Download or read book Freak Show Legacies written by Gary S. Cross and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-06 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Framing the moron written by Gerald O'Brien and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people are shocked upon discovering that tens of thousands of innocent persons in the United States were involuntarily sterilized, forced into institutions, and otherwise maltreated within the course of the eugenic movement (1900–30). Such social control efforts are easier to understand when we consider the variety of dehumanizing and fear-inducing rhetoric propagandists invoke to frame their potential victims. This book details the major rhetorical themes employed within the context of eugenic propaganda, drawing largely on original sources of the period. Early in the twentieth century the term “moron” was developed to describe the primary targets of eugenic control. This book demonstrates how the image of moronity in the United States was shaped by eugenicists. This book will be of interest not only to disability and eugenic scholars and historians, but to anyone who wants to explore the means by which pejorative metaphors are used to support social control efforts against vulnerable community groups.

Download or read book Problematic Wildlife written by Francesco M. Angelici and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-18 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides insight into the instances in which wildlife species can create problems. Some species trigger problems for human activities, but many others need humans to save them and to continue to exist. The text addresses issues faced by economists and politicians dealing with laws involving actions undertaken to resolve the problems of the interaction between humans and wildlife. Here, the words ‘problematic species’ are used in their broadest sense, as may be appreciated in the short introductions to the various sections. At times, the authors discuss special cases while always extending the discussion into a more general and broad vision. At others, they present real cutting-edge analysis of ecological topics and issues. The book will be of interest to biologists, ecologists and wildlife managers involved in research on wildlife, parks, and environmental management, as well as to government departments and agencies, NGOs and conservation wildlife organizations. Even those in contact with nature, such as hunters, herders, and farmers, will be able to find a great deal of important information. Specific case studies are selected from among the most significant and prevalent cases throughout the world. A total of 26 papers have been selected for this book, written by zoologists, biologists and ecologists. Many have an interdisciplinary approach, with contributions by economists, criminologists, technical specialists, and engineers.

Download or read book Freaks Geeks and Strange Girls written by Randy Johnson and published by Last Gasp. This book was released on 2004 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a colourful history of the carnival sideshow and its distinctive banner art. With one hundred colour photographs, the book lovingly surveys this now vanished icon of early rural America, counterpointing classic freak show art with contemporary interpretations. Fifty archival black-and-white photos of sideshows provide a historical context for the banner illustrations.

Download or read book Wonder Show written by Hannah Rodgers Barnaby and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barnaby delivers a striking historical fiction YA debut about a wayward girl amid the freaks and sideshows of a late 1930's traveling circus.

Download or read book The Big Top on the Big Screen written by Teresa Cutler-Broyles and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-01-27 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Circuses and film are a natural pairing, and the new essays making up this volume begin the exploration of how these two forms of entertainment have often worked together to create a spectacle of onscreen alchemy. The films discussed herein are an eclectic group, ranging from early silent comedies to animated, 21st century examples, in which circuses serve as liminal or carnivalesque spaces wherein characters--and by extension audience members--can confront issues as far-reaching as labor relations, sensuality, identity, ethics, and more. The circus as discussed in these essays encompasses the big top, the midway, the sideshow and the freak show; it becomes backdrop, character, catalyst and setting; and it is welcoming, malicious or terrifying. Circus performers are family, friends, foe or all of the above. And film is the medium that brings it all together. This volume starts the conversation about how circuses and film can combine to form productive, exciting spaces where almost anything can happen.

Download or read book Media Performative Identity and the New American Freak Show written by Jessica L. Williams and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-04 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces how the American freak show has re-emerged in new visual forms in the 21st century. It explores the ways in which moving image media transmits and contextualizes, reinterprets and appropriates, the freak show model into a “new American freak show.” It investigates how new freak representations introduce narratives about sex, gender, and cultural perceptions of people with disabilities. The chapters examine such representations found in horror films, including a prolonged look at Freaks (1932) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), documentaries such as Murderball (2005) and TLC’s Push Girls (2012-2013), disability pornography including the pornographic documentary Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan Supermasochist (1997), and the music icons Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga in their portrayals of disability and freakishness. Through this book we learn that the visual culture that has emerged takes the place of the traditional freak show but opens new channels of interpretation and identification through its use of mediated images as well as the altered freak-norm relationship that it has fostered. In its illumination of the relationship between normal and freakish bodies through different media, this book will appeal to students and academics interested in disability studies, gender studies, film theory, critical race theory, and cultural studies.

Download or read book Pickled Punks and Girlie Shows written by Rick West and published by Schiffer Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step down a little closer; you don't want to miss a thing. Join fifty-year sideshow veteran, Rick West, on a strange and wonderful trip through behind-the-scenes tales of his life as a showman. The strange, the bizarre, the unusual comprise this engaging memoir bursting at the seams with rare images of two-headed cows, Bigfoot creatures, pickled punks, showgirls, humongous hogs, 3,500-pound steers, and much, much more. From attending the Ozark Empire Fair at age five to revealing the true story behind Frank Hansen's infamous Minnesota Iceman, the author takes the reader into the world of America's sideshows and midway grind shows. It's all here; it's all on the inside. See it now or miss it forever. It's showtime!

