the Way of the Showman
Philosophical and esoteric perspectives from a modern day Showman.
Each season is different in its approach. S1 is essays. S2 is one book length attempt at Understanding Showmanship, S3 is conversations with remarkable Showfolk. The brand new Season 4 explores the relationship between Showmanship and Play.
The host, Captain Frodo, internationally renowned circus performer, director, writer, husband and dad lays out, in great detail, his practical performance philosophy for performers who seek to deepen the conversation with their audiences and themselves. You can find him, and more of his writing at: www.thewayoftheshowman.com
the Way of the Showman
127 - Beyond Monsters: Philosophy & Freakshow with Anna Maria Sienicka - 1 of 4
Prepare to shatter your perceptions of identity and the monstrous as Captain Frodo takes you on an extraordinary exploration of freak shows with the brilliant Anna Maria Sienicka from Sorbonne University. This episode uncovers the rich tapestry of performance art that has defined Frodo's career, from the kamikaze freak show to modern-day sideshows, and delves into how these spectacles challenge social norms and provoke profound reflections on humanity. With Anna Maria's scholarly insights into the philosophy of art and medicine, we dissect how the portrayal of monstrosity in freak shows can disrupt our understanding of identity, disability, gender, and race.
We'll tap into the emotional power of horror, tracing a path from childhood Goosebumps thrills to a deep appreciation for the genre's ability to evoke strong emotions and blur reality and fiction. Discover the charm of low-budget horror films and how they engage audiences by playing on our deepest fears and curiosities. The conversation transitions seamlessly into the realm of literary giants like Victor Hugo, where we examine how characters with physical abnormalities provoke thought on societal norms and the limits of human perception, much like sideshow performers do in real life.
As we navigate the historical and cultural landscape of freak shows, we celebrate contemporary performers who have turned the tables on exploitation to embrace empowerment. Learn how they challenge societal norms and reshape narratives, as we explore the slow acceptance of freak shows within disability studies and the broader cultural landscape. By engaging with performers like Matt Fraser, who proudly identify with the term "freak," we confront our own curiosities and appreciate the artistry and humanity behind these performances. Join us in this captivating journey beyond the spectacle to uncover the profound questions of identity and representation that connect us all.
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Greetings, fellow travelers, and welcome to the Way of the Showman, where, as always, we view the world through the lens of showmanship. I am Captain Frodo and I will be your host and your guide along the way. But the journey that we're about to step into now in February February here on the way of the showman in 2025 is about freak show. So freak shows is something that I was performing almost exclusively in from 19 at the end of 1998 and then until about 2004, first in the kamikaze freak show and then in the happy side show and uh, still the acts, the main acts that I do today, that I get booked around the world and that I get booked in my hometown for anything from a wedding, wedding, funerals, anything um is has a base in Freak Show, and, of course, I have magic and all these other things. But Freak Show has been a big part of my life and still takes up a big part of my shelves here in my recording rooms. So it was really interesting that I found a message on social media from a lady in Paris or in France, I didn't know. That was in Paris and she was saying she is working on a PhD about freak shows and she wondered if she could talk to me and after a little bit of back and forth, we finally managed to get our schedules to align and I went into a conversation with her, but the conversation was, as far as I was concerned, was just for her it's for her dissertation and I was answering the questions. But about two hours into what became a three-hour conversation, I realized that this is some amazing stuff that I have never actually talked about on the podcast before. It's also interesting to be in the situation where I am being asked things by someone else, so I asked her during the recording are you recording this, and whether I could use it for all of you guys to hear? For those of you who are interested in freak shows, and since this absolutely is an interdisciplinary project, the way of the showman, what we're interested in here most of all is the different kinds of interactions that we can have with our audiences. Whether you are a professional clown which I know you're out there and you're listening right now whether you're a sideshow clown and I know you are listening too or whether you're doing magic or whatever it is that you do acrobatics or juggling then what we all share together, there is a connection between all of those things and it has to be the meeting, that in-between state of presenting material for an audience. And one way to do that is freak show, and this year we are going to explore that further. The first big nod in that direction was my conversation with Jelly Boy the Clown, who's a wonderful book. Absolutely I can recommend to give you a feeling of what it's like to be a modern day freak show performer traveling around and that gives you the flavor of what there's going to be. Four episodes coming out in February.
Speaker 1:We are going to explore this together with Anna Maria Sineka, who is a professor. She is also a candidate or a PhD student and a lecturer in philosophy. Last year she was lecturing at the Sorbonne University in Paris and this year she is lecturing at the Sorbonne University in Paris. And this year she is lecturing I was going to say performing, but as you hear in the beginning, it is kind of a performance there too, so at the Nanterre University, or didacting myself into philosophy and whatever.
Speaker 1:It's highly intimidating to be with somebody who is so bright and has written papers on this, so I am a little nervous, I think, when I first start talking with her. But after having recorded that one big conversation of three hours, I realized that it very much went in my direction. She was asking me. So then we teed up and had one more conversation and in this conversation I was going to ask her about her who are you and how did you get into all of this? And, as it always is with me, and whoever it is that I talk about or talk to, I immediately and she is very strongly in that direction too immediately we go to the ideas, we touch on some of the topics that we delve in later in these other episodes, and every now and then I remember that I should go back and ask some questions because, as my wife said, when I was first starting to go out on man dates with Jay Gilligan and we came home and she would ask me where does Jay live? When we were in Vegas and I go, actually I don't know. And so is his family here? I'm not sure, are they coming? I don't know, because we had only talked about ideas surrounding the craft and about art and aesthetic and whatever. And it's very much this way here as I get to know Anna.
Speaker 1:So she works on the perception and staging of bodies judged as monstrous and questions the possibility of developing an aesthetic specifically related to freak shows, and her research lies between philosophy of art and medicine. As you will hear, she seeks to understand the modalities of the appearance of the quote monsters in order to clarify the scrutinizing gaze imposed on abnormal bodies. So there's some bit from that. I found on a website on experts in France that you can find if you connect with her on social media. Anyway, I had a wonderful time talking to a very smart person. And yeah, just before we then move on, of course, when we talk about freak shows, then the topics of this episode and the next four are filled with triggers.
Speaker 1:Freak show as an art form is, um, it's supposed to be triggering. It's. That's actually the reason why an act can belong, or be presented as a, in a freak show context. It's that we have found something in it that we aggrandize, that we push and prod and go. What's the most full-on way that we can do this? If we've got aerial skills, can we do it with chains instead? Then it belongs in a freak show, whilst maybe a tissue act won't belong there.
Speaker 1:So it's like the reason that something is being presented is that we have found something in it, that's sort of inherently in it, that, whether this has to do with the topics of the body or with the actions that the person does, the identity or any other aspect of a person that takes to the stage, but what?
Speaker 1:What unites all of these is exactly that they hit you in the guts and that there is a shocking nature to it. And that doesn't, of course, mean here that that it's inherently negative or that it's like like swallowing a sword needs to be revolting. I fight hard to make it something else than that, and that goes for the same with, as we talk about issues of disability and gender and race and all these things that have been just exploding throughout the history of freak shows. And so, yeah, please listen, knowing that we do not in any way want to disrespect anyone or anything, but that we're discussing these topics in good faith to increase our own understanding of freak show and the presentation of deep and fully human beings, but having them presented, as Anna calls it in her dissertations and in her scientific papers, that we're presenting human beings as monsters. What is there to be discovered here and what does it mean to do a freak show performance? I hope that you will listen with good faith and that you will enjoy this wide-ranging and deeply philosophical conversation with Anna Seneca.
Speaker 2:The first time I had to teach, in my very first class, I had problems to project my voice to the end to the whole class. To project my voice to the end to the whole class because it was a very were many, many people for this very first class. So I'm used to speaking really not really loudly, so for me it was really an experience to have to project my voice. So I don't even imagine how you deal with this.
Speaker 1:By the time you study to do a PhD, does everybody also teach students then? Is that a common thing in the university?
Speaker 2:Well, it's quite common, but it's not everybody. Some people just write their PhD, others do teach at university or in high school. It depends on the contract they get from their university.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And last year I was giving classes at the Sorbonne and this year I'm giving classes at Paris, nanterre which is another Parisian university.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's amazing, you live in Paris.
Speaker 2:Yes, I live in Paris, quite close to Nanterre.
