Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit Review

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(More customer reviews)I have been using Freak Show in my Introduction to Sociology class since it has been published. I find the book to be a great way to introduce students to a qualitative approach to the sociology of deviance. Bogdan's fresh approach to the material makes the experiences of the so-called "freaks" come alive. Discussion that ensues covers the range from the construction of disabilites, how non-white "races" were constructed as "inferior," and the way modern-day "Freak shows" live on in TV-talk shows. I have frequently cast about for a newer supplemental reading to offer my students, but have always come back to Freak Show. And for all you non-professors out there, I recommend the book as a great read!

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From 1840 until 1940, freak shows by the hundreds crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. By today's standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitative—the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America's most popular forms of entertainment.Robert Bogdan's fascinating social history brings to life the world of the freak show and explores the culture that nurtured and, later, abandoned it. In uncovering this neglected chapter of show business, he describes in detail the flimflam artistry behind the shows, the promoters and the audiences, and the gradual evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. Freaks were not born, Bogdan reveals; they were manufactured by the amusement world, usually with the active participation of the freaks themselves. Many of the "human curiosities" found fame and fortune, becoming the celebrities of their time, until the ascent of professional medicine transformed them from marvels into pathological specimans.