Meg's Musings

Welcome to the Freak Show

DC talk had a CD by that title (I liked it).

So.
The Freak Show.
Imagine a large red and yellow big top tent with all types of classic painted advertisements for what was inside. A two-headed mummy, the skeleton of a giant, a woman with the body of a snake, a woman with no head, a fire eater, a glass walker….and the pictures marched on. We’d wandered past it earlier in the night, but come back because it had caught david’s imagination. I had misgivings—what if it was a zoo of people? But we decided to go back.

We arrived at just before midnight. Last show of the night. A girl in stilettos and fishnets waving us in , a midget barker hawking the show, a wrinkled exhausted looking little old man whose face strongly resembled a potato taking cash. Perfect setting for a very creepy movie.

We paid one admission fee and were waved in for the second, the potato man had compassion since it was the last show of the night. There were no live “freaks”, just people with a different lifestyle. They were already most of the way through the show. When we entered they were just starting the headless woman. She was “in a horrible car accident, her head severed from her body! But the body was in good shape, so they cleaned her up…” and through a series of mirrors, she appears headless in the show several times a night. I applauded. She waved. Then the gentleman grabbed some beer bottles, cruched them up a little, showed us his feet and jumped up and down on them (amazingly not cutting his feet or landing on the microphone that was between them catching the crunch). I applauded. He smiled. Next we saw the snake lady. Another illusion that would be quite convincing in the right light from the right angle. I applauded. She yawned.

Then came the grand finale, a fire eater. She had dreads and tattoos, piercings and an excellent sense of showmanship. She ran the fire up an down her arms, blew it out her mouth, juggled it a little and posed elegantly. I applauded. She smiled and talked up one last exhibit, a collection of deformities kept in formaldehyde on loan from the Theatre History Museum in Indiana. David looked at me. I looked at David. We forked over another two bucks and went in.

Honestly, it was one of the best and most sensitive exhibits I could have imagined on the subject. She talked about the fact that they don’t get jobs if they have true “freaks”—people with deformities—but that for many years, it was a (or one of the only) lucrative and loving place for people who looked different to find community. She talked about the fact it’s illegal to have them in many states, but the motive is suspect—out of fear or respect. I’d like to think respect, but I think not. Would a law like be trying to prevent teaching children that deformities are entertainment or belong separate from the rest of society or is it removing a valid form of employment and community to those whose physical bodies would have been drowned as infants a hundred years ago?

She identified each deformity and told a little about it as well as mentioned some famous people who had had it. There was an infant with a second head on its head that died at birth (most do she said), a three legged torso, a set of conjoined twins and one I’ve forgotten. The show ended, the lights went down and we went back into the main tent. It was good showmanship, educational, respectful and interesting. I don’t regret going in. It’s a different way to look at those lost and forgotten children. They still belong to my God’s family.

I said thank you, David said thank you and we went home, sated but with things to think about.

posted by Me @ 18:37