Who are the real Freaks?

When you watch Cannibal Holocaust, there’s a line at the very end where the narrator ponders, “who the real monsters are…” It is the kind of pretentious line which forcedly places a significance on your work, when what had just been shown does so without it. However, in Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), there is a significance that isn’t spoken but emphasized. The “circus freaks” are actually the decent, honest, and intelligent folk (they think and feel) while the “normal-sized” folk (not all of them, a clown and a “lovely-figured woman” (once with the strongman) turn out to be swell) are foul, rotten, dark-soul bunch. Two antagonists, a “Cleopatra” on the flying trapeze and a strongman, in an affair, decide to dupe a lovestruck dwarf (she jokily refers to him as dwarp) into marrying her so she can balk him of an inheritance while the little man’s fiancé watches from the sidelines as he’s taken advantage of.

Something I have read about is the racism prevalent in the 30s when the film was made and released. How repulsive the *freaks* are. I hope that we have at least evolved somewhat from that but I highly doubt it. Particularly depressing to me is how the *freaks* were forced (most of them) to eat outside the MGM commissary because the *normal* actors were disgusted by their presence. It doesn’t surprise me, though. 

At any rate, this film, perhaps in as good a form as can be considering the footage that is lost (if someone could find this footage, I’d be certainly grateful!), sympathizes (as it should; kudos to Browning for what he could accomplish, and thankfully a decently restored version now exists. I wish he could have had the chance to understand how admired his work is in later years, particularly Freaks) with the *freaks* and abhors the actions of Cleo and Hercules. The scene near a pond, for instance, towards the beginning addresses how the circus “pinheads” and their “mother” are just enjoying some time in the sun outside the confines of the wagons and tents, with a local all in arms about them “trespassing” on land, *them monsters* (as he describes them), while the officer considered their argument and was pleasant and understanding. That is something that does shine through at times: not all the *normals* are monsters. Venus, the former strongman Hercules’ squeeze, becoming romantically involved with Clown, sees that he and Cleo are working together (and are lovers) against Hans, the dwarf, while Frieda (Hans’ fiancé before Cleo emerges to seduce him) must look on, attempting to thwart their efforts. What happens to Cleo is poetic justice. I can imagine the horror that audiences experienced at the time: particularly those so repulsed by the undesirables appearing on screen or in their presence. The idea itself that a normal could be violently mutilated into a freak through the wake out of the outrage of a family exacting revenge is the stuff of nightmares for many…especially those in the MGM commissary or audiences so comfortably superior in their *normal bodies*.

The dialogue fascinates me. It’s pre-Code nature. What is implied and subdued, but also what isn’t. The greed, booze, abuse, sexual innuendo, violence, and racism all emerging in action and word is quite eye-brow raising considering the eventual “blockade of morality” that would soon work as a stoppage to artistic freedom. Exposing people in all their darkness and ugliness and showing that those supposedly physically repulsive are beautiful on the inside with a certain audience disgusted by it: I admire the approach, although the dinner table scene leaves me a bit unsettled because it kind of reduces the freaks to what they appear to the outside world. I had liked how the film didn’t dehumanize them and actually shone a light on them that was different that what the customer or patron views them as. I thought the dinner table scene works against what Browning had accomplished throughout. One thing that will always stand the test of time: don’t fuck with the family because they will return in kind…with a vengeance. The family pulling out a switchblade or Luger gun, the daggers and hiding in the darkened areas under wagons, steps, and behind wheels; this is their world and if you are in it and hurt one of their family, you hurt them all. Cleo and Hercules learn that the hard way.