Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities For Amusement And Profit Download Free (EPUB, PDF)
From 1840 until 1940, freak shows by the hundreds crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. By today's standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitative—the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America's most popular forms of entertainment.Robert Bogdan's fascinating social history brings to life the world of the freak show and explores the culture that nurtured and, later, abandoned it. In uncovering this neglected chapter of show business, he describes in detail the flimflam artistry behind the shows, the promoters and the audiences, and the gradual evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. Freaks were not born, Bogdan reveals; they were manufactured by the amusement world, usually with the active participation of the freaks themselves. Many of the "human curiosities" found fame and fortune, becoming the celebrities of their time, until the ascent of professional medicine transformed them from marvels into pathological specimans. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr (T); 1st edition (August 1988)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0226063119
ISBN-13: 978-0226063119
Product Dimensions: 1 x 6.2 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #1,129,876 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #103 in Books > Arts & Photography > Performing Arts > Theater > Circus #53033 in Books > History > Americas > United States #76710 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences
One does not need to be a fan of the cirucs or amusements along those lines to be intrigued by Robert Bogdan's examination of freak shows. In "Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit," Bogdan traces the roots and heyday of freak shows with alacrity, intelligence, and respect. This thoroughly researched work is filled with pictures and artifacts (some rather gruesome in their subject) that furthers Bogdan's examination of freak show history.Beginning in the mid-1800s to around 1940, freak shows were a staple of amusement in the United States. At a time when strange creatures and humans from foreign coutries were unknown to those in other countries it was easy to startle and entertain with these fascinating exhibits. Who now can imagine what it would be like to live in a world where a giraffe was an unknown, fascinatingly strange creature. It is so common to us today that at times it is hard to conceive how people could be taken in by some of the fabricated freaks (or gaffs as they were known as). The lack of scientific and medical knowledge allowed freak shows to propser, especially those that featured people we now know as mentally handicapped, because their conditions were unidentified at the time. True, real oddities existed - the super-tall or super-small, the armless or legless wonders, the Siamese twins - but freak shows also cast their lot in created freaks - fake "savages" from foreign lands, "wild" children, island cannibals, and tattooed marvels in a day and age when tattooing was not common, but rather a sure sign of savage heathens.Bogdan covers the real as well as the fake, those who made themselves feaks and those who were forced to be labled as freaks.
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