Speaker 1:So this time I wanted to uncover a little bit about who you are and the sea from there which led you to your academic explorations and how those went on to Freak Show. So just tell me a little bit about yourself, just where you come from and how your interest in Freak Show emerged.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think I've been always interested in freaks and monsters from a very early age. I remember when I was a child I used to seek out horror books. I remember in the local library there was a series I think it's an American series Goosebumps.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I read several books and I was really fascinated by them Because I remember distinctly one specifically. It was called it Came From Beneath the Sink. And I remember reading that book and when I finally finished it it was a story about a sponge that was scaring everybody and when I read it I was like 10 years old or something like this, and I remember that I was baffled by the absolute shamelessness of this story, like really they're making the bad guy a sponge and from. I think it was really this moment that I became interested in horror, because what interested me is the sheer creative power that we can put into creating horror stories, giving the thrill, creating monsters, and I started to watch horror films. I always liked the nitty-gritty, artificial side of the thing, that when it looks almost poorly, made, very artificial, that's really something that drove me to horror. But also I remember that I was feeling very strange liking horror because it wasn't something that you can be proud of these days. You can like paintings, you can like sculpture, but when it's horror it's like, oh, it's just silly entertainment. But I was almost sure that there is something more Like I'm not just into horror because I like getting scared, and the more I watched horror films, the more I read about horror, I started to develop an interest about what makes me feel, what I feel when I see monsters, when I feel the thrill of a story, what there is behind, because it's not just to get scared, there is really something intricate.
Speaker 2:For me, what I like about horror is the relationship the genre has with the truth. It's this tension between it's based on a true story and remember, it's only a movie, and for me, that's really what interests me. Do you believe what you see? Is it too extreme to believe it? Um, but monsters do not exist. That, all those questions that, um, the horror asks, but mostly what the horror asks you to feel, that's, for me, the the most, uh, interesting thing that's, that's wonderful, it's so fertile, so many things to grab onto there and then.
Speaker 1:But this, the last little bit of the of having the, that this is based on a true story, but remember, it's only a movie and this tension in in there, like this, is also uncovering this, the space of horror, but not just horror as in the actual horror of the Holocaust or the horror of the fires that are going on at the moment, but the portrayal or reenactment or telling of stories where we are almost defining what is, this almost three-dimensional space between human beings where, when, when you encounter horror or how to portray it. I think that is a very fertile and an interesting angle into what the freak show, what the freak show is and, of course, beautiful as well. You say it's the shamelessness of some of these horror movies, which it's so cheap in a way in the way, because you can. You can make people very afraid with very simple, simple tools, and what's also striking me is how close this mirrors myself. I was also very interested in horror movies in my teens or so, and I was specifically interested in sort of splatter movies of where you use graphic effects with lots of blood and whatever. Of where you use graphic effects with lots of blood and whatever, and at that time so this must have been in the early 90s or so, maybe 1990 even that these things really flourished in me and I remember at the time thinking this is directly linking to your idea of it sort of being cheap and nasty or whatever that both Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson's first movies are very less of Peter Jackson's bad taste and Sam Raimi's Evil DeadMan and all this. But they started as with these really extreme low budget uh movies, both of them having flavors of comedy as well mixed in with it. And I kind of thought it's. For what I was reflecting at at the time was, if you make a strong enough movie, strong enough ideas, because these themes are, they have, so they have this gripping power it can be a sidestep where you can tell a very interesting and very captivating story without having the the big budgets, because it's it's tuning into this um horror, into the horror, into what the horror is. So I fully agree and I love this kind of shaping of the space between. So it's interesting.
Speaker 1:You read the Goosebumps books and this book as well. It came from Beneath the Sink, which is a direct reference to a kind of B movie, so they're referencing all sorts of stuff. So you read that book and that caught your imagination. And then the movies that you started to watch became almost in the genre of it came from Beneath the Sea, or it came from the Beast, from 10,000 Fathoms or 20,000 fathoms. So you were already then thinking about this deeper than most people, I think.
Speaker 2:Well, I was very, very surprised by my own liking of this story because I knew what I was getting into it when I took the book. What I was getting into it. When I took the book, I knew it was a horror book. But he has the same shamelessness of this story, making the bad guy a sponge. Mostly what struck me was why do I like this? If we look at it, it's a silly story. So what is there to like?
Speaker 2:And with horror, what is difficult to express sometimes is what is the pleasure you take away from the horror movies or the horror books, or Most, most people think it's just for the frills, for getting scared, like, like you want to experience something that looks dangerous from a safe space. But I I think it's way more than this. It's. There is also pleasure, because you're looking for the thrill, you're looking to feel something, to, to get a sense of the fear. But you also get the pleasure from these movies because they are mostly made on different tropes. You're looking at things you already know. It's a pleasure in familiarity. You have the the fear side of the horror films, but also the pleasure of coming back to something you already know.
Speaker 2:I think it was Philip Brophy, who was a film critic, who said that some horror movies is Is all about a film Showing you that they know that you know that, they know that you know. And for me, there is something you know, you're going into something that you already know. There is several people. They're going to discover a monster, they're going to get chased, somebody is going to die. There is going to be lots of blood. You already know that story. But, um, the thrill also of this story is to to discover the the new take on on those tropes, to also to feel this familiarity of rediscovering those tropes it's yeah.
Speaker 1:So this feeling and we we ended up in in our previous conversation, also ending up with this, this description of what the freak show kind of is, because because to me, all performance or so and a whole, all a life, but let's just stick to the performance it's about an experience.
Speaker 1:As the performer, you are creating the potential for an experience and it might work really well or not very well, and my expertise as I grow as a performer is to learn to predict and have a better yeah, to better predict what it is that I can actually convey and the experience that I can create.
Speaker 1:And the freak show is a particular type of experience and I love this that you say that it's a pleasure that we all or it's, it's, it's something that already catches our attention the monster or the running away or whatever we it's, it's grabbing onto something which is an actual universal human experience, encountering a monster in the forest when it's just you, some people, that you care about and it's all of a sudden it goes from being about we're here in the forest to have a nice time and doing the things that young people often want to do have a drinking and having sex or whatever is going to happen in this movie and all of a sudden a monster comes in and it changes the story and it becomes much more primal and I like this. So so, um, how do you, can you describe this sort of state a little bit more of the, the kind of what are the different aspects, because you are specifically looking at monsters? I understand.
Speaker 2:I'm looking at monsters and freaks mostly, and what is most important to me is to shift the perspective on freaks and monsters, because when we look at classical philosophy, the monstrous is what is always referencing to something that is metaphysical or ontological. This is those sort of questions what is a monster and and we? What interests me is what do we experience when we see something that is monstrous? So mostly from a phenomenological point of view, so really the embodied experience. For me, a monster, and mostly a freak, a freak as a sideshow performer is someone who performs to disturb the tranquility of our own experience of the body okay, great yeah so when we see a
Speaker 2:monster, and by monster I mean someone that is looking very strange. I am. I do not intend to use the word monster as an answer, but giving the monster. As for the freak, someone that is so extraordinary looking that we cannot give it any other definition other than freak or monster, because it's so extreme, so interesting, so uncommon that we cannot rely on language anymore. But still we do recognize that there is something, some familiarity in the monster, because we wouldn't call something a monster if it wasn't giving us something to how to say it. Well, a monster is only a monster if we can relate it to something that is familiar.
Speaker 2:There is no monster that is cut from our own categorization.
Speaker 2:It has to be something that is interstitial, that is always in between. So, for example, someone that would be considered a freak must be having some link to the humanness, to something that we can relate to. If I were to show you, for example, a monstrous bug, unless you are extremely familiar with bugs, you wouldn't see that this bug has something very asymmetrical that is monstrous, quote unquote in its structure. But when you see monstrous, freakish feature on a human, you spontaneously see them because you realise it's a human face, it's a human body, but there is something that is so extreme on this face that it's difficult to enter a process of recognition, of mutual recognition, because at the same time we have the humanness that connects us to that person, but at the same time there is this feature and this monstrous, freakish feature that puts it so much away from our understanding of what is human. So there is always this strange balance between what is known and what is unknown, even in the perception of someone who is a freak or who can be deemed monstrous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so do you think that it's possible to think of monsters also by degree? Because there's almost like it's on on a spectrum. The other day I, when I was coming home from stockholm, there was a woman at the airport which had something going on with her lip. So it was and I don't mean botox, there was it, but it was some sort of growth and I was thinking of our conversation coming up and and gone when.
