Media, Performative Identity, and the New American Freak Show

Add to my list

by Jessica L. Williams

Type

Essays

Subject

Countries > United States

Keywords

United States, disability

Publishing date

2017

Publisher

Palgrave MacMillan

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 200 pages
6 x 8 ¼ inches (15 x 21 cm)

ISBN

978-3-319-66461-3

User Ratings

(0 vote)

X

Average rating:

0	rating	= We can do without
0	rating	= Good book
0	rating	= Excellent book
0	rating	= Unique / a reference

Your rating: -

Book Presentation:
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 freakshow 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.

About the Author:
Jessica L. Williams is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at SUNY College at Old Westbury, USA.

See the publisher website: Palgrave MacMillan