Media, Performative Identity, and the New American Freak Show (eBook)

Jessica L. Williams (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2017 | 1st ed. 2017
XII, 188 Seiten
Springer International Publishing (Verlag)
978-3-319-66462-0 (ISBN)

Infos

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-present), 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.


Jessica L. Williams is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at SUNY College at Old Westbury, USA.