Download PDF by Robert Bogdan: Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and

By Robert Bogdan

From 1840 till 1940, freak exhibits via the loads crisscrossed the USA, from the smallest cities to the biggest towns, showing their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded girls, savages, snake charmers, hearth eaters, and different oddities. via state-of-the-art criteria such screens will be thought of merciless and exploitative—the pornography of incapacity. but for 100 years the freak convey used to be greatly authorized as certainly one of America's most well liked varieties of entertainment.

Robert Bogdan's attention-grabbing social background brings to lifestyles the realm of the freak convey and explores the tradition that nurtured and, later, deserted it. In uncovering this overlooked bankruptcy of exhibit company, he describes intimately the flimflam artistry in the back of the exhibits, the promoters and the audiences, and the slow evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. Freaks weren't born, Bogdan unearths; they have been synthetic through the enjoyment international, frequently with the energetic participation of the freaks themselves. the various "human curiosities" came upon repute and fortune, changing into the stars in their time, till the ascent drugs remodeled them from marvels into pathological specimans.

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Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit by Robert Bogdan


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