Speaker 1:So when you have something which is then immediately recognizable as Anna and I'm and, and I looked, and I of course my eye got drawn to this, this anomaly, and and you want to think that, oh, I'm better than that.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to let you define, but if somebody has a big birthmark on the face or something it is, it's like for good or bad, as what, what we do, it's this part of human nature to immediately go towards that thing. Or it's a limp, or it's something. I mean in pirates, everybody is supposed to have it one arm missing, hand, or a hook or or an eye missing or a, which makes you immediately this other slightly monstrous, not following the rules. So, looking at her, I was like you're sort of I'm ashamed that I'm such a simple person that I immediately look at this. But she was dressed so normal and she's a normal person doing normal things, going somewhere, and so she wasn't the monster. And then maybe we come into this like how monstrous would she had to be for her to be a monster, or how little monstrous can you be and through the presentation of this can you become a monster? What do you think of that?
Speaker 2:Well, I think what is important here to say is that it's our perception that is mostly seeking out the monstrous. I think nobody is really monstrous, because they still relate, they still fall into our categorization of what is human. But, as you've said, when somebody has a feature that is very visible might it be the sleep or the birthmark or some tumor on the face it's it poses a problem in our day-to-day conversation because we do not enter into a subjective relationship with the person that is having those features. But it's like we enter the subjective relationship with the feature, as if the person who is having this birthmark, this weird leap, is behind her own deformity, her own feature. That's why it's very difficult, because we know it's a person, but we are drawn to that feature. It's like as if we had relationship, the discussion, with this feature and not with the person who has it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that ties it back to this which you used the word in between. It's when you encounter another human being and you immediately, on a deep level, knows it's a human being, but then your eye is drawn to the birthmark and it is as if the birthmark is stepping between you and them and is crying out somehow to be explained or is fighting to define the person, which of course it will never do. But it's but, but a yeah, so, and that's that's really interesting.
Speaker 2:So it becomes like a, a mask of the monstrous which you did not choose to put on yes, absolutely, and with the idea of the mask and tourism, we we've talked about it during our last conversation. There is a famous French author, Victor Hugo, who wrote two different books, which represents the same situation the Notre Dame de Paris, and I don't remember the exact title in English, the One who Smiles or the Laughing man, I don't know exact title in. English, the one who smiles or the laughing man, I don't know.
Speaker 1:The laughing man yeah, this was made into a movie with Lon Chaney.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And in those stories we see two different characters, one that has a hunchback and the other one that is deformed on the face, who has a perpetual smile. And both of them are hidden or performing. And when they confront people and those people are fascinated by their face, by their appearance the first thing they think is oh, that's a beautiful disguise, it's a beautiful mask that you're wearing. And when it's revealed that it is not a mask, that it's the real face, people are horrified because they realize that what they thought was artificial is actually natural. And with this naturality of the deformity of the monstrous face, of the monstrous appearance, there is a sense kind of of contagion. Well, it can happen to me, it can happen to my children. There is something that really disturbs our own experience of the body. What we have now is not something that we're going to hold on forever.
Speaker 2:Many things can happen and the human form isn't as stable as we like it would like it to be yeah and I think it's the same experience we have with, uh, sexual performance, with freaky acts, when someone is swallowing a sword, uh, for example, and there is something that disturbs the tranquility of our own experience of the body. We do not imagine a sword going down our throats. There is something, oh so my body potentially could do this, but at the same time we're like but is he going to hurt himself when swallowing this sword? There is really something visceral about the experience of the monstrous or of the freak, and for me it relayed, and that's why both should be thought together yeah, because the sideshow performer or whatever the working act or so is, is slightly different.
Speaker 1:It's a different ontological state. The freak who goes in, who is somebody who is a short person or somebody with a growth on their face, will have this mask on that they can't take off. But the sword swallower can sit there and if they don't have their swords they can be incognito. So the sword swallower we spoke about this last time too, but you are made into a freak by what you do, and the, the natural born freak, was like the king of the freaks because it's. It screams to you on this even more primal level or so. But interesting thinking then about um, in my mind it now becomes Lon Chaney, but the man who has a permanent smile on his face and the link to the clown and it's probably almost the most common clown that we see in popular culture at the moment is the horror clown or the pennywise clown, from from it or so, and so do you think that there is something uh monstrous about the clown?
Speaker 2:I think there is um something about the how to say it. It's difficult to read a clown's face. That's why it makes it scary, because we have a difficulty. Is it sad? Is it? Is it laughing? It has a perpetual expression and when it's fixed, it's getting hard to relate to the person wearing the makeup, wearing the mask, because, as we've said, it's something that is we're entering a relationship with, with the feature, with the mask, with the makeup, and not with the person that is behind it. Because of the clown makeup, we do not see if the person is sad, how they are feeling, and that's why I think there is a fear of clown, because there is this uncanniness of how to relate to another person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and something interesting as well with what you just said about Victor Hugo's book the Laughing Laughing man, where they think it's a, they think it's a makeup, and so they they relate to this man because they think that he has the clown makeup on, but then when you wipe away the white and they realize, oh, this is your real face, then then he maybe has been accepted as a clown, but it turns out that he is a monster or so, and isn't there a clown?
Speaker 1:There's a movie, like a horror movie now, about somebody putting on a clown outfit that I have, that I haven't seen, but I just saw that and he puts on the outfit and then he can't take it off. It's like it's gotten stuck to his face or so, which I guess is playing on this fear of uh, of, uh, of, yeah, taking on a role, and we mean, we touched on that last time too this, the presentation of self. We present ourselves in one way and, and uh, whether it is in social media or in real life, you might say or do something that colors you and you might find yourself stuck in this position of defined by something that you said.
Speaker 2:Uh, anyway, also something that is terrifying about um, monstrous figures it's to be defined by by our own body. We feel like, oh, I can change something, I can put different, put on different clothes, I can put on makeup, I can do body modification, I can do tattoos, but to be stuck in our own body without being able to change anything, to change our expression, our facial expression, is something that is absolutely terrifying because it takes away our, our capability to to really interact with different people and to be, to experience our body as that give us mostly limits and not giving us.
Speaker 1:Possibilities.
Speaker 2:Exactly yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome, and there's something about the finality of it too, of a two. If somebody is, uh, you know they have a, have a, an abnormal feature on their, on their face, you are, you are quite literally stuck with this and there there is now an an obstacle between you and and seeing them for real. You need to spend a lot of time with somebody who is like that before you before that sort of disappears in your, in your mind, and all you see is the person, because I guess the familiarity of it is, is, is what that you. Then you can slowly see the, because our appearance is what you first meet is by, like your senses just sees it, and because we are human being ourselves, we immediately can tell this is different and your eyes goes to it and your and and you have to control your judgments in.
Speaker 1:Oh, with the classic disney thing of all right, just watched yesterday, finished watching the lord of the rings with my daughter for the first time, and it's never unclear in the big battle who is the bad and who is the good, because the bad are gnarly. They look. Each one of the goblins or each one of the orcs, look, look already bad. So it's very easy to understand, but I wanted to go a little bit back. I always do this and I'm so interested in the ideas. So you read Ghostbump's books as a kid and was fascinated enough. So what subjects did you then when you went to university? As you finished school and then you went to university to study, what discipline is it that you studied first, and how did that link to monsters? Or did you come to university already wanting to know about monsters?
Speaker 2:At first I went to what we call in France something like a preparatory school to get into high universities and I studied different social, science and literary subjects and I decided that I preferred philosophy. And why did I choose philosophy Already? Because I knew I was interested in monsters and horror and when, if I were to choose I don't know literature, I would have to study like the monstrous figure in Victor Hugo, for example. And philosophy, what interests me is the freedom it gives you to discover ideas, to research different subjects. For me, philosophy is more of a method than a set of ideas and texts. That's why philosophy, for me, was the best subject to address the idea of monster.
Speaker 2:And I think that's something that I used to tell my students when they were surprised that in philosophy why do we study monsters? It seems kind of silly. I always tell them that. Well, a philosophy started by question asked by a monster and Oedipus asking, giving the answer to the Sphinx, about what is it to be to be human, and the human about the question about humankind. The very first philosophical question comes from a monster.
