how, according to rumors, she was hidden away because her family was so ashamed that she was a squib. Even Ron mentions an accountant cousin with whom his family has minimal contact (it’s assumed his cousin is not particularly magical, due the context of the discussion).

In disability studies, physical disabilities are viewed as things that can be embraced or utilized in an innovative way (Shape Structures Story, Thomson)—just because someone does not fit the norm that has been the precedent, it doesn’t mean s/he is suddenly rendered useless—this applies to intellectual disabilities as well. As an article by Marten Soder points out (and as I mentioned previously), disability can often be a structure of society based on the impediments society places before those who are perceived to be disabled. There is much emphasis on how the disabled look rather than how they think (in fact, I believe there is an emphasis on how “normally” and clearly the physically disabled think and feel), that we forget that there are those who are viewed as being disabled due to their non-normate approach to thought or intellectual (or magical) performance. The squibs of the wizarding world and this are often segregated into special or different classrooms or schools, removed from the culture they were born into, and often times looked down upon as something less. What is more, you can never make a squib a witch or wizard, just as you can never make a child with Down Syndrome a child without–but you can give a paraplegic a wheelchair or a deaf person the ability to communicate with ASL. While Squibs and the learning disabled are ever bit as “disabled” by our culture as someone with a physical disability, they are  not given as much opporutunity, I believe, by society to integrate or even segregate themselves on their own terms (which is perhaps why there is much less focus on the mentally/learning disabled than on the physically disabled).

A Psycho’s Freak Show

Let us indulge in the possibility of a reach for “The American Freak Show” within the realm of Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Psycho.” Though, it must be stated, this piece may spoil the ending of “Psycho,” so if you wish to have full enjoyment from the movie, and you have yet to see it, I suggest doing so before reading. Beyond the very premise of a Hitchcockian film, where the audience spent money to see a story displayed on the silver screen, a story likely to be frightening, we also have a freak show displayed within this  film.

But first, what is a freak show? A freak show, as defined by Rosemarie Thomson in Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, “Scrupulously described, interpreted, and displayed, the bodies of the severely congenitally disabled have always functioned as icons upon which people discharge their anxieties, convictions, and fantasies” (56). This is not completely meant for a definition of a freak show, but rather, a freak and it’s continuous “function” in society. The “freak” is made to become the space of the objet a, where anyone can compare themselves with in either a positive or negative way to feel better about their own life. The positive aspect is simply believing that if this “being” is possible, defying nature’s rules, the spectator can defy the rules of their world. A negative aspect, the “freak” illustrates how bad life can be, thus making life look so much better. It is as Thomson states, “Freaks were celebrities as well as spectacles, their popularity suggesting that audiences simultaneously identified with and were repulsed by the performers” (66).

In “Psycho,” Norman Bates becomes the “freak,” the individual we find ourselves identifying with, but repulsed by at the same time. Slowly, his split mind reveals itself with the way he acts in accordance to the way people treat him. Though, another level is interestingly the fact his mother, who is depicted as mentally disabled at the introduction of her character in conversation between Marion and Norman, is under the sensitive protection of her son Norman. Norman cannot accept leaving her, though she is abusive, because that would be treating her as inhuman, because insanity is still human. But as he and Thomson have said, “We all go a little crazy sometimes.” Though Thomson spoke of it in a more general sense of saying, we all, if we live long enough, will be disabled in some way (14).

The most interesting moment of displaying the “freak,” in the sense of a show, is when Norman brings Marion back into the parlor of the hotel’s office. Inside this “man cave,” we as the viewer alongside Marion, discover an array of stuffed birds. Possibly a reference to Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” it is also a display of death, of mortality, of the freakishness in this final step of life. And even beyond simply displaying dead things as alive through taxidermy, it reveals a bit more about the “Psycho.” Norman is different, odd. So he chooses an odd way to display himself, with a silent and still show of small creatures. As each character enters this space, they see these birds and are repulsed, enticed, and frightened. Little do they know, Norman’s mother is just the same. Little do they know that Norman is his mother. Alfred Hitchcock is the host of his own freak show, his own “man cave” filled with taxidermy.

The Indestructible Girl

There are many ways in which elements of Rosemarie Garland Thomson’s book Extraordinary Bodies come to life on screen in the sci-fi television series Heroes, written by Tim Kring. Numerous elements of her definition of “extraordinary bodies,” play out in this show, especially through the narrow focus of how these bodies align with freak shows. By just examining one episode from season four of Heroes, and comparing it to Thomson’s chapter “American Freak Shows,” it is evident how the character of Claire Bennet has an “extraordinary body” who must choose between living in a “normal” society or losing the façade and showing her true colors by joining a freak show.

Claire is a 17-year-old girl who is indestructible, much to her own dismay. Throughout the series this is made clear, but viewers can especially mark a change in her character in season four. In this season Claire has to make a choice between hiding her ability while living in a society of people without abilities or joining a band of “freaks” like herself. The antagonistic character Samuel presents her with this opportunity. Samuel is the leader of a carnival ring, Sullivan Bros. Carnival. In episode 12, “The Fifth Stage,” Claire is unavoidably drawn to the carnival, as she steals a compass from her father that leads her directly to it. She notices how the compass refuses to move its directed arrow away from the carnival, and it makes her think about how she “always said [she] belonged in a freak show, just never took it so literally.” In “The Fifth Stage,” Claire has her first experience with seeing people live out in the open with their abilities. As Samuel talks about the carnival, he presents it in appealing ways but also as American Freak Shows: “It’s actually more normal than it appears. It’s just the [air quote] “show” part of the business. We need to make money in the most honest way we can, goin’ town to town, always on the move. ‘Least for now, ‘til we find a better, more permanent way to live.” He then continues on to welcome Claire in, to “meet [his] family.” Samuel plays the role of the “showman” (79) as Thomson describes this role as the person who “offered economic independence at the expense of cultural normalcy,” and has to accept “total immersion in the freak role” (79) Samuel says this is the only way for freaks to make money and by agreeing to join them Claire would be leaving her life and existence in society to live with this new “family.”

