Step Right Up: Sideshow Autonomy from Freaks (1932) to American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014-15)

Aíne Norris

Ninety years ago, Freaks (1932) puzzled audiences with a message that asked viewers to reconsider the sideshow and the performers therein. Freaks asked audiences to consider the humanity of sideshow performers in a way that the shows traditionally removed, questioned, or distorted for profit. Based on reception, audiences in 1932 were not ready for this emotional labor; the film was considered a failure and, by many, the end of Tod Browning’s career. 82 years later, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk debuted American Horror Story: Freak Show (AHS) to strong viewership and ratings. In the season, writers adjusted time and understandings of the body in a way inaccessible to Browning in 1932 due to the cultural hold of the sideshow on American audiences. To fully contextualize the societal trajectory from Freaks to AHS, one must examine similarities between the horror film and television season alongside major milestones of sideshow culture in America.

Setting the Stage

From its opening scene, wherein people observe human oddities in pits, Browning masterfully establishes major themes of the film: community, deceit, and vengeance. The announcer, tantalizing the crowd as they look down upon an unnamed, especially shocking monstrosity not shown to viewers, states that freaks^[1] “did not ask to be brought into the world” and that their “code is a law to themselves…offend one and you offend them all” (Browning), a warning of what’s to come and a careful introduction of a freak code inaccessible to the audience.

As Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), an aerialist, seduces Hans (Harry Earles), a little person, after learning of his substantial inheritance, viewers are introduced to a myriad of other sideshow performers within a traveling circus. The menagerie of born freaks^[2] includes conjoined twins, dwarfs, a bearded lady, an armless woman, two geeks^[3], pinheads, and more.^[4] Throughout the film they are discussed as objects, with people stating they “should have been smothered” at birth and calling them “living breathing monstrosities.” Even Hans, in his first conversation with Cleopatra, says that, due to his small stature, people often forget he’s a man “with the same feelings they have” (Browning). Browning is careful to further humanize the sideshow performers by primarily showing them in the back yard^[5] engaging in everyday activities rather than on display for an audience.

Browning also establishes a divide where select non-sideshow persons are allies to the freaks, such as Venus (Leila Hyams), while others are out to humiliate and exploit them. After Cleopatra successfully seduces Hans, he ends his engagement to Frieda (Daisy Earles), who warns him that, to Cleopatra, he is “only something to laugh at” (Browning), knowing that Cleopatra is also seeing Hercules the Strong Man.

In a well-known scene, the freaks gather for Hans and Cleopatra’s wedding feast, passing around a “loving cup” to accept the bride, chanting “one of us! One of us!” After laughing cruelly at Hans, drinking heavily, and beginning to poison her new husband, Cleopatra explodes, calling the group “dirty, slimy freaks,” an outburst that launches the film’s climb to its climax: the hunt (Browning).

The climactic scene unfolds at night as the wagons are in motion, moving to the next stop during a storm. After her plot to poison Hans is discovered, Cleopatra runs through the rain as a group of freaks follow her into the woods in an eerily calm pursuit. Meanwhile, another group hides under wagons and closes in on Hercules methodically, building intense anticipation for audiences as the rain falls harder. In the end, it is revealed that Hercules was killed, and the oddity mentioned in the pit at the beginning of the film was Cleopatra, on display as a mutilated human bird, tarred and feathered without the ability to speak, her arms, face, and feet modified. Despite the film’s true ending, reconciliation between Hans and Freida, it is the rainy pursuit most remembered as the pinnacle, riddled with tension and suspense.

Freaks was highly anticipated prior to release. An ad published in papers across the United States depicted images of characters from the film, stating “what about the Siamese twins – have they no right to love?…They have the same passions, joys, sorrows, laughter as normal human beings. Is such a subject untouchable?” (“Tod Browning’s FREAKS”). However, positive buzz about the film stopped there. Audience reactions ranged from outrage to disgust, with statements such as “‘you must have the mental equipment of a freak yourself to devise such a picture’” and “‘the picture is horrible. To put such creatures before the public in a picture is unthinkable’” (“Freaks Has Moviedom in Uproar”). The Oakland Tribune addressed the revenge scenes and assertion of autonomy, stating the film was a “revolting story of vengeance as practiced by the indignant denizens of the sideshow.” The review also  challenged Browning’s previous success writing for Lon Chaney stating “it was one thing to see an artist of Chaney’s standing in a repulsive role, knowing that it was nothing but a characterization, and quite another to see the real monstrosities” (Soanes). Many felt Browning’s legacy for horror films like The Mystic (1925) and Dracula (1931) was destroyed by Freaks. Moreover, reviews confirmed that audiences were not interested in exploring the paradox of the sideshow: that despite being a platform built on othering, human oddities were worthy of consideration, and that, despite performers earning success and community through their participation, sideshows were designed to display differences for dollars.

