What characteristics depict a person as a "Freak"?
"I think what’s interesting about me is my personality. Of course, these are different and they’re interesting to look at, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I'm powerful and awesome, and I have these, and I'm a freak" -Mat Fraser
Despite the evidence that there is no concrete definition, there were many factors that ensued the defining of "freaks" within the Victorian Era. Historically, the term has changed and depended on the cultural beliefs and societal normalcy. For example, during the 17th Century, people viewed "freaks" as a discourse from the natural universe's creations, in the 19th century, "freaks" helped medical practitioners understand the human anatomy, and religion influenced the impression that "God made monsters to punish humankind and to encourage penitence for sins such as greed, blasphemy, idleness, and insubordination." (Tromp 23). This called to question the relationship between the mind and body, if one's body is deemed as "freakish" does that imply they have an evil, immoral soul?
In Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britiain, Marlene Tromp deduces "Showmen used products to depict the deformed as respectable participants in British society and suggested that exhibited freaks shared the middle class's interest in domesticity, financial security, and leisure time." (Tromp 28). This highlights that, apart from their physical deformities, they shared the same common, personal desires as other members of society. This notion challenged the boundaries between "freaks" and "normal" people because they discoursed from the Victorian era's expectations causing them to be treated as outsiders. Certain interpretations by people concluded that showcasing “freaks” was degrading to their status, which brought attention to the impracticality of British imperialism, showmen using them to their advantage for profits as Britain similarly did to the colonization of other areas.
The representation of "freaks" relied heavily upon advertisement, demanding the photography of them for promoting the exhibits. Meegan Kennedy wrote an essay centered around the case of Hoo Loo explaining the body-centric motif of medical photography, the term defining the common nature of photography taken during the period. This is when the subject of the picture is "not 'present' by means of identity but rather by their medical condition. They remain dis-empowered, a condition marked here by a lack of direct eye contact and a forced perspective employed by the camera. This collaborative aesthetic rarely allows this type of perspective. ..freak performers were initiating a new mode of disable presence, once clearly seen in the use of direct eye contact." (Tromp 296). In other words, performers took advantage of their uniqueness to award themselves authority that focused on their deformities rather than objectifying them.
What is a "freak" show?
"Freak" shows attracted their audiences because people were unable to grasp the reality of the exhibits. The public presentation of the showcases allowed Victorians to explore elements hidden by Victorian ideologies, such as sexuality/gender and flesh/body relationships. Many people would travel, near and far, to experience the sensation in person.
For the Victorian culture, these shows were sometimes considered problematic because "exhibited freaks and their managers often exploited the tensions in the conversations, generation multiple, even contradictory interpretations of bodily and social meaning for and with its audiences" (Tromp 7). The shows generated a social question between the boundaries between ones own self and the fear of the Other, or the unknown, creating fear in people being different from the being different because it limited one's success.
The purpose of calling upon people to see it publicly was a tactic to inspire conversation within a community. It is believed that "patterns within the advertisements...suggest that the market success of those exhibited as freaks relied largely on their ability to encourage curiosity in the physical oddness without aggravating British cultural anxiety about the spectacle trade, psychical segregation, and working-class leisure." (Tromp 22). Not only did they rely on large audiences, but they also relied on the widespread conversation to attract those audiences. For this reason, they helped members of the Victorian community establish a dialogue over a larger geographical area.
In response to the anxiety of health, the attention of "freak" shows received added to the concerns of people because "with both causes and patterns of disease very much matters of speculation, it was difficult to ever feel comfortable about the state of one's health. The behavior of the severe contagions of the time had a special way of intensifying anxiety" (Haley 11). Thus, "freak" shows invoked all definitions of the term "sensational", body, mind, and communal.
What messages did "Freak" shows present?
It is important to remember the significance that health and medicine had within the Victorian period, which largely helps situates the rise of popularity to “freak” shows.
No topic more occupied the Victorian mind than Health-not religion, or politics, or Improvement, or Darwinism…Literary critics thought of Health when they read a new book of poems; social theorists thought of Health when they envisioned an ideal society” (Haley 3).
Additionally, “freak” shows influenced medical and psychologists to teach the body and mind as two separate entities. The study of “freaks” challenged a common perception of the mind and body, that “the mind is dependent on the body: hence and acquaintance with the physiology of the body should precede the study of the physiology of the mind” because people began to question the importance of the body, its relationship with the mind, and how it effects one’s role in a community. The shows seemed to critique the material importance the body has over the quality of one’s person.
Because the shows challenged mainstream notions of the era, they helped form and mold a new culture that veered away from the then-current British beliefs. Audiences were concerned about the nature of “normalcy” within the community, seeing that these “freaks” made an income by exhibiting themselves. “Freaks” could positively represent other indigenous or foreign groups of people because it helped to “look at the relationship between the freak and the audience and the use of freakish-ness as a metaphor in other culturally marginal contexts” (Tromp 13). The conceptualization of bodies was then considered to be determined and controlled by the culture, fluid to it.
