Freak Show Urbanization

In the turn of the late 19th century, urbanization led to the rise and demise of Freak Shows, and greatly contributed to “the Other” ideology. In the beginning of my research, I only had minimal knowledge or understanding of Freak Shows mostly from TV shows and stories. Freak Shows, I found out, were not only “freaky”, but also ethically scary. From the physical wonder to the physiological curiosities, Freak Shows were morally the norm and basically the foundation to America’s national identity during urbanization.
(P.T. Barnum and "General Tom Thumb")

(Heth and Barnum's advertisement for her)

Freak Shows had started a couple or so decades before the time of urbanization and really peaked then drastically fell during urbanization. These shows all came to be by P.T. Barnum, a businessman obsessed over the public’s attention and deceiving the world. According to "The Rise and Fall of Circus Freakshows" and a P.T. Barnum Biography, Barnum started his business with buying an elderly African American woman named Heth, he told audiences all over she was a 160-year-old who was formerly the nurse of George Washington. The public believed the fabrication within an instant, as they were hungry for everything new. Now this was around 1835, around 1850 was when he hit it big with his American tour. He became most popular and famous around 1860-1880 with performers from “Jumbo”, the world’s largest elephant, to “General Tom Thumb”, the 5 year old who stopped growing, to “Dog Faced Boy”, an extremely hairy Siberian. P.T. Barnum captured America’s imagination and fascination to the strange and odd, and managed to betray science and basic humanity to change the way society managed their identity.

(P.T. Barnum's "Barnum Museum")

Society had never dreamed of the technical advances going on around them that of course they would believe the “freaks” and their stories. People’s credulity around the 1880s was so astounding that people enjoyed being deceived. In the research behind the recent movie “The Greatest Showman”, they quoted that, “Barnum’s greatest discovery was not how easy it was to deceive the public, but rather how much the public enjoyed being deceived.” Urbanization led to almost overwhelming sense of how to society should spend their time and attention, that Freak Shows became a big entertaining hit and also an affective influence on society’s way of thought.

Society was struggling with their identity in a time of constant change, that they needed a process to mark who the powerless minority was, according to "Interpreting the Freak Show and Freak Show". The ideology of “the Other” became a hit during the time of urbanization, seeing how it created a valid excuse to find out who was and who was not. Anyone who was out of the relative ordinary became “the Other”, people used it to describe what the norm was. In the book, “The Inhuman Race”, the author quoted in his section Abolitionism and The Racial Freak, “freaks shows helped Americans to establish the coordinates of who ‘we’ were by showing who ‘they’ were not.” Freak Shows rose the tension of race interpretation and made the “freaks” equal to the identity of a “slave”. Society made this apparent in their human zoos, to exhibit what the "wrong" is like. The pressure on society made them need reassurance on who they were and what their identity was in the chaos of urbanization.
("Krao" another "missing link" along with "Zip The Pinhead")

("Zip The Pinhead")

Not only did these “freaks” seem legitimate to the public, but also to science itself. P.T. Barnum’s infamous “Zip the Pinhead”, a man with an abnormally shaped skull, was taken into the tale of a man who was a different race of human and was caught on a gorilla trekking trip in Africa. According to "the Rise and Fall of Circus Freakshows", Charles Darwin, in his book “Origin of the Species” quoted that Zip and his tale was the “missing link” and evolutionary proof to the racial theory. The scientific knowledge during urbanization was so ignorantly incorrect that the line between real and fake was near nonexistent. The sense of "nativism" and "foreignness" was so strong throughout the 1880s, that in 1887 Henry Bowers created American Protective Association to exclude the "undesirable" immigrants. Urbanization was in a time where people were still hung up around racial difference and dependent on the wealth gap, but with urbanization people slowly grew empathy from the Civil War and the new advances in society made them think twice about judging people. Everything was changing, so why doesn't society. The credulity declined with the increase in medicine advances, which enlightened the people on the "freak's" physical abnormalities.

(The victims of the human zoos exhibition in Paris)

Scientific knowledge was growing with urbanization, so although science contributed to the rise of Freak Shows, it also killed it. Thanks to Ngram on Google, it graphed how the term "freak" peaked in 1896 and faltered extremely past 1910 with people's usage of the word to describe different people. Also the term "sideshow" started to peak in 1943 and within the mid 1900s, because people used the word "sideshow" instead of "freak show". Along with P.T. Barnum's death, museums and tours started to become less popular, however they are still some today with "Ripley's Museum Believe It or Not" and "My 600 Pound Life". According to "Human Zoos", urbanization caused people to think there was a responsibility to enlighten the "unenlightened" on a need-to-know basis only to keep people under control. Society and science made a huge jump forward during urbanization.

Freak Shows, I would say, were crucial to society, to give them that exposure to get it out of their system. Also to give attention to different health systems in humans for science to acknowledge. The same with cheap labor, it was need for the industrial revolution. The Freak Show was needed for society's urbanization in itself.
Works Cited
The Rise and Fall of Circus FreakShows
April 14, 2014
Zachary Crockett
I found the major “freaks” within the rise of freak shows and how it ended, how the “freaks” were treated and how profitable these shows were to society and the economy. Also the main exhibitioner, PT Barnum.

Victorian Freak Shows
-Freak Gallery
I basically found how these shows were advertised and brought upon to society, and how the term “freak” was described as to society, and really backed up some information from my previous source (source 1)

National Fairground and Circus Archive
-History of Freak Shows
I found the European aspect of the shows and Barnum's counterpart, Tom Norman, and how exhibiting these “freaks” was pure easy due to how gullible society was and how society was so desperate for things new.

PT Barnum Biography
February 22, 2017
I found more information on PT Barnum and his launch of “The Greatest Show On Earth”.

The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture
-Abolition and the Racial Freak
Leonard Cassuto
I found the perfect answer to my question of how and why Americans valued the Freak Show. I also found out that freak shows really affected society in the racial standpoint knowing that people back them considered Africans as wild, aka freaks.

The True Story of “The Greatest Showman on Earth”
Jackie Mansky
December 22, 2017
I found that the recent movie “The Greatest Showman” is indeed Hugh Jackman as PT Barnum, but the movie didn’t really show his real “enslaving” side, only the charming con man he was. I found a great quote on how Americans loved being deceived and how culture has changed.

Bluford Adams
Biographies - PT Barnum
I found more about PT Barnum’s early life and his association with Heth and his influence on America and Europe.

David A. Gerber
Disability, Handicap & Society
Interpreting the Freak Show and Freak Show
I found more information on the society and their opinions on freaks, how society practically bullied them.

Tim Watts
American Theater
American History
I found not a lot of information, just some on the theater background of the freak shows, the popularity.

The Other
February 4, 2009
I found great information behind the ideology of “the other” and how that affected America’s identity during urbanization.

Google Ngram Viewer
“Freak”
“Side show”
I found interesting evidence of the term “freak” and “side show” being used to determine to the peak of freak shows and also the decline.

Late 19th Century changes in science and thought
I found really good information on the scientific movement during urbanization and how it influenced people to think differently towards society and life as a whole.

Chapter 18 of textbook
Exclusion pg 496 or pg 504
I found the concept behind excluding the immigrants and creating a blame towards them affecting urbanization as a whole.

Hugh Schofield
Human Zoos: When real people were exhibits
December 27, 2011
BBC News Paris
I found some evidence and context for human zoos during the 19th century and how it affected society and urbanization.


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