A Contemporary Cabinet of Curiosities

In 2014, audiences again waited in anticipation, this time for the fourth season of American Horror Story, an installment titled Freak Show set in Jupiter, Florida in 1952, twenty years after Freaks. Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange) is the German proprietor of a surviving freak show called Fräulein Elsa’s Cabinet of Curiosities. The season depicts the freaks as a close-knit community who, like their predecessors in Browning’s film, take revenge upon those who harm them. The season was celebrated with mostly positive reviews and high ratings, earning twenty Emmy Award nominations (“American Horror Story: Freak Show”). Simultaneously, fans, critics, and scholars began discussing the season’s overlap with Freaks and what this resurgence might mean for the original film’s allegory.

When considering AHS as a season and as a homage to Freaks, the similarities are profound in plot, characters, setting, and message. Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk were clearly influenced by the 1932 film and created a world that both overlapped Browning’s back yard and that explored new territory for contemporary audiences.

The most blatant overlap between the film and season are its characters. Though the persons depicted in AHS were sideshow mainstays, the purposeful inclusion of similar characters to the film reinvigorated the original message of Freaks. AHS, like Freaks, included a Bearded Lady, limbless persons, a Strong Man, a Half Man / Half Woman, a geek, and pinheads. Even Elsa Mars, in her complex dichotomy of fierce maternal care and selfishness blended the conniving Cleopatra and kind Venus characters from Freaks. As lead characters, the season relied on Bette and Dot Tattler (Sarah Paulson), dicephalic parapagus twins,^[6] modeled after Daisy and Violet Hilton. Though the Hilton sisters were pygopagus, connected at their lower back, it is likely producers chose to depict Bette and Dot as an extreme variant to emphasize their rarity and value to the failing sideshow.

An unmistakable similarity between Freaks and AHS is each medium’s rain-soaked murder and hunt scenes, which end with Cleopatra (Freaks) and Stanley (AHS) serving time for their crimes against the freak community, both mutilated and bird-like, with Stanley (Denis O’Hare) donning the costume of the group’s dead geek.^[7] In AHS, Elsa even screens Freaks before the hunt begins, an undisguised acknowledgement of Browning’s work and a clear warning to Stanley.

Cultural Significance

American sideshow changed and evolved quickly during the twentieth century, reaching its peak around the time of Freaks. The chronology connecting film to season contains many cultural milestones; recognizing them helps viewers contextualize why Freaks was widely criticized while AHS was celebrated.

An important thread in both Freaks and AHS is performer distaste for the term ‘freak.’ In the second episode of the season the performers are mocked and called ‘freaks.’ Jimmy states, “they don’t even know us. If they just got to know us, they would see we’re just like them. No better, no worse. Just regular people” (Gomez-Rejon). This noticeable irritation for the word has roots in reality. In 1898, Barnum & Bailey sideshow performers formed a group and “formally protested against being called freaks.” Though some regarded this protest as a carefully-executed publicity stunt meant to bring attention to the sideshow, the request still prompted James Bailey to temporarily accept ‘prodigies’ as a replacement term for ‘freaks,’ a change reflected immediately on banners. However, by 1903 the word ‘freak’ prevailed, attracting more attention than ‘strange people’ or ‘oddities’ (Drimmer xv).

Resistance to the word ‘freak’ was part of a larger conversation happening at the turn of the century regarding what it meant for a body to be pure or worthy of life. The eugenics movement raged in America and abroad, and bodies deemed as ‘freaks’ could be subject to investigation, sterilization, or institutionalization.^[8] As discussed by Fordham, the eugenics movement increased aspects of mockery in the shows and, eventually, “a number of states and municipalities began to view freak shows as a threat to the morals of society and passed laws prohibiting or regulating freak shows” (Fordham 4–5). For example, in 1921, the State of Florida created a law against freak shows that stayed on the books until 1972 (“Freak Show Curb Voided”). Eugenics press coverage and anti-show laws were the initial glimmers of forthcoming change for sideshows, compounded by the Great Depression. The golden age of sideshow began to fade by the late 1930s, and many shows with human oddities closed for good (O’Brien 8).

Another cultural moment around autonomy was provoked by Freaks stars Daisy and Violet Hilton. For a time, the twins flourished in vaudeville and were among the highest-paid sideshow performers, with weekly earnings around five thousand dollars (Mannix 52). As their popularity waned, they turned to publicity stunts to keep their names in the papers, and one such stunt required the public to consider the bodily, mental, and emotional agency of conjoined twins. In 1934, Violet Hilton was denied a marriage license in both New York and New Jersey due to her conjoined body, and both states argued it was “immoral and illegal” with implications of polygamy (“Two Cities Block Siamese Twin’s March to Altar”). The Hilton sisters fought the courts repeatedly to consider their status as individuals, which paved the way for future cases of bodily agency.

