Disability studies

1. Freak shows and
Freakery
INTRODUCTION TO DISABILITY STUDIES
CLASS 12

2. freak
 Someone who is persuasively presented as one
 The display turns the human being into a peculiarity
 It is a certain kind of production or performance that creates ‘the freak’
(take present day reality music and dance shows
 History - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8myQ0mfROZg

3. The festival/ feast of fools
 The central idea seems always to have been a brief social revolution, in which power, dignity and impunity is
briefly conferred on those in a subordinate position. In the views of later commentators, this makes the
medieval festival a successor to the Roman Kalends of January, although there is no continuity between the
two celebrations.[2] (so Quasimodo in The Hunchback is a participant because he is the bell-ringer)
 An orderly—if not always fully scripted—liturgical celebration with some dramatic elements.[3] The
involvement of inversion (subdeacons occupying the roles normally fulfilled by higher clergy) and the 'fools'
symbolised orthodox biblical ideas of humility (e.g. the last being first) and becoming a 'fool for Christ' (1
Corinthians 4:10).[4]
 In the Middle Ages, particularly in France, the Feast of Fools was staged on or about the Feast of the
Circumcision, January 1. It is related to certain other liturgical dramas, such, for example, as the Feast of the
Ass, the Play of Daniel, and the Office of the Star. So far as the Feast of Fools had an independent existence,
it seems to have grown out of a special "festival of the subdeacons", which John Beleth, a liturgical writer of
the twelfth century and an Englishman by birth, assigns to the day of the Circumcision.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCHm5DURhMw ]

4. Historical prevalence
Exhibitions of live human curiosities
had appeared in travelling fairs,
circuses and taverns in England
since the 1600s. These included so-
called giants, dwarves, fat people,
the very thin, conjoined twins and
even people from exotic climes.
Freak shows were a particularly
popular form of entertainment
during the Victorian period, when
people from all classes flocked to
gawp at these unusual examples of
human life.
(Victorian Freak Shows – British Library website)

5. Class acts

6. “Siamese Twins”
Chang and Eng, the pair of
conjoined twins that were
very popular at the shows in
England present to us the
attractions of biologically
different others and racially
different others.

8. “The Hottentot Venus”
Several prints dating from the early nineteenth century
illustrate the sensation generated by the spectacle of
"The Hottentot Venus." A French print entitled "La Belle
Hottentot," for example, depicts the Khosian woman
standing with her buttocks exposed on a box-like
pedestal. Several figures bend straining for a better
look, while a male figure at the far right of the image
even holds his seeing-eye glass up to better behold the
woman's body. The European observers remark on the
woman's body: "Oh! God Damn what roast beef!" and
"Ah! how comical is nature."

9. Social context of freak shows in
Europe
 ‘monster in the marketplace’ - a common phenomenon in 17th and 18th
century England (Swift – Gulliver having to face “the Ignominy of being
carried about for a Monster”)
 All classes in England enjoyed these shows : royalty were entertained in
their court; wealthy connoisseurs obtained private audiences in their
homes by paying showmen to bring the curiosities; inns were popular
spots for exhibiting the monsters who stayed there while travelling – up-
scale viewing; cheapest shows – itinerant showmen who set up their
displays in the streets near taverns or coffeehouses.

10. Joseph Merrick or The Elephant Man
(1862-1890)
Joseph had been originally set up as a permanent exhibit
in a shop on the Whitechapel Road in East London -
a location directly opposite the London Hospital and
when one of the surgeons, Frederick Treves, happened to
make a visit there, he invited Joseph to be examined and
photographed for medical records. Treves described his
patient as being ‘deformed in body, face, head and limbs.
His skin, thick and pendulous hung in folds, and resembled
the hide of an elephant – hence his show name.‘
The Elephant Man’s skeleton was preserved and is still held
at the London Hospital but even today with advanced DNA
tests, his condition has still not been conclusively proved. It
is thought most probably that he suffered from
neurofibromatosis type 1, combined with Proteus
syndrome.

11. Elephant Man or just Joseph Merrick?
Tis true my form is something
odd,
But blaming me is blaming
God;
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.
If I could reach from pole to
pole
Or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measure by the soul;
The mind’s the standard of the
man.
(Hymn by Isaac Watts, late 18th
century hymn writer – reference to his
dimunitive size)

12. Saartjie Baartman (1789-1816)
Saartjie Baartman was born in 1789 into the Griqua tribe of the eastern Cape, a subgroup
of the Khoisan people who are now thought to be the first aboriginal inhabitants of
the southern tip of Africa. Her family moved to a shack near Cape Town and, while
working as a 20-year-old servant to a local farmer, she attracted the
attention of a visiting English ship's surgeon, William Dunlop. What
made her a curiosity in the doctor's eyes were her extraordinary
steatopygia — enlarged buttocks — and her unusually elongated labia,
a genital peculiarity of some Khoisan women of the time.
She agreed to go with Dunlop to England where, he promised her, she would
become rich and famous as a subject of medical and anthropological research.
She was 21 when she left Cape Town for London.
Contemporary descriptions of her shows at 225 Piccadilly, Bartholomew Fair and
Haymarket in London say Baartman was made to parade naked along a
"stage two feet high, along which she was led by her keeper and
exhibited like a wild beast, being obliged to walk, stand or sit as he

13. “A little something for everybody”:
freak shows in the U.S.
P.T. Barnum (1810-1891, USA)
Phineas Taylor Barnum is one of the most colorful
and well known personalities in American
history. A consummate showman and
entrepreneur, Barnum was famous for bringing
both high and low culture to all of America.
From the dulcet tones of opera singer Jenny
Lind "The Swedish Nightingale" to the bizarre
hoax of the Feejee Mermaid, from the clever
and quite dimunitive General Tom Thumb to
Jumbo the Elephant, Barnum's oddities,
spectacles, galas, extravaganzas, and events
tickled the fancies, hearts, minds and
imaginations of Americans of all ages.
*the barnum effect - is a term that is used in
psychology. It is the tendency for people to
accept very general or vague characterizations
of themselves and take them to be accurate. A
good example of this can be seen when
people believe what is said about them in
psychometric tests, personality profiles,
astrological predictions, and so on.

14. DISABILITY
HISTORIES:
Class 2
INTRODUCTION TO DISABILITY STUDIES: HSS
F-248
March 2021

15. Eugenics as ‘science’:
 Late 19th century and early 20th century
 Eu-gene [well born]
 Sir Francis Galton
 Building on Darwin’s idea of natural selection

16. Eugenics at work
 Termination of pregnancy when prenatal testing reveals that the
foetus manifests any evidence of being born with a disability (e.g. the case
of Down Syndrome) [explored further in the bioethics classes]
 Forceful sterilization: historically hysterectomies have been performed
on women with disabilities in psychiatric institutions without their consent
thus curtailing their reproductive rights
 Euthanasia or physician assisted death: supported dying becomes more
easily available as an alternative to supported living for people with
disabling conditions [explored further in the bioethics classes]

17. Population
control
Racial
purity
Intelligence
standardization
National purity

18. References
1.Chapters in Beginning with Disability:
Chapter 10 – Disability History
2. Entries from Keywords for Disability Studies
- Eugenics
- Euthanasia
- Freak
- History