Speaker 1:So yeah, interesting. That's also, of course, very interesting. I I think that it's often uh, neglected or over overlooked in in that science too. It's a method of exploration and not a set of answers. And people say science says this and you go. Well, it always comes down to a certain person or ideas that have been thought, but it doesn't necessarily reflect reality or whatever. And and philosophy, it's a method for, uh, for taking something seriously, I feel, and you can take everything. Uh, seriously, yes, and, and you could, you taking seriously. How did your professors, or so what did they think about you? Because now you're writing your PhD, which must mean that you have done a master's or other things beforehand and when you started to tell them that you wanted to look at monsters, what was the reaction of that from them?
Speaker 2:Reactions were very mixed. Um, I am, I was very lucky because, um, my professor was very interested in studying everything that is strange, that is weird, that is, um, she's uh, she's an expert on the aesthetics of illnesses, so very close to my very own subject. But other professors were very skeptical about my choice of research, because, for them, well, a monster is, of research, because for them, well, a monster is. I am and I was writing my, my master's degree in philosophy of the art, aesthetics. So for them, I had to take a very classical path of exploring the idea of monsters Going into an art that is legitimate. So monsters in Hieronymus Bosch paintings or something like this, so not monsters, and especially not monstrous quote unquote people, not freaks, because well, it's not really art, as they would say.
Speaker 2:And in France, I think, we have a very classical background. So it's difficult to study monsters from an aesthetic point of view because we have several difficulties. First of all, it's kind of immoral, like, why do you want to get scared? And, most of all, do you think real people are monsters? That's terrifying to think and that is not what I think. I think there is something in our perception that makes us see some people as monsters, and for me it's very important to understand what makes our gaze as it is, even in order to help people who have this disability. So we have this question of immoral gaze. We have also the question it is an internal question in French philosophy the difference between art and entertainment, and we've been talking about it last time art and entertainment. And we've been talking about it last time In France. We have really this heritage of Pascal, who said that well, if something is entertainment, it's only to forget about our own human condition. And so he was very skeptical of everything that could be considered entertainment, and sideshow, horror movies, everything like this. If it can't be considered art, it's entertainment, so it has nothing of value to give to the audience and it has no value to be studied. So that's another point. A third point would be the very conception of art. True art would be something that you can contemplate and go back to looking at a painting. It's something that you're never getting used to. And my professor told me well, with the freak show, with the side show, you're going to just see a monster when, okay, you've seen the monster, we've seen the disabled person put on stage by exploitative circus showmen. So where is the art? Because once you've seen the monster, there's no reason to go back to experience the sideshow again, because you've already seen everything.
Speaker 2:There is a famous quote from Jules Vallès, who was a French author and journalist from the end of the 19th century and who was writing about people, about what they were doing in the little shops on the street and street performers, and when he wrote about our French sideshow he said well, saito, is people entering a little theater, they see the monster, it rose its screens and people then get out of the, of, the, of the theater. It's only a pleasure of going, in, discovering, going away. So there is no novelty in um, in these shows. Once you've seen it, it's like you've seen it all. So, uh, from an aesthetic point point of view, if you cannot experience um, the art, the, the play, what is put on stage several times, it has no real aesthetic value. It is actually, again, mere entertainment. So that's the main points.
Speaker 2:And, yes, and of course there is this question of an immoral gaze.
Speaker 2:If we consider that a sideshow is art, if free performers do something that could be linked to the art of the actor, does it mean that we rehabilitate the voyeuristic gaze of the audience who, for them, feds on the deformities that those people presented, of the exploitation.
Speaker 2:And well, that was the difficulty to um, to present a history of friction that is not only about exploitation. Of course they were a very tragic story of people getting exploited, but it's also stories of triumph, of people overcoming the difficulties, of people making something very unique. That was something that I had to clearly express in my master's degree and also for me to overcome the different obstacles of classical philosophies, to say it's not just entertainment and and that, and that there is value in coming back to the sideshow to see again the spectacle, because, because it's a, it is not always the same thing. And I think we go back to what, uh, we've said about horror movies there is always a thrill, something new, but there there is also the pleasure in familiarity because, like horror movies, freak shows also rely on things we already know, on the same figures, on different tropes, if I can say so, that we all know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's yet again. I mean, anyway, I just tried to ask a simple question. So this one French philosopher or critic that you mentioned, he said that you go in and you see the freak in the little theater and you go out and then there is no change. I mean, does he categorically think that you can't bring this experience with you and reflect on it on a deeper level, Because art comes from that change? It's like Hans-Georg Gadamer talks about this. It's like his definition is if there is no change, if there's no actual conversation, where the art is speaking to you and you're putting something into it, he says it's not even art at all. And I would say that there is potential. But what do you think about this, of the possibility of change for Encountering the Monster or the Freak Show?
Speaker 2:I think there is. Each spectacle, each play of the sideshow of the Frick show is something new, because when you go into a sideshow performance, of course there is the act that is put on stage, but it's mostly the relationship between the performer and the audience, and each time there are new members in the audience, each time the interaction is different. I've seen it myself when I was I was in looking at a sideshow performance the first time I was looking at the stage what the person is doing and I was mesmerized by oh my God, they are swallowing a sword, they're putting needles through their skin. That's terrifying. The second time I was um, I was giving more my attention to how do they present it, how do the talk, how the talk is given, how do they direct my gaze to um, to to the act, the. The third time I was looking at the people behind me how they were hiding their eyes, like me for the first time. Oh no, he's really going to do this. It's really a shared experience and for me it really ties back to the thing about horror movies. It's also something that you experience greatly when it is shared and what you fear when you're looking at a horror movie might not be something that somebody else fears, and there is really a sense of shared experience when looking at strange things might they be horror, might they be freak performances that there is really something to be shared, and mostly shared through the bodily experience. How we feel when we were fearing for the characters on the screen, when we are sensing the thrill of the performer who is going to put a needle through their skin, and how I project my own pain if I had to put a needle through their skin and how I project my own pain if I had to put a needle on my skin to the performer's body, how do other people in the audience react to it? Do they have anticipation? Do they have fear for this performer? It's really fear for this performer. It's really.
Speaker 2:What is really interesting is because it is very hard to express what do we feel bodily in those situations. That's why the shared experience is really important, because we're not only interested in what is going on stage but also what is going within us. That's why I say that the monstrous experience, the experience of the freak show, the sideshow, is something that deeply disturbs our own experience of the body. So we try to see if does the other person next to me feel the same thing? If not, what do they feel? Because, well, it all ties back to the experience of fear and of pain, sometimes of joy it is so hard to express when I feel pain for the performer on stage. Do the other person next to me feel the same? Because when I feel pain I have certainty, but when the other person feels pain I'm in doubt, because there is something that is very difficult to communicate about how we're feeling, and that's why I think there is this resurgence of Frick Show.
Speaker 2:If I go back to the history of Frick Show, fr freak show went into decline when, when the cinema started to um, to emerge because, uh, we had to um, we could put different monsters on onto the screen, we could make them even more stranger, more in a sense, realistic. But with this rise of cinema and, most of all, special effects, everything became, became very, very accessible. There was not this experience of the artificial, of something that is very, very flashy, when it was in the Frick Show. And for me, this is why there is a resurgence of Frick Show, because we long to that bodily experience of pleasure, of fear, that is now only available in plays and spectacles like the Saito.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the movies. They manage to aggrandize and control the gaze and do all these things on a higher level in all dimensions, because you can prepare it much more and then go out, which is similar to what the difference is with live theater and with you are more aware of the artificiality in the theater than in. But anyway, I was just wondering if part of the reason why freak show performances are not considered art is because very often when you are in the domain of freak shows, you end up with performers that are not necessarily very good performers, not very great artists, and and I'm going to explain that a little bit is that it's the same as with magic. You take a magic trick, you can go into the shop and you buy the magic trick which allows you to disappear, the little handkerchief. You take the hands, I'm empty, I put it in my hand, it's gone and that's the magic trick. But this is a special thing. You buy in the shop a trick of telling them look there and do this, them look there and do this.
Speaker 1:And and then uncle john, who is not a magician, but that's a plumber, but that has bought this magic trick, if you don't think about it any deeper, you will say this guy who can do a card trick or can make the handkerchief disappear, he is now a magician. But he is not. He has a, he has a trick that he can show. But a normal or a serious magician will question the depth of this. But when we and it ties to what you so beautifully described with the layers of uncovering the layers the first time come you see just the guy putting the pin through his skin and then you see just the actual art or the artifice of it. This is what he wants you to see. The second time you start to see the craft. How does the person create this situation? How does he draw on? Which threads does he draw on to make the monstrous situation? And then you can also then explore all the people around you. Uh, how are they reacting and how do I connect to the humanity?