Download or read book Carnie King written by John Thurston and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2024-07-02 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the audacious showman who built the greatest carnival dynasty in North America. Enter the realm of the carnie king, Patty Conklin, the flamboyant founder of what would become the world’s largest carnival company. Patty started on the mean streets of New York selling peanuts before becoming a a small-time operator. Willing to try anything to promote his show, he established himself as a carnie celebrity. Winning the midway contract for the Canadian National Exhibition in 1937, he made it his personal world’s fair. It became the foundation for his son and grandson to expand Conklin Shows until they were playing the biggest fairs and exhibitions throughout North America. Carnie King begins with the birth of Joseph Renker to German immigrant parents, tells of his personal transformation into Patty Conklin, and follows his incredible life through to his death in 1970. It covers his company's history after Jim Conklin took over, expanded it beyond recognition, then handed it on to his own son. Not only a history of Conklin Shows, Carnie King explores how midways work and their commercial and popular presence in North America The story it tells is based on dozens of interviews with carnies and access to the Conklin archives. It includes anecdotes about a range of characters and insights about life on the midway. Carnie King is at once a revealing look at a unique part of twentieth-century culture and a vivid account of three generations of showmen and their dominance of midways across the continent.

Download or read book Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo written by A. W. Stencell and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The follow-up to Seeing is Believing (ECW Press, 2002) tells the fascinating story of the carnival in words and pictures. Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo follows the development of the circus sideshow with interviews and stories from sideshow workers that explain the role of freaks, working acts, managers and talkers and explores how important grift was to circuses and how it became located inside the sideshow.

Download or read book With it written by Barbara Bamberger Scott and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With It is written from hard experience, neither memoir nor factual chronicle. I traveled with the carnival for over three years, with my then-husband and little girl. I've lifted the stories out of memory, put them on a time-line, highlighted the most colorful characters, and thrown in a murder loosely based on real events. Nearly everyone is fascinated by the possibilities inherent in the carnival subculture, and I was no exception. I learned the world - its language, its joys and its ugly secrets - and lived to tell the tale.

Download or read book Seeing Is Believing written by A. W. Stencell and published by . This book was released on 2002-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of midway attractions and the showmen who presented them on American midways from the 1870s to World War II, this fantastic, fully illustrated book showcases the manufacturers of the Polly-Moo-Zuke, the Two-Headed Giant and the Devil Fish, as well as stories of hoochie coochie dancing bears, monkeys racing miniature racecars and the strange people who made a living eating snakes. See war criminals, wax out-laws and papier mache torture victims. Learn about illusion on the midway and tricks of the trade in a journey into an age of America's last real showmen.

Download or read book Billboard written by and published by . This book was released on 1959-08-03 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

Download or read book The Church of Dead Girls written by Stephen Dobyns and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One by one, three young girls vanish in a small town in upstate New York. With the first disappearance, the townspeople begin to mistrust outsiders. When the second girl goes missing, neighbors and childhood friends start to eye each other warily. And with the third disappearance, the sleepy little town awakens to a full-blown nightmare. The Church of Dead Girls is a novel that displays Stephen Dobyns’ remarkable gifts for exploring human nature, probing the ruinous effects of suspicion. As panic mounts and citizens take the law into their own hands, no one is immune, and old rumors, old angers, and old hungers come to the surface to reveal the secret history of a seemingly genteel town and the dark impulses of its inhabitants.

Download or read book Secrets of the Sideshows written by Joe Nickell and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2005-09-09 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Joe Nickell - once a carnival pitchman, then a magician, private detective, and investigative writer - has pursued sideshow secrets for years and has worked the famous carnival midway at the Canadian National Exhibition. For this book, he interviewed showmen and performers, collected carnival memorabilia, researched published accounts of sideshows and their lore, and even performed some classic sideshow feats, such as eating fire and lying on a bed of nails as a cinderblock was broken on his chest. The result of these varied efforts, Secrets of the Sideshows tells the captivating story of the magic, tricks - real or illusory - and performers of the world's midway shows."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Billboard written by and published by . This book was released on 1954-07-24 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

Download or read book The Dwindling Book One Incarnate written by Greg Back and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if the Little People came back from self-imposed exile, smack into the middle of World War Two, and brought their magical continent (and their own war) with them? What if some of them have been hiding inside some of us all along, awaiting a wake-up call? 1945: The Schism is thinning. If nothing is done, it will give way, and all the magic penned in a parallel Earth, including the living continent Faerie, will rush back home with disastrous consequences world-wide. The only hope to stop it is Al Terity, a mechanic from Pennsylvania, unaware that he carries the Dwindled spirit of Fyndil Stellarson, architect of the Schism. Al didn't expect to meet a Gremlin on a beach in the middle of World War 2. Al was supposed to marry Sarah and settle down. But she was run down in the street the same night he met Donnelly... his buddy... lying gut-shot beside him in the sand, while machine guns chew up his company. Who'd expect a Gremlin to offer him a deal to save his friends? And all it'll cost him is... ?