Sideshow U.S.A. by Rachel Adams5/27/2023 ![]() Adams accepts the film as an ambiguous version of the freak show in which the actors can be seen as monstrous Other or as part of our concept of our normal selves. The chapter is divided into two "exhibits": Exhibit A is "The African Savage" Exhibit B, "The Last Wild Indian." "Sideshow Cinema," the third chapter, is a thorough analysis of the 1932 film Freaks. 27)-was born in the mid-nineteenth century. The freak show as we know it-that is, as a way to exhibit "national fantasies" (p. Chapter 2, "Freaks of Culture," examines the historical context of the institution. In this first chapter, Adams highlights the plasticity of the category of "freak," points to cultural identity as a decision, and situates the freak as the centerpiece, not the side show, of our understanding of literary and visual culture. The Overture, "Recovering Otis," picks up where Bogdan left off, with Otis Jordan, the Frog Man. ![]() This well researched study is cleverly organized not into an introduction and three parts, but an overture and three acts, followed by an epilogue. ![]() takes its place alongside Robert Bogdan's Freak Show and Rosemarie Garland Thomson's Freakery (in which Adams has an essay) as a landmark analysis of the freak show through the lens of disability studies. Reviewed by Lynn Rose (Department of History, Truman State University) Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination.Ĭhicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001. ![]()
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