Speaker 1:But the magic trick in itself has this, uh, this power that can make you confused with. So there might be no craft apart from the actual trick. So often with freak shows, when the guy goes, I'm going to put my, this pin through my arm and that you go. This is level one of it and some people when you come back the next day. Maybe there is no real more depth to the craft or the person being in a conversational uh uh process with the audience where he goes.
Speaker 1:Oh you, this person over here finds it's very difficult and and he is screaming when he when, when I say it, so then you go a little closer to them, not pushing it too much, but you to to amplify that, so maybe he doesn't have this. And the power of the, the acts done in the freak show, has has this uh uh so powerful that they can be done without skill. And so do you that the academy, when they see the freak shows and they have they just seen bad performers, or that there are differences in how well the or how good the freak show performer is?
Speaker 2:well, it's um. It's amusing that we're talking about this, because I had almost the same conversation with Jelly Boy and he told me that he was very afraid after COVID, that it will be the end of the act of putting a I don't remember the name in English- to put a yeah the blockhead, exactly the blockhead act.
Speaker 2:And he was telling me well, after covered, I was thinking it's the end of this act now. Everybody had to put a thing through their nose. They know how, how it works. Nobody is going to be amazed when I do it on stage, like everybody can do it now at home. And um, and when he did it on stage after coffee he saw that the audience was even more into it than before because they had their own experience so they could relate more to what was happening.
Speaker 2:Because I don't think that, because people do not French academia, do not enjoy sideshow performers, sideshow acts, because they've seen poor tricks, but because the representation they have of it is something that is reduced to only the act.
Speaker 2:They do not see the talk, they do not see everything that uh that surrounds the act um, they do not see, um, the decoration, everything that is put on stage to um to make the act um possible, possible, uh, that Jelly Boy told me, is that many people think that the freak show, the sideshow, is a spectacle of the eyes that were only here to see something extreme. But he takes great care to mobilise the other senses so the audience can smell when he does something with fire or the sound of the talk or of the instrument he's using. So it's not only something to be experienced by the eyes. It's for a freak show act to work. It has many layers. It's not just putting a pin for the skin, it's not putting something up the nose. That's why, for me, the sideshow is really a kind of theatre and not just a set of different acts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. It's along the lines of when we think of the possibly arguably the greatest or most famous of the sideshow revivals the jim rose show, when they came out at the lollapalooza tour and they were not wearing costumes in a sense, but of course this was the costume that they wore, like ripped up jeans or whatever, which was the height of grunge at the time, or so, so, and I think so and so when you say I don't have a costume, I just wear this clothes. But the definition of the costume is what you wear when you are on the stage. So the choices that you take when you're on the stage, they will be your part of your performance. So it's in that kind of vein, I was thinking.
Speaker 1:But also, I think, the common denominator, what ties together all these things that you were talking about. Jelly Boy says it's all the senses. It's a smell of the fire and a smell of the burnt hair when he's burnt his arm, and you can smell their arm here in the room. This all helps to grab this, to grab you, and, and I think the this is where a good performer thinks about these things as as one thing, and they, they focus in on the experience and try to make it a multidimensional performance by hitting all of the senses. And I think also there you can draw, by what you say, how you move, you can draw their focus towards certain things that are beyond the actual pin through the arm itself or the fire on the skin, and I don't know if you, if you talk about the witch burning, so you talk about the jean d'arc or or the burning of a human person or, and you and you place some of these images in their mind now and then you are quiet and you and you do the thing, or there is music on. It's almost like you can't help.
Speaker 1:Now, starting to connect these things, even if it's just. This is they are not related, but it creates an inner process and for me it has to do with the why's. Why are you doing all of these specific things? Why are you doing all of these specific things? And the why is always to create the freak experience or the experience of the monstrous in the audience. So I mean I know there's no real question in that, but maybe I'll take it back to you were saying that Pascal said that the entertainment, or so, is escaping from the human condition, but isn't it? Or do you think it's possible that going out here and putting fire to your skin so they can smell it, is this not forcing you to face the human condition?
Speaker 2:not forcing you to face the human condition. I think it's exactly this way To go back for a second to the senses. One other reason for people to be skeptical of the art of the sideshow is because it is not an act that relates only to the act of vision In classical philosophy, one with which I disagree, of course. An act that relates only to the act of vision In classical philosophy one with which I disagree, of course is that something that is artful, something that is really aesthetic, is to be experienced by the eyes, because when we look at something, we have a distance, we have time to reflect on it, but when it's a very bodily experience, we're drawn into the play, into the act, into the object itself. We cannot really separate from from it, so we cannot reflect on on it. That's why, uh, for, for classical philosophy, there is no um aesthetic experience. There is because there is no reflection, because, because there is no distance between you and and the performer, it's you are to, your experience is to intertwine with, with the act, so there is no longer a possibility to reflect on it, to contemplate it as, and a true art object should be looked at, because it's not only the eyes that are that are important in the sideshow or performance.
Speaker 2:Another difficulty would be that the person on stage, um, is not only an actor. Um, it's not like I don't't know Margot Robbie who is an actress. We know she's Margot Robbie outside of the stage, but she's Harley Quinn. She's Barbie on the movie, but the persona on stage. When those lines blur, I think there is a difficulty for some people to really get into the performance, because are they putting themselves on stage? Is this really an act of the actor? And the difficulty to perceive am I seeing a true person or am I seeing an actor is something that puzzles, I think, people.
Speaker 2:And to finally come back to your question, I think that Pascal is absolutely wrong about this idea of entertainment not being art, and especially when it relates to Frick Show, because when you see these acts, when you experience and you project your own pain on the performer, when you have a sense of thrill, a fear, when you're laughing with the performer Because there is, of course I'm talking about fear and pain, but there is an extreme lot of joy when we're looking at those performances. I think it relates us even more to the human experience, the human condition to experience joy, to experience pain at such a deep level. Some performers I've talked to said that there is something really spiritual for them to perform, to put this act because it's a very important experience of their own body and how they present this experience to them, to the audience, and to relate so much to the bodily experience. Um, maybe, paradoxically, it gets spiritual because we reflect on how we experience things, why we experience those things. I think it's well.
Speaker 1:The friction can't be reduced to mere entertainment, because it makes us reflect even more on how we interact with other people and so it's interesting that you say that maybe the freak act itself, or like it, explores the freak as in physical deformity, but it can also be dealing with social taboos, where it's queerness or it's gender or these things. That that I mean. That makes you question and that in the past and now as well, I guess, if you put it on the stage, it it uh, really can be. I mean, it's, it's explosive now, it's so and and when you.
Speaker 1:This might then mean that the expression of this particular art form or entertainment is so strong that the professor from the academy who comes in and watches it can never actually gets to see the deeper levels, because the expression itself is so. They feel like what they saw was 100% real, in a sense that what you saw was what you got, and they might not have seen the and you think that, um, that, that this is one of the, you think it's that this, the, the, the deep, uh, visceral emotion and it's, it's not, it's almost that embodied feeling that you get with it is so strong that it hides the theatricality of it yes, I, I think it's uh, it draws back into, um, looking big, the ultimate uh way of experience art.
Speaker 2:And when we, when the experience is very, very embodied, it's something that strays away from, from a reflective experience. That's why, um, that's why the for some professors, a freak show, a sideshow, can be considered art, because we're too drawn into it to really be able to reflect on it. I think that's the main problem, also, because in France we had our own tradition of Frick shows and side shows. It was called Entre-sorts. It's a very strange name because it's a word that is formed by two different words entrer and sortir, which would be to enter and to get away, to go away, and it draws back to the idea of going into the theater seeing the Frick and going away to experience other things.