By the mid-twentieth century, audiences were less exposed to sideshows and were overall less interested in human oddities. Only a few sideshows persevered, among them Coney Island and Hubert’s Museum and Flea Circus (Hall 38). This opened the door to re-release Freaks; mid-century audiences, decades removed from actual sideshows, could consider the film’s allegory without the same cultural baggage. In the 1960s, Freaks again made headlines with screenings at the Venice Film Festival and in theaters for limited camp and horror audiences (Bogdan viii). Finally, in 1994, the film was selected for preservation through the Library of Congress (“25 Films Added to National Registry”).

Sideshow Autonomy: Then and Now

In 1932, audiences were not ready for the duality requested by Freaks. The film required audiences to consider that displaying humans with physical or mental anomalies for profit and entertainment is, at its core, degrading and dehumanizing. However, the film also affirms that sideshows, by human design, were one of the only spaces, historically, for such persons to make money, find community, and survive. Audiences were not ready to come face-to-face with the true horror of the film: sideshow performers challenging the status quo of popular entertainment, seeking revenge, and ultimately taking control. The potential for retaliation or enforcement of the freak code was haunting to viewers who were familiar with or had even participated in sideshow voyeurism. This, coupled with the film’s display of unusual bodies in everyday contexts, was a horrifying assertion for the sideshow audience.

82 years after Freaks, AHS premiered to a very different audience base. Most viewers were raised without sideshows and grew up in communities where bodily differences were less exclusionary. Contemporary audiences, though potentially disturbed by the show’s premise, accepted the appeal for bodily agency and the freak code of autonomy while still enjoying the classic horror setup and call for fear. And, with the season set purposely in the 1950s and not in modern times, where such perceived exploitation would be less tolerated,^[9] producers and writers stretched the boundaries of bodily agency and sideshow chronology for contemporary audiences. In the end, Browning’s freaks ultimately prevailed, their crawl toward recognition as slow, calculated, and significant as that original scene in the rain.

Notes:

^[1] For consistency with vernacular of the film and television season, the author primarily uses freaks throughout the text, noting respectfully that the term is not acceptable in most contexts.

^[2] Sideshows traditionally contained different kinds of freaks; born freaks were persons born with their bodily or mental abnormality, whereas other freaks included fire eaters, sword swallowers, and mystics.

^[3] A geek is a sideshow performer who often sits in a pit, dressed in feathers. Sometimes they are surrounded by snakes and other times they eat the heads off chickens or other small animals for audiences. In Freaks, the main geek is Koo-Koo the Bird Girl, who worked with Ringling Brothers for many years and deliberately made herself into a freak (Mannix 107).

^[4] The author uses traditional sideshow phrases throughout for consistency with the film and season, rather than clinical terminology.

^[5] The area off-limits to the public, containing performer wagons, dressing rooms, the cook house, and more.

^[6] Dicephalic parapagus twins have one torso and two heads, and typically share most of the body’s major organs.

^[7] This ending also invokes the 1947 carnival-based classic Nightmare Alley, where con-man Stan Carlisle ends up as a geek after losing everything, including his mind.

^[8] This also reflects the rhetorical argument of sideshows as a safe haven for those with anomalies.

^[9] Some scholars and critics state that modern reality television shows about persons with bodily differences are contemporary iterations of sideshows.

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Works Cited

“25 Films Added to National Registry.” The New York Times, 15 Nov. 1994, https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/15/movies/25-films-added-to-national-registry.html.

“American Horror Story: Freak Show.” Wikipedia, 15 June 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_Horror_Story:_Freak_Show&oldid=1093175032.

Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2009.

Browning, Tod. Freaks. MGM, 1932.

Drimmer, Frederick. Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves, and Triumphs of Human Oddities. Bell Pub. Co, 1985.

Fordham, Brigham A. “Dangerous Bodies: Freak Shows, Expression, and Exploitation.” UCLA Entertainment Law Review, vol. 14, no. 2, 2007, https://doi.org/10.5070/LR8142027098.

“Freak Show Curb Voided.” The New York Times, 15 Oct. 1972, https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/15/archives/freak-show-curb-voided.html.

“Freaks Has Moviedom in Uproar.” Daily News, 21 Feb. 1932, p. 252.

Gomez-Rejon, Alfonso. “Massacres and Matinees.” American Horror Story: Freak Show, 2, FX, 15 Oct. 2014.

Hall, Ward. My Very Unusual Friends. Ward Hall, 1991.

Mannix, Daniel Pratt. Freaks: We Who Are Not as Others. Re/Search Publications, 1990.

O’Brien, Tim. Ward Hall: King of the Sideshow: The Official Biography. 2014.

Soanes, Wood. “T. Browning’s Freaks Shown at American.” Oakland Tribune, 27 May 1932, p. 24.

“Tod Browning’s FREAKS.” Moberly Monitor-Index, 20 Feb. 1932, p. 8.

“Two Cities Block Siamese Twin’s March to Altar.” St. Louis Star and Times, 6 July 1934, p. 19.