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Sideshow U.S.A : freaks and the American cultural imagination / Rachel Adams.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Adams, Rachel.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Sideshows--Social aspects--United States.
- Sideshows.
- Circus performers--United States.
- Circus performers.
- Abnormalities, Human.
- Popular culture--United States.
- Popular culture.
- Social aspects.
- United States.
- Physical Description:
- xi, 289 pages : illustrations ; cm
- Other Title:
- Sideshow USA
- Place of Publication:
- Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2001.
- Summary:
- A staple of American popular culture during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the freak show seemed to vanish after the Second World War. But as Rachel Adams reveals in "Sideshow U.S.A.," images of the freak show, with its combination of the grotesque, the horrific, and the amusing, stubbornly reappeared in literature and the arts. Freak shows, she contends, have survived because of their capacity for reinvention. Empty of any inherent meaning, the freak's body becomes a stage for playing out some of the twentieth century's most pressing social and political concerns, from debates about race, empire, and immigration, to anxiety about gender and controversies over taste and public standards of decency.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-276) and index.
- ISBN:
- 0226005380
- 0226005399
- OCLC:
- 46918080
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