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A comprehensive study of freaks and freakshows, FREAK BABYLON also includes Doctor Frederick Treve's classic case history The Elephant Man and an illustrated account of the classic movie Freaks.
The untold story of the Victorian freak show and circus, and the remarkable cast of characters who performed in them.
Society has long been fascinated with the freakish, shocking and strange. In this book Gary Cross shows how freakish elements have been embedded in modern popular culture over the course of the 20th century despite the evident disenchantment with this once widespread cultural outlet. Exploring how the spectacle of freakishness conflicted with genteel culture, he shows how the condemnation of the freak show by middle-class America led to a transformation and merging of genteel and freak culture through the cute, the camp and the creepy. Though the carnival and circus freak was marginalised by the 1960s and had largely disappeared by the 1980s, forms of freakish culture survived and today appear in reality TV, horror movies, dark comedies and the popularity of tattoos. Freak Show Legacies will focus less on the individual 'freak' as 'the other' in society, and more on the audience for the freakish and the transformation of wonder, sensibility and sensitivity that this phenomenon entailed. It will use the phenomenon of 'the freak' to understand the transformation of American popular culture across the 20th century, identify elements of 'the freak' in popular culture both past and present, and ask how it has prevailed despite its apparent unpopularity.
Frannie Costello faces the murky complexities of life. It is 1961. She is sixteen, pregnant and terrified. Abortion is not a choice. Or is it? A controlling mother whisks her away from Baltimore? Away from Nicky Feola, her first love. Away to a darkened room festering with a shadowy aura of shame. Frannie survives but follows the unforgiving cycle. She falls into an abusive marriage. When all hope is nearly gone she reads a newspaper clipping of the opening of a new. Las Vegas casino, THE ALLADIN. Courage leads her to abandon her husband. She escapes to the city of glitz and glamour. Could this city be the twentieth centurys Babylon? Would this city be Frannies demise?
Shattered Illusion is a short collection that includes Jeremy Void three longest poems: "My Psychedelic Suicide," "The Nameless City*defaced," and "The TR*TH."
Siamese twins, midgets, giants, bearded ladies, and hermaphrodites are among the people profiled with compassion and insight
Several Hebrew captives arrive in Babylon from the land of Judah. Among them are Darnill and his sister Helez. King Nebuchadnezzar's aim is to educate them in the ways and laws of Babylon so they can serve in his court. Murder, threats and escape from the fiery furnace of execution follow as their life in Babylon unfolds. Helez, a plain Hebrew girl of noble birth, falls in love with Zarko-Bel, son of the chief army commander. Their unlikely love is threatened by his reputation as a womaniser and by the fact that he serves other gods. Will she eventually open herself to be loved or stay true to her faith? Zarko-Bel has had his way with several nubile young girls in the past. He battles his own demons as he tries to win the heart of the beautiful Hebrew exile. Will he succeed or is this the one that will get away? Together they face life in Babylon and must survive jealousy, despair and loss. Will they be triumphant in their love for one another or will the challenges they face drive a wedge between them? Only time will tell if they will overcome the obstacles in their path to have a chance to live happily ever after
A groundbreaking anthology that probes the disposition towards the visually different Giants. Midgets. Tribal non-Westerners. The very fat. The very thin. Hermaphrodites. Conjoined twins. The disabled. The very hirsute. In American history, all have shared the platform equally, as freaks, human oddities, their only commonality their assigned role of anomalous other to the gathered throngs. For the price of a ticket, freak shows offered spectators an icon of bodily otherness whose difference from them secured their own membership in a common American identity--by comparison ordinary, tractable, normal. Rosemarie Thomson's groundbreaking anthology probes America's disposition toward the visually different. The book's essays fall into four main categories: historical explorations of American freak shows in the era of P.T. Barnum; the articulation of the freak in literary and textual discourses; contemporary relocations of freak shows; and theoretical analyses of freak culture. Essays address such diverse topics as American colonialism and public presentations of natives; laughing gas demonstrations in the 1840's; Shirley Temple and Tom Thumb; Todd Browning's landmark movie Freaks; bodybuilders as postmodern freaks; freaks in Star Trek; Michael Jackson's identification with the Elephant Man; and the modern talk show as a reconfiguration of the freak show. In her introduction, Thomson traces the freak show from antiquity to the modern period and explores the constitutive, political, and textual properties of such exhibits. Freakery is a fresh, insightful exploration of a heretofore neglected aspect of American mass culture.
The Cultural Construction of Monstrous Children raises important questions at the heart of society and culture, and through an interdisciplinary, trans-cultural analysis presents important findings on socio-cultural representations and embodiments of the child and childhood. At the start of the 21st, new anxieties constellate around the child and childhood, while older concerns have re-emerged, mutated, and grown stronger. But as historical analysis shows, they have been ever-present concerns. This innovative and interdisciplinary collection of essays considers examples of monstrous children since the 16th century to the present, spanning real-life and popular culture, to exhibit the manifestation of the Western cultural anxiety around the problematic, anomalous child as naughty, dangerous, or just plain evil. The book takes an inter- and multidisciplinary approach, drawing upon fields as diverse as sociology, psychology, film, and literature, to study the role of the child and childhood within contemporary Western culture and to see the historic ways in which each discipline intersects and influences the other.