Speaker 2:And this history of our own entre-sorts, our own sideshow, is mostly lost to the American imagery. And now what we have in France is mostly queer cabarets that are using the monstrous figures, the freakish figures of the 19th century the Birded Lady, the Half and Half Act and this history is used in cabaret to play with the gender binary. And this is maybe something that is more accepted in the French academia, because we can look at this play with having already this ideological background, intellectual background, and we see, oh, there is a freak on stage but it's actually Judith Butler illustrated. So I think there is a risk for freak shows to become too much into, to go too much into something that is too intellectual and to to lose the appeal of something that is really bodily. That, for me, is at the heart of the experience, because it's not just a queer performance, it has to be something that disturbs the body to be considered a sideshow. If not, just do cabaret and it's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I mean the different movies. It makes me, of course, think of David Cronenberg and the body horror movies of transformation. Maybe the fly is a good example of somebody who is quite literally, through the movie, turning into a monster. I mean, an experiment goes wrong and this man is now turning into half man. Half fly goes wrong and this man is now turning into half man, half fly. The idea is laughable in a way. But when you see David Cronenberg's movie with Jeff Goldblum in it, it is not laughable. It's so deeply affecting and to me this has a really strong freak show aspect to it. Freak show aspect to it.
Speaker 1:And I guess horror films, even body horror or so, that they might have been slow to be included in the study of the academia's interest in the freak show. The first one I know of is Robert Bogdan, but that's of course the Anglophone Like. Where did that? Like? Because, yeah, could you just describe sort of the little bit of the history of the study of freak shows? When did they actually manage to see? Hey, the freak show experience. When you see it again and again, you can see that there are depth and you can reflect on this experience. What's the academia's history of that. When did it start or become OK, or or is it even okay?
Speaker 2:I don't think it's. It's okay. Well, it's okay because I can write my own phd on the subject, so it was approved by my professors, so in that way it is okay for me to write on this subject, so it is, in a way, accepted. But in France we do not have studies of Frick Show. I think what would be the closest thing to it is disability studies and, for example, what we call disabled theatre, so people with different disabilities putting on shows, putting on plays, and how it might relate to our gaze, how it might relate to the history of our own perception, because one thing that happened like 20 years ago so it's a long time, but not so long time ago there was a controversy in france. Uh, during the festival davignon, which is a very big french theater festival, and there there was a play, um, put on stage with only disabled actors and um, there was a critic who said well, we're looking at a freak show, why do we put those people on stage? And from this point it started a conversation on the visibility of different looking people and how can they present themselves in the day to day life, but also on stage, how can we ask the disabled disability, what is the place for disabled people in the theatre world. So that's maybe the closest thing to freak show studies in France, because if not, we do not have any. Maybe something about queer studies on the reclaiming of some monstrous figures, but the Frick Show as an art form in France. I think I'm the only one studying it this way. Hopefully we have the studies, the American studies with Robert Bogdan, with Rachel Adams, that paved the path for me to write my own PhD. But if not, there is not many publications, not many papers, not many books on this subject. But I feel, with the rising interest in queer studies, also in extreme arts, that there is an interest with the history, Also with the French history, because we have our own tradition but it's mostly lost history. Because we have our own tradition, but it's mostly lost.
Speaker 2:Most people, when they think of Frick Show, have only the American image, which is a great image because it's so colorful, it was something so big, it was the very first big American entertainment industry. So it's normal that they have mostly those images. But because we have those images, we do not have, uh, the archives of our own history of freak shows and our archives, and those archives are very hard to find because it's mostly an oral history. We have, as I said, jules vales, who was a journalist who was writing about those, uh spect, about the French sideshows, but mostly it was just street performances for the people. It was very niche, it was something that was very looked down upon. So we do not have many archives to study. But on the bright side of things, because we do not have these archives, it means we have a very big creative freedom to reinvent Frick shows and to reinvent French Frick shows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hadn't kind of thought of that before because I don't think Norway in my knowledge either. I mean, there is a little bit of performance here too, but not enough that there is when you say, step right up or right here on the inside we have strange, unusual freaks. You recognize this somehow from cultural, yeah, just from the culture coming out of America or whatever. So you know it, or you don't know it. Here in Norway, you don't know it or not, but we don't have a language the equivalent of this in Norwegian. And of course the academia needs an angle in when you're doing the serious studies or so so it's. And in America at least you could start to study the freak show culturally. This happened. This person was there.
Speaker 1:Here is the newspapers that categorizes this and I mean the rise of circademia, circus and academia around. Circus is also a growing field and freak show is more on the fringes than the circus was. And every one of these genres also comic books this is another, like graphic novels, is another field. That because you can pay attention to it easily, that because you can pay attention to it easily, a lot of people will just dismiss it and go. It's for children, but within the graphic novels as well. There is, of course, an incredible amount of work going on, which means it's also slowly coming into academia as well, so you need an angle into it. And academia as well, so you need an angle into it.
Speaker 1:And and until you talked about this, entrezor, I did also I'd never heard of it. So, uh, have you got any? I I might have talked about this a little bit, but I can't remember the details. But I just, uh, it's so interesting when I when I found, when I hear about it, but could you describe or have you got any examples of what would actually happen? Would they rent the theatre or what would happen in an entre-sœurs sort of show? What's the actual experience?
Speaker 2:It depends on how small the theatre was, because some of the performance were street performance, others were renting theaters, and where they would perform it would give their performance a legitimacy and in France it was mostly exhibition of freaks, sideshow acts, but it wasn't like in today's America extreme acts. It was mostly magic illusion and also medicine show, putting up different anatomical pieces for people to look at, of deformities, of illnesses, of sexual diseases, of course, also all encompass on this exploration of what is happening inside the body, with the person Swalungya sword, looking at the representation of an illness, something that can affect your. It was all about this experience and what made it difficult to be accepted in the late 19th century is that there was a lot of deception because people were promoting themselves as doctors I'm doctor, something and something, and I'm going to present you a freak and then I'm going to show you all the illnesses and it was always a show. But at the end of the 19th century there was a movement called hygienism in France that promoted hygiene, promoted medicine and a medicine that would be only restricted to professionals, to the clinic, to the people who were legitimate in the study of medicine. So people playing the role of the doctor was really something that was thought about at the time.
Speaker 2:So it was really a mix of freaks, of anatomical pieces made of how do we say this was made of I don't remember the word but really realistic representation of the effects of illnesses, of disabilities and how they affect the body, and everything was put together on display. Those shows were also thought to be kind of immoral because you were looking at a body, sometimes naked. Sometimes there were also exhibited pieces of representation of venereal diseases. So of course in the late 19th century it was really frowned upon to look at those things. Well, it was mostly seen as something that was a little bit immoral. But at the same time in France, in Paris for example, it was usual for people to go to the morgue to look at cadavers. So there was really an interest in the bodily, in everything that is morbid. So freak shows and side shows could thrive on it.
Speaker 1:It's almost like for one. It strikes me as interesting that an exploration of the things with in the world, the, what are the experiences and encounters in the world that we can have, that makes us feel what I categorize as the feeling of the freak show or so, and in a sense you could, maybe do, you think you can, look at what they put on stage and all these people. They are there in a sense unearthing, the uncanny, and they're looking for what. They are, that, what are the experiences? That intrigues us with this bodily way that looking at the venereal disease, somebody who has become deformed because of late stage syphilis or whatever, like these things, would be so shocking. So, in one part of the entrezoro, because these things are also mirrored in the American tradition. So it has to do with the, with the presentation of the, the monstrous.
Speaker 1:In one way, the, the entrepreneurs who are looking for this, are looking. What is it that? When you tell people outside the store window, come inside and you will see these things, and that people will go oh, this, I must see, this is shocking, I want to. So they are. In one way, it's the study of what shocks us like that, but secondary that it's the professor or the doctor that needs to present these things. So it's also the, the search for the presentation, the mode of presentation, like, if you are to see these monstrous things, how does it need to be presented? Do you see those two aspects as the? So can we then see the freak show entrepreneur as actually uncovering the uncanny or so? Uncovering the uncanny or so, like they're, they're exploring this field of that that is within art is not so commonly expressed, but I feel that it's a, it's a thing in itself, do you agree?
Speaker 2:I think there is something like this, but I would also say that one thing that was really prevalent in French sideshow freak shows was the play on the real and the fiction. Because when the talker was giving the talk, oh, you're going to see this, you're going to experience that. Sometimes they were saying, oh, but this is what we're looking at is false, it's completely made up, just when they're going to show something that is real or supposed to be real, to give it more value. You've seen something that is false and now you're seeing something that is true, a true freak, a true representation of an illness. So the lines were really blurred with the experience. What is really true, what is not? Can we really believe the talker? Can we really believe our own eyes on for what is happening on stage? And that was something that was, uh, really, really important in the french side show.
