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.
