This book traces how the American freak show has re-emerged in new
visual forms in the 21st century. It explores the ways in which moving
image media transmits and contextualizes, reinterprets and
appropriates, the freak show model into a “new American freak
show.” It investigates how new freak representations introduce
narratives about sex, gender, and cultural perceptions of people with
disabilities. The chapters examine such representations 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. Through
this book we learn that the visual culture that has emerged takes the
place of the traditional freak show but opens new channels of
interpretation and identification through its use of mediated images
as well as the altered freak-norm relationship that it has fostered.
In its illumination of the relationship between normal and freakish
bodies through different media, this book will appeal to students and
academics interested in disability studies, gender studies, film
theory, critical race theory, and cultural studies.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9783319664620
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
Palgrave Macmillan
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter