When watching Freaks, it is hard to imagine that once upon a time people sought amusement from viewing humans with abnormalities and physical deformities. However, not much has changed since then. People still gawk at others who do not fit into ‘normal’ physical appearances. Whether it be amputated limbs, different skin colors, mental disabilities, and other severe birth deformities, society will continue to distance themselves from them. So the question should be posed; did Tod Browning had the right to publish and direct such a movie?
When Freaks first debuted in 1932, it was met with horror and shaking of heads (Whittington-Walsh). For twenty years, it was kept in the vaults of MGM, the studio who produced it, and it was forbidden in England for forty years. Some have said that the film ended Tod Browning's career as a movie maker. The movie starred real freak show acts including half-woman, half man; those who had pinhead deformities; bearded lady; midgets; people who were born without limbs; and other types. In the movie, husband and wife, Hans and Frieda were siblings born into a family of seven children with three born without looking like dolls.
Many critics and audiences have called the film insensitive to freaks. However, Browning did not intend to make a movie about the monstrosities of entertainers in such freak shows but to highlight their bond with each other. In the beginning of the film, a proclaimer says that to mess with one is to mess with them all. When Hans is mistreated and misled by Cleopatra, his fellow misfits help him get revenge on her. It is the same for Venus when she is attacked by Roscoe (?) and defended by Phroso. After Roscoe is injured, the freaks are seen coming towards him with murder in their eyes. Even though Venus did not have an abnormality, she treated everyone nicely. Venus and Phroso are the exemplary normal figures who are kind to everyone they meet, that is why they must end up together. Cleopatra, Hercules, and Roscoe are shown to be the evil bullies and their ends are in the movie justified.
Freaks is not simply a film about what people look like and reaction to their appearances, but a social commentary on the code of conduit of freaks. Browning had freak shows as merely as a setting about human connections and bonds. Audiences in the early 30s' only saw what was above the surface and did not try to understand the message of the movie. There have been worse movies that have graced the screen and viewers adored them- take 1915's Birth of a Nation for example. It was a film that is so racist that there are arguments about whether it should even be seen or shown. over the course of decades, society has become more open to viewing movies that were once seen as taboo. One of the main reasons is as a whole, people have become more open and honest about weird things and they have more knowledge of the different sorts of diseases and disorders that are out there. There has been so much understanding about the human body and genetics due to books, research, and the internet where people can look up things they simply do not know about. Overall the targeted audiences overreacted when Freaks first came out, but now society has come to appreciate the frankness of the topic and the meaning of the story.
