Le Freak, C'est Chic: The Twenty-First Century Freak Show as Theatre of Transgression

Le Freak, C'est Chic: The Twenty-First Century Freak Show as Theatre of Transgression MICHAEL M. CHEMERS I don't think politics matters spit ifthere's a dollar to be made. - Dick Zigun In his 1996 article "The 'Careers' of People Exhibited in Freak Shows: The Problem of Volition and Valorization" David A. Gerber, a historian of disability and an outspoken advocate for disability rights, manifestly resists any historical exploration of the freak show that is not grounded in outright condemnation: Today it is difficult to avoid responding to the existence of the traditional freak show from anything but a moral standpoint, reinforced perhaps by aesthetic condemnation ,I ... ]To us the freak show appears nothing but vulgarity and exploitation. A barbaric legacy of the past, we are well rid of it. So what is there left to discuss? (43) At first glance, Gerber's disgust seems to articulate the sensible, laudable desire of most scholars to write histories that are receptive to narratives of oppression and inclusive of subaltern voices. What profit to theatre history or theory could this "barbaric legacy" have to offer? Gerber directs his condemnation towards Robert Bogdan's reportage of the Baskin/Jordan controversy, in Bogdan's seminal 1988 sociological work, Freak Show: Preseflling Human Oddity for Amusement and Profit. In 1984, Otis Jordan, an African-American performer, with severely stunted arms and legs, who was then advertised as "The Frog Man," was a professional freak with Sutton's Sideshow, one of the, perhaps, five freak shows remaining at that time in America. The Sideshow had, at that time, become the target of disability rights activist Barbara Baskin. According to Bogdan, Baskin led a media campaign to ban freak shows from the New York State Fair, mainly targeting JorModern Drama, 46:2 (Summer 2003) 285 286 MICHAEL M. CHEMERS dan's perfonnance. Baskin's effons had indeed incited the fair to move Sutton's show, "The Incredible Wonders of the World," off the midway, to the back, away from the prime business real estate. Sutton, furlhennore, was under pressure to remove the tenn "freak" from any presentations referring to Jordan. Bogdan interviewed Jordan for his opinion ofthe controversy: (Jordan] thought the woman who was complaining about hisbeing exploited ought (0 talk 10 him about it. He would tell her there "wasn', anybody forcing him to do anything." As he pul it, "I can't understand it. How can she say I'm being taken advantage of? Hell, what does she want for me - to be on welfare?" (280) Jordan felt that he was entitled to choose his own career path, whatever it might be. Jordan told Bogdan that in the freak show he had found companionship , personal satisfaction, and sufficient compensation to live a lifestyle he desired. The professional freak show personnel I have personally encountered over five years of research unanimously contend that the business of freak performance itself cannot be properly understood until the historian is prepared to accept that it is possible for an actor to choose the freak show from a variety of plausible options and actually to find it to be a meaningful outlet for anistic expression, as well as an enjoyable means of making a living. The prejudices against the freak show make professional freak perfonnance more difficult with each passing year, but performers of the bizarre continue to work; many, rather than feeling exploited or coerced, actually feel empowered by their choices in the freak profession. For example, in a 2001 interview, Tony Torres, a Coney Island dwarf perfonner , confessed, It's not easy because some people put us down and say that we're hurting ourselves just because we feel like it. But us as performers, we do it be~ause that's the type of work we Jove. That's what we enjoy. We enjoy doing this. We're not trying lohurl nobody, we're not trying to make nobody dislike us with this lype of work (Torres). Jennifer Miller, a radical lesbian juggling anist, theatre director, actress, and clown, said of her perfonnance at Coney Island in the late 1990s, I am the Bearded Lady. I grew up from 20 10 30 as a woman...