Dr. Phil, Medical Theaters, Freak Shows, and Talking Couches

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Richardson ◽  
Jennifer Eisenhauer
Keyword(s):  
Freak Shows

Romantic Monsters

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-53
Author(s):  
Maaheen Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
William Blake ◽  
Visual Illusions ◽  
Victor Hugo ◽  
Freak Shows ◽  
History Of

The second chapter elaborates on the history of Romantic monsters and their connections to comics monsters as well as the medium of comics. It describes the context of the burgeoning romantic visual culture, including the perpetuation of imaginative prints by William Blake and Francesco de Goya as well as the increase in freak shows and other forms of entertainment based on visual illusions. This underscores the close ties between entertainment, 'spectacularity' (which combines theatricality and the spectacle while also alluding to specters) and monsters, while also showing how more rebellious, anti-Enlightenment strains crept in through the interest in the abnormal and the increasing space offered for unbridled emotionality at the ends of both production and reception. The inclinations towards ambiguity and even human-like renditions discernible in the literary monsters created by Mary Shelley and Victor Hugo are discussed. Three monsters with strong romantic inclinations—Frankenstein’s monster, Baudelairian ennui, and the trickster (included for his playful ambiguity and love for the spectacle)—are introduced which personify the different potentialities of the medium while having commonalities with comics monsters.

Mass culture: the Victorian world picture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Horrall
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Popular Theatre ◽  
Illustrated Books ◽  
For Profit ◽  
World Picture ◽  
Freak Shows ◽  
Scientific Controversies ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Ideas

This chapter explores aspects of nineteenth-century popular culture that contributed to the emergence of the cave man character. References are made to previous works from history, cultural and literary studies and the history of science. These show how long-standing ideas about the earth’s history were challenged by geological, archaeological and paleontological evidence of ancient and extinct mammals, dinosaurs and hominids. Elite ideas were popularised for a mass public by scientists themselves, and through evolutionary freak shows that exploited scientific controversies for profit. Increasingly, scientific ideas were generalised and disseminated by mass-market, heavily illustrated books and magazines. A new style of comic magazine introduced ‘cartoons’ which poked gentle fun at current sensations, as did an emerging entertainment industry centred on music hall, pantomime and other forms of popular theatre. New steam-powered transportation meant that books, magazines and performers travelled farther and faster than ever before. Britain was the hub of this new mass culture, both spreading and receiving ideas through a continuous, reciprocal dialogue with the emerging empire and America.

scholarly journals Kidnapped Amazonians, Severed Breasts, and Witches

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 108-118
Author(s):  
Laken Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Perception ◽  
Freak Shows ◽  
Renaissance England

Freak shows are physical and metaphorical,demonstrating a cultural perception of what and who is privileged. In Renaissance England, Shakespeare and Spenser both write of deviant women and perpetuate the stereotypes of foreign women, creating literary “freak shows” in their works Two Noble Kinsmen and The Bower of Bliss. Whether these characters are Amazonian women disinterested in heterosexual romance or promiscuous witches, they are set as spectacle in the confines of their respective texts.

Disability, Race, and Gender on the Stage in Antebellum America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenifer L. Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Antebellum America ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Freak Shows ◽  
Blackface Minstrelsy ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
And Gender

Antebellum Americans confronted anxieties about many issues, such as industrialization, immigration, and urbanization, that found expression in blackface minstrelsy and freak shows. In these performances, racial fears, gender worries, and the insecurities of an emergent working class combined with the specter of disability to assuage the concerns of white, working-class audiences partly by reinforcing whiteness, masculinity, and nondisability as markers of citizenship. From the “laughable limp” of an elderly, enslaved groom who inspired Thomas “Daddy” Rice to craft his infamous Jim Crow character to displays of the supposedly 161-year-old disabled body of Joice Heth, minstrelsy and freak shows routinely conflated race, gender, and disability on the antebellum stage. This practice reached its pinnacle with Thomas “Japanese Tommy” Dilward, one of only two black men to perform in blackface before the Civil War.

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