Hoo Loo: An Extraordinary Case
Hoo Loo exemplifies a case that baffled both medical examiners and the public even though his defect was a medical anomaly rather than a birth defect immediately drawing attention to him that outcasted him. Loo was extensively researched because his case "raises questions about the relation of the professional knowledge and medical representation to British beliefs about race, nationalism, and imperial ambition...it suggests that the discourse of the ninteenth century case histories enables the exoticization of "grotesque" diseases" (Tromp 83). Given the uncontrollable physical deformations, it exceeded the "natural" boundaries of the body which reflected the fear that the "expression of anxieties over the reproduction of the British nation with their usually Asian or Southeast Asian features clearly marked, the sickness of monstrous growth coincides, here, with some of the global locations where the British empire was most rapidly expanding" (Tromp 83).
Not only did Hoo Loo exhibit Britain's imperial fear, his condition also touched on the fear of discoursing sexually during the Victorian Era. The location of Loo's tumor growth suggested that he had issues with his sexuality. Due to the popularity of the tumor, Guy's Hospital, the place of the surgical attempt to remove it, moved the surgery to a theater that was fit to hold 680 spectators which created a more intimate sensation because "the spectators 'thought we could trace' his thoughts, his regret, and his resolve" when they experienced the live surgical procedure (Tromp 84-85). Loo was mistreated during the surgery, resulting in his death, due to the doctor's failure to accommodate his unfamiliarity in a European setting. Loo's experience, however, develops another type of sensationalism around the event. It concluded that "sentimental medicine draws upon the sensibilities of an earlier century to heal Hoo Loo figuratively, but signifying the physician's human purpose and the identification with the patient...an acknowledgement of the limitations of medicine, and as a means of symbolically recovering the patient through an empathetic relationship expressed by the physician and shared by this readers" (Tromp 92). Had Hoo Loo been treated subjectively and not as a medical experiment that was overly concerned with his body, the common understanding of body and mind, he could have lived.
Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man"
"Disability 'is a part of a historically constructed discourse, an ideology of thinking about the body under certain historical circumstances. Disability is not an object-a woman with a cane- but a social process that intimately involves everyone who has a body and lives in the world of the senses'" - Lennard J. Davis (Tromp 115)
As Hoo Loo created a social dialogue, Joseph Merrick created a political dialogue. Merrick's exhibition gave route to another type of sensationalism between the heard and the unheard. The heard, considerable "normal" people, and the unheard, those that did not fit into the heard category, were conflicted with the ancient hierarchy of social structure. For example, the unheard can be paralleled to the oppressed group, and "the oppressed are the 'silenced' whose liberation will ensure when credence is finally granted to their marginalized 'voice'" (Tromp 116). One's voice plays an enormous factor in the identity they uphold, speech can be an indicator of class, knowledge and background; thus, when Joseph Merrick clearly had a rhetoric that considered him as an intellectual, his appearance limited his abilities.
"One does not know where a man is until after he is has spoken"- Jean-Jaccques Rousseau
Yet, how can a "freak" like Joseph Merrick be heard when no one is listening? Darwin's theories regarding evolution were very popular in Britain's Victorian period, the relationship, or lack of, between the superior man and animal. As stated above, language as responsible for the defining of one's identity, "freaks" began to communicate in different way than relying on their speech with those who refused to listen. The inability to easily classify Joseph Merrick into a class reminded society that, "language includes any kind of instrumentality whereby we communicate our thoughts and feelings to others, and therefore that the deaf-mute who can converse only with his fingers or the lips is as truly gifted with the power of speech as the man who can articulate his words." (Tromp 119). Although Merrick himself was gifted with practiced speech, his exhibition advocated a new method of communication between different groups of people.
In conclusion:
The construction of "freak" shows critiqued and scrutinized many Victorian ideologies with their attention. These spurred conversations regarding fears of abnormal sexual, political, and societal identities of Britain's culture. For some scholars, "freak" shows negatively exploited the subjects, dehumanizing them and objectifying them to spectators for the entertainment of upper class members. However, for the performers of these exhibits, they were able to bring positive and credibility to their role in a society where being different was dangerous. They also brought new knowledge to the medical field, while establishing a new way of embracing individuality and relationships by means of communication and dialogue. "Freak" shows as a sensation undoubtedly sparked the reformation of social classes and the consequences of exploiting marginalized people. These "freaks" generated public discussion about the fears and anxieties while making an income and creating an identity for themselves against the judgement of the collective. They encouraged healthier relationships that blurred a multitude of boundaries (aforementioned class, gender, beauty, economic and political). Without the recognition of "freak" shows our culture might still view differences as fearful and would not be as apt to engage with the unknown and, in this case, has effected all aspects of a countries identity beneficially.
Works Cited:
Durbach, Nadja. “Re-examining ‘the Elephant Man”. The Public Domain Review. http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/07/24/reexamining-the-elephant-man/.
Haley, Bruce. The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture. Harvard University Press, 1978.
Morris, Thomas. “The sad case of Hoo Loo”. WordPress, 20 Jul. 2016, http://www.thomas-morris.uk/case-hoo-loo/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2017.
Tromp, Marlene. Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain. The Ohio State University, 2008.
Credits:
Created with images by Brian Omura - "Freakshow"