Speaker 2:One of the thing also was um, most of the people who went to the sideshow knew that the performers were not monsters, were not true freaks. Some of them were, of course, but most of the people were on the joke with the talker. They knew that they were coming for a good show. They're not only here to see Siamese twins, even if it happens sometimes. That's why freak show sideshow entrepreneurs had links to the medicine, because doctors wanted to come to see a true freak so they could examine it. But most of them were putting on stage people that were ordinary or almost ordinary. But with the talk, with the different accessories, they were made to look strange, to look uncanny, to really look like a freak. But people knew that.
Speaker 2:Well, the lady on stage is exhibited as the most beautiful lady of the world, that everybody is in love with her. Her beauty is absolutely unheard of and she was probably somebody very nice. But it was more of the of the talk, of the experience, of the anticipation, and people after the show were buying postcards of the Fricks of the exhibition and telling their friends oh, I can't even imagine what I saw at the Frick show. I saw the most beautiful lady, I saw Stain Miser, the twins, I saw someone or something, and it was a way to perpetuate the publicity, the entertainment, even outside of the freak show itself. It was a way for them to. Well, I'm brave enough, I witnessed the monsters, I saw it with my very own eyes and it became even something that was very, very normal for people to buy postcards of the sideshow, of the Frick show and to send them to friends like kisses from Ronald, I don't know, showing Fricks from the specific regions. That was I don't know Siamese twins or a birded lady, and it was a way to even explore France from even from a touristic point of view each region having its own freaks and to send those postcards.
Speaker 2:So it was really this thrill of the bodily experience. But because sometimes of course there were the true siamese twins, the brothers touch ship were exhibited in france and it was a big thing at the time. But there were also false-bordered ladies, true-born ladies and anything, anything and and anyone in between. So it was really something joyful but also something strange because of course people were like uh, I know it's just an act, but I play, pretend for my own joy, but at the same time is it really an act and that's? That's something that really interests me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also love this the interplay of, or role of, imagination in grasping existence, because reality is presenting itself to us and we can see it through the senses, but we know, with microscopes, telescopes, and we know that there are colors on the spectrum that we can't see, like ultraviolet. The world is richer and more strange than we know. Know, and I think putting the lens on this uncanny feeling, the monstrous feeling, or and you can find it in many different things I think that that it uncovers an aspect of nature which is there, an aspect of reality, phenomenologically, I I feel my heart races faster, my palms get sweaty, real things happen to my body when I watch this. So I, and for as much as there is, that the academy and everything is only just starting to grasp it. You would also expect that the more on the fringes the topics are, it takes long time before they they get, uh get recognition.
Speaker 2:But your studies now is going to be a start because I, hopefully, because I I really want to, uh, to show people that there is value to go to see sideshow performances, that it's not just silly things with silly people doing silly things again.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I, I, I share that. I feel like this is my whole goal with my having the podcast and everything too. It's to to take things that other people think as frivolous and silly, which, when you're doing fun and games or you're doing circus or you're doing freak show, it's easy to confuse or, like we could do it with jokes like stand-up comedy, to think that, because I laugh when I watch this, it's not the serious exploration or so, which, of course, is ridiculous. I think so. Are you thinking of of making a book for the public as well, out of your PhD, or have you not? You have not coming. You're not gotten that far yet to think about it oh, I absolutely want to publish now.
Speaker 2:I have some papers out on on the subject, but of course my main goal would be to publish my my PhD on the subject. But now I should mostly finish writing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But yes, of course, I would love to present my research, to also put on all the performance I had the pleasure to talk to on the spotlight, because they are making the sideshow, they are making the Frick show, and I had the pleasure to talk to so many of them. They shared their experience, their vision of the Frick Show, so that's also something that I would like to present to a publisher and to people interested in the Frick Show.
Speaker 1:But you could, of course, and then, once you are your PhD and everything which we can then call you a doctor and you are a professor, so you could, you could invite these different performers and you could be, and I am the professor and I am, I'm a doctor of a monster, of teratology, of monsters, and and this is the legit legitimization of it. So here we have jelly boy the freak and here we have so. So then you are you, you are blurring the levels of reality, you become a freak show entrepreneur revitalizing the entresseur in paris, and you can be a real doctor actually presenting tricks. So maybe this is coming full circle.
Speaker 2:Yes. Now people are asking me well, you have all this theory about what is it to see a monster, what is it to experience a freak show performance? What were the sideshow back then? And they're telling me so now, what you are lacking is the true experience. You have to um and to uh, to walk on fire, to to swallow a sword, become a freak yourself.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I don't know, maybe a little trip to coney island at some point oh, that would be great, of course, but also, uh, to me it's like there is a role for everybody in the freak show and you're, you don't. You do not necessarily need to be the freak with your knowledge and your expertise. I think you are uniquely positioned to be the doctor that stands at the front and that draws on philosophy and draws on the history of medicine or so, to present it. Because to me, you are ripe for being the entrepreneur or the ring mistress which actually presents the freaks and gives it the legitimacy that that, if I am there as the sword swallower, I'm just a guy that was stupid enough to stand at home and practice with a coat hanger or whatever to learn this thing. And because it evokes an emotion, because when, when it comes down to it, most of the time, when they go, why are you swallowing swords and they go? A big reason for why is because when I do this, you ask why you? Yes, it's it, I do this, and it just is like an encounter with a mystery for you.
Speaker 1:And and I need somebody to legitimize it, because this is not enough. It's not enough just that it has a strong effect, effect of the audience. You also need that legitimacy which is pictured in general tom thumb it's not just a very small guy, barnum calls him, he gives him some made up military history, or so you find these professors, captains of. I am calling myself captain, so I'm in that tradition, and I became captain frodo because of of the, this exact freak show tradition. You take a title because you need to legitimize yourself, because what you do is so base and so low that you need some sort of uh? Um legitimization, and in this I see you as the the perfect presenter. You don't have to be the freak yourself because you can lend your academic credibility to it, and it can be. I have discovered this freak and it's a perfect manifestation of what uh latour talks about when he says this or whatever yes, so that's what that?
Speaker 2:So that would be the goal after the PhD to open my very own circus and to present all the amazing people I've had the chance to talk to and to make the Frick Show history. And what is it so interesting? Available to people? People, because when I I've been looking at because of course there is Coney Island, there are some art venues, there are some festivals that promote sideshow performers, but, yeah, there is no really a true place to for for this type of art, so we have to create it ourselves.
Speaker 2:Because I've seen performers going on TV, like America's Got Talent, like just like Jolly Boy, and Because it's on TV, it's a very different experience because it's there, is the screen that mediates Experience. But what I found extremely interesting is that people in the comments were asking but is it really true what he is doing? Is it just a trick? And he said to one of the judges I'm not doing a trick, I'm doing a stunt. And what I found extremely interesting in this thing is that some sideshow acts are so extreme that they're so, are so extreme that they're so, and when we look at them it's a very embodied experience and it's so strange that we tend to think, oh, it must have been a trick, it must have been an illusion, it must have been magic. So it goes full circle.
Speaker 1:It gets so real that we start to doubt the reality of it yeah, and maybe this is also a natural mechanism that is in us as human beings that if it becomes if it becomes too much, we would rather think that the sword is a is some next level form of technological thing. It's got to be a trick, because I would rather believe that it has to do with technology than that it has to do with a mastery of biology or something that we are afraid we are, and this is one more way that we can see why we are actually still afraid of today. We see that we are still afraid of the monsters.
Speaker 2:Yes, it goes back to what we said. We'd rather see a mask on a deformed face than to acknowledge that it's the person's true features. Yeah, that's why for uh, for casimodo or the laughing men, um, they were beautiful when they were looked at, uh, as if they uh, they were wearing a mask, but when people um saw that it was a true feature, it was the true face. That that's the moment there was a shift and they became monstrous because it's it's no longer an illusion, it's it gets real and almost surreal. That's why we we protect ourselves from the monstrous with fiction, and with fiction we experience also the monstrous yeah, beautiful it's.
Speaker 1:It's what happens, in a sense, in David Lynch's the Elephant man, where you are slowly as the movie goes on, his humanity is revealed and in the end, by the time he, dignified, decides to lay down to die. It's like it's this tragic thing, because you realise that it's the most beautiful soul captured in a monstrous exterior. And there's something beautiful about that as well, that there is something in there that can't be touched and that can't be changed. And if you just pay attention to it, if the academic came back the second day, they will realize that, oh, there is maybe a lot more depth in this than what they first thought, because you were shocked.