One of the most comparable aspects of this episode is how the “freaks” are seen. Walking around the carnival, Claire, notices signs like “the amazing replicating man” and “tattoo girl: the exotic temptress” which seem similar to the names “billed”(71) to the freaks Thomson discusses. Claire meets the tattoo girl who, with her ability, shows Claire a tattoo of herself as “Indestructible Girl,” telling Claire, “This is your desire.” She witnesses a carnie use his ability to cheat a man out of winning a game. This same man is fuming and confronts Samuel by beating him up. Claire steps in, and he calls her a freak, but she is able to evoke visible feelings of terror in the man as he cuts her and sees her instantaneously heal. Thomson’s interpretation of “freaks” parallel how the carnies and people with abilities are portrayed as she discusses how it is in the “monster’s power to inspire terror, awe, wonder, and divination…” (page 57). By looking at all of these examples that accumulate throughout the episode, it is clear that these people with abilities have extraordinary bodies and the roles they play in the Sullivan Bros. Carnival are in line with how freak shows are described in Thomson’s book, as these freak shows “defined and exhibited the ‘abnormal’” (58).

Dual Disability in Harry Potter

It’s easy to read the Harry Potter series as an allegory for trauma and recovery. Harry is psychologically scarred by the murders of his parents, leaving him vulnerable to external pressures – a condition we see most clearly in “The Prisoner of Azkaban.” As a result, though, others in his support network make special accommodations for him, teaching him advanced protective spells, feeding him emergency chocolate, and generally supporting him when necessary. The series, then, is a refreshingly optimistic story of how a young boy learned to overcome an sometimes crushing disability.

At the same time, though, it could be argued that his traumatic past is never Harry’s true disability. There’s a clear way in which being an immigrant in a foreign land is a disability in itself, and that’s exactly what the “muggle-raised” Harry is. His ignorance of the wizarding world makes him an endlessly useful literary device for Rowling, but it also makes him an eternal outsider, even when surrounded by his friends. Throughout all seven books, Harry has to familiarize himself with simple concepts like candy and receiving letters; his constant struggle is not just to fit in, but also simply recognize what he’s trying to fit in to – a struggle that’s still ongoing at the end of the series.

Are Harry’s friends and mentors as accommodating of this disability? They certainly seem helpful enough, but their help usually amounts to little more than above-average patience. They explain bizarre objects and creatures as they appear, on a sort of “need to know” basis, but I’m sure that even they recognize the futility of trying to explain everything. Their support is more reactionary than preventative of confusion.

Harry’s trauma physically manifests itself in the form of his scar, a constant reminder to others of one of the disabilities he faces. It signifies to others that he is someone special, and the physical pain it causes cues others that Harry is in need of protection. Harry’s more fundamental disability, however, lacks any physical sign other than his awkward cluelessness. Perhaps this is why it gets swept under the rug. The main focus of the series seems to be Harry confronting his demons and recovering from his trauma; he succeeds in this, but he’ll probably fight the battle against his endless otherness for the rest of his life.

American Freak Shows

In chapter three of Extraordinary Bodies, Rosemarie Garland Thomson discusses American freak shows from1835-1940. She argues the following: “Scrupulously described, interpreted, and displayed, the bodies of the severely congenially disabled have always functioned as icons upon which people discharge their anxieties, convictions, and fantasies” (56). In other words, going to a freak show might be considered a guilty pleasure for some people. Instead of focusing on literature in this chapter, she directs her audience to real-life examples from the past of people who may have been considered “freaks.” Later on in the chapter, she argues that “the public lives and deaths, and indeed the public bodies, of Sartje Baartman (“The Hottentot Venus”) and Julia Pastrana (“The Ugliest Woman in the World”) expose how gender, sexuality, colonization, race, and pathology interrelate in the process of construction cultural icons” (71). Using these two women as example, she shows the transition from freak to specimen for these poor women. While Julia Pastrana was still alive, she was considered to be “’semi-human’” (72). She was a hirsute Mexican-Indian woman who had bear and apelike characteristics. From the young age of 20, she sang and danced for audiences. She died during childbirth six years later. Her journey, however, still wasn’t over. For over one hundred years, her embalmed corpse was shown in shows and circuses. Sartje Baartman became a specimen when “the eminent French zoologist Georges Cuvier dissected her body thus assuring her continuing freakdom by literally and discursively making her a medical specimen” (76).

One example I’ve found in literature is Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. Gulliver is a scientist travelling to all these different villages. At one village, he finds himself surrounded by people who are much smaller than him. In this case, Gulliver is a giant and in some ways, a freak. They want to put him on display to be used as entertainment, echoing Thomson’s argument that “the spatial arrangement between audience and freak ritualized the relationship between self and cultural other” (62). In the next village, Gulliver encounters people who are much larger than him. Here, Gulliver finds himself at a freak show, surrounded by ugly (and generally naked) women. He describes it as disgusting but doesn’t hesitate to take scientific note of it (shape, color, size), highlighting Thomson’s earlier argument about freaks becoming specimen.