American Studies - Movie Review Example

Your and # “Freaks” The trouble with choosing which features of identity are inherent in a film like the provocative and controversial film, “Freaks,” is that identity is part of our everyday experience. As Judith Lorber (2007) states in her discussion about gender, it is “the equivalent of fish talking about water” (54). As a result, choosing which identity feature to emphasize during a discussion of “Freaks” is difficult. “Freaks,” made in 1932, was a horror film made in the era before a rating system was developed in the U.S. Directed and produced by Tod Browing, its cast was mostly composed of actual carnival performers, or as they were called at the time, “freaks.

” Instead of using costumes and make-up to portray freaks, Browning used performers who actually had the deformities portrayed in the film. The title of the film, as well as the term used to describe its characters, is disturbing, although it is the term that circus performers have traditionally used to refer to themselves. There is much about the film that is disturbing, and not just because it is a horror film. Joan Hawkins (1996), in her discussion of the film, treats the two most obvious identify features, disability and gender.

Because identity is more complicated than that, however, I would include race, although I agree with Hawkins’ interpretations. As Douglas C. Baynton (2001) has rightly points out, “Disability has functioned historically to justify inequality for disabled people themselves, but it has also been done so for women and minority groups” (33). I would say that the characters in “Freaks” consider themselves a race of people, the membership of which depends upon their status as people with disabilities.

When the freaks decide to accept the trapeze artist Cleopatra into their community, even though she is “normal,” they perform an elaborate, religious-like ceremony to commemorate it. They pass around a large goblet of wine around, drinking from it and chant, “We accept her! We accept her! One of us! One of us! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble!” In another scene, one of the circus performers confronts Hercules, Cleopatra’s lover and co-conspirator, threatening to go to the police with his crimes.

Hercules says, “So, you’d tell on your own people,” and the freak responds, “My people are decent circus folks.” These two scenes demonstrate how a group of people with disabilities consider themselves a race. After the ceremony, Cleopatra discloses that she has married the midget for his money, but ironically, she remains a part of their race in spite of it. After it is discovered that she has attempted to kill her new husband, the freaks take revenge on her by attacking her and physically making her like them.

Ironically, heir actions have made an outsider an insider. Even Hercules, who in the original version of the movie was castrated, went through the process of becoming an insider. It can be said that one of the reasons the general public rejected “Freaks” so strongly was that it tapped into our society’s views about disability and race. It is classified as a horror movie, but its implications about identity, and more than just about disability and race, is what really horrified the public in the early twentieth century.

As Hawkins states, “Freaks” continues to be a disturbing film, even to contemporary audiences, and not because of its depiction of violence. It is disturbing because it makes its audience uncomfortable. Hawkins rightly states that it is guilty of the very thing that it claims it is criticizing (p. 267). Even though it is one of the few films of its era that depicts a group of people who are very different than most movie-goers of the time, it presents physical difference as horrifying, as something to be feared.

Works Cited Baynton, Douglas C. “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History.” The New Disability History: American Perspectives. Eds. Paul Longmore and Lori Umansky. New York: New York University. 2001. 133-57. Hawkins, Joan. “’One of Us’: Tod Browning’s Freaks.” Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. Ed. Rosemarie G. Thomson. New York: New York University Press. 1996. 265-276. Lorber, Judith. “’Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender.

” Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study. Ed. Paula S. Rothenberg. New York: Worth Publishers, 2007. 54-64. Print.