Speaker 2:Many people ask me if I saw the movie. What do I think about it? It's one of my favorites, the movie by David Lynch the Elephant man. I think I love this movie. What do I think about it? And it's one of my favorites, the movie by David Lynch the Elephant man. I think I love this movie.
Speaker 2:But it also poses an obstacle to my own research because people, most of the people I talk about, freaks have this image of Elephant man and they see, oh, it's a very sad quote unquote monster. It's a story of exploitation, first from the frictional entrepreneurs and then from the doctors. That man is never free from people looking upon him, looking down on him, and that's why there is, I think, because there is image of the sad creature that is exploited. It's difficult to think differently on the freak show. That is not a story of exploitation, because we have only this image of the laughing man that was looked down upon, of Casimodo, of the elephant man, of the black Venus and of course, like I said, there were stories of exploitation. But I think many people now neglect the histories of triumph, of people doing an act, becoming celebrities, in favor of the story of the sad monster exhibited and exploited by greedy entrepreneurs or doctors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and here I think it's also it's because in literature or in movies or so, the stories that speaks most directly to the people and becomes the biggest hits. It's because they're telling the story that you are expecting. And the story that is expected is this first level story and just like, uh, the, the, the queer community in all its aspects are fighting to have the stories being told about what it's really like to be this person. That's, I mean literature now, novels and everything it's being written just from this point of view and some of them are, the characters are queer, but this is not what story is about. It's just like it's not like they can tell whatever story that they want. Now, it doesn't just have to be. This is my story of how I came out. This will always be, but this is in in one sense, it's like the level one story or so, because this is an, an apocal moment and everybody. You need to tell these stories first to get this into the popular consciousness and then you can get into the more nuanced and ambivalent and and and scary and and all the different levels as you go on and that, the, the, the differently abled performers that you describe.
Speaker 1:In avignon, which does a show and I don't know what show it was, but let's say it was a shakespeare's macbeth, and then the. And then the person says, oh, but it's a freak show in the sense it is. They couldn't see the play because the actors were too loud when they censored freaks by todd browning, because it was a freak show it was about. But it's also a story. But you can't see the story because this, the experience of encountering freaks, is so strong that you can't see the art because it's shouting at you and and a cast of differently abled performers playing Macbeth, or or the recent, wasn't there like an all, all African-American and like all black actors playing Macbeth? Wasn't that also Macbeth? Now?
Speaker 1:I think it was a Shakespeare play for sure, but I don't remember which one and you can imagine not long ago that people are going well, this is crazy, we can't, this is not how it's supposed to be, and that they can't see past the exterior, and then the art is hidden to them. So it seems like maybe the stories as the freak experience continues to seep into people's imagination. You can tell different stories about what the freak is, but now, like you feel like almost the David Lynch movie is like the level one of that story of the freak who had a terrible time or so, and even there I was just looking at myself. Freak who had a terrible time or so, and even there I was just looking at myself.
Speaker 1:there's a book about joseph merrick and it's like the, the real history of the, of the and um, which traces more what, because there are more details about him than sir frederick treves, who wrote the book. The first story that explains a little bit more of, of the, of that even the elephant man had a certain agency is in his own presentation as he went on, even though he also was abused, or so in in part.
Speaker 2:So maybe your research will help, uh, help push out to open up for other stories as well to be told well, I hope, because now what I see is, um, people and mostly performance, trying to reclaim the word freak, which was an insult almost like, uh, like the story of the word queer, um to to make it something uh, subversive, to make it something that is our own, and I've seen it. It for example, with the documentary by first Matt Fraser and the second one by Adam Pearson. Both of them were in their own documentaries, going to see the performance and asking them why did you choose to join a sideshow? And mostly they were going to see people that would be considered back then as natural-born freaks, so people that you different abled, that are considered disabled, and they were asking question, okay, but looking back at the stories, at the history, it's all about exploitation. What would you decide yourselves, on your own, to put yourself through it, to put yourself on stage, to be loved by people and the performers they talk to?
Speaker 2:They're like, people are going to look at me anyway, so I can choose how I present myself, I can direct their stare at me to change the way they think about me, the way they look at me, and also it's a good way to make money.
Speaker 2:It's a way to become an artist. It's a way to make art, it's not just exhibiting myself. So those are also the stories that we need to hear, why people are choosing to become fricks, because it's not out of necessity that they're choosing to become fricks. Like back then, if you had a terrible hunchback, you had a facial deformity, maybe the friction was the only opportunity for you to make money, to live a decent life. But now people I can choose to perform or to have other opportunities and if they choose to uh to join a side show, to become freak performers. And well, those are stories that we need to hear, to see their perspective, to see their unique takes on on on how they they present themselves on stage, how they uh put uh their own act yeah, and of course it's interesting because, I mean, matt fraser has done lots of different things but we are all shaped and understood.
Speaker 1:There is a there is a conversation between how we actually look. There is a conversation between how we actually look and how we are being perceived. So of course people will ask him how can you go into the freak show and present yourself as a freak when the questioner says because this is what I always am so afraid of thinking about you, and now you come out and you do it? And now I make me very uncomfortable because political correctness says I see matt fraser on stage.
Speaker 1:I should never think the word freak, I should think it's a human being who just has funny arms. I should actually I shouldn't think about the arms at all, I should just see him as a. But he is inviting you by shining a light on his different abilities or how he is different and allowing you but also forcing you to see it, because in this world now we are so afraid of that and that somebody with downs or so that does something. We find it very hard to engage with them. Maybe it's always been like that, but stepping out there and being a person with Down's, who is also a magician, presents a unique way of encountering people who are mentally or so differently abled, or has one more chromosome or whatever. So it is it. I continue to love that how it uh, how it can allow you to reshape the narrative of, of who you are and first of all, we have to acknowledge the gates, the, the, the, the stardom, the act of looking.
Speaker 2:Uh, as we've said, when we encounter someone that is looking different because of the birthmark on their face, because of the lip, we do as if we do not see it. Oh, it's only a normal person. I do not, I do not even see that there is something different. Um, just to almost to play pretend, uh, out of I don't know political correctness, out of the necessity for a fluid social interaction. But to acknowledge the act of looking is a way also to fight for, um, disability rights, because if we do not confront this curiosity that we might have for people that are visibly different, um, we cannot just play pretend and do like, oh, I do not see that that this person has these different things, that this thing this person has has this unique shape of I don't know lips, of nose. But we have to acknowledge that there is something different so we can study this perception, this act of looking at different bodies Might they be different, disabled, might they be monstrous, looking deemed monstrous or or just freaks.
Speaker 1:It all ties back to to the act of perception it's wonderful and I am uh, having, uh, you sent me one of your papers and, uh, with the limitations of not being able to read it, I feel like there's so much depth. So not only am I looking forward to, I guess it's going to take a while for your PhDs to be finished, and then it's going to take a while before the book comes out, and then I have to wait for the translation. So, in the meantime, I guess my best access to it is to keep pushing you and having a dialogue with you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for this opportunity. It was absolutely lovely to speak to you to talk about sideshow, freak shows and all those things that are so rich and unique.
Speaker 1:How would people, if they are interested in the work that you do or you are somebody who is listening to this podcast and I know there are people out there who are freak show performers and who thinks about these things is there a way that they can find you through social media or so?
Speaker 2:yes, uh, you can find me by, uh, by looking up my name, anna maria shinitsuka. There is my personal email and my university email so they can contact me this way. But also I'm very present on instagram where I share my um, my publication, my um, my interest, and it's it's very french, it's on company demos, uh, so I can send it, uh, send the name uh, the name to you.
Speaker 1:I'll put the link in the show notes but yeah, those are.
Speaker 2:Those are the ways to contact me and, of course, if someone who's doing sideshow acts wants to talk about their experience, I'm looking forward to discover their perception and their vision about it.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:All right, I hope you enjoyed that. I certainly did. Felt like I went to school, going very deep. And if you do enjoy these conversations and you are an interdisciplinary performer, who are interested in the space between performer and audience and are interested in performance, then please click subscribe. It's free and it's really good for me. And then the algorithm finds us and the world is a happier place and before we know it, there will be peace on earth and freaks will not just be in the side show but will become the main attraction. So click subscribe to the episode and to the podcast and, if you have the goodness in your heart, tell your friends about it, because a lot of people need to listen before we find the people such as yourself who might enjoy to tune in every week.