Authors:
- Explores the history of the freak show and how it was transformed through the emergence of media and explores the ways in which moving image media transmits and contextualizes, reinterprets, and appropriates the freak show model into a “new American freak show”
- Focuses on what changes in viewing mean, and why and how the viewer stares at freakish bodies through specific media including film, television, and live performance
- Examines such representations as found in horror films, including a prolonged look at Freaks (1932) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), documentaries such as Murderball (2005) and TLC’s Push Girls (2012-2013), disability pornography including the pornographic documentary Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan Supermasochist (1997), and the music icons Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga in their portrayals of disability and freakishness
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
Keywords
- Freakish Bodies
- American Freak Show
- Media Representation of Disability
- Spectatorship and Mass Media
- Freak Show Film
- disability on screen
- freakish music videos
- circus on screen
- body politics
- body modification
- Marilyn Manson
- Lady Gaga
- The Elephant Man
- critical race theory
- disability studies
- Performative identity
- the freak body in cinema
- Horror bodies
- Human Monsters
- Feminization of Disability
Authors and Affiliations
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Department of English, SUNY College at Old Westbury, Westbury, USA
Jessica L. Williams
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Media, Performative Identity, and the New American Freak Show
Authors: Jessica L. Williams
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66462-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-66461-3Published: 18 October 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-88250-5Published: 15 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-66462-0Published: 04 October 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 188
Number of Illustrations: 4 b/w illustrations, 16 illustrations in colour
Topics: Popular Culture , Disability Studies, Culture and Gender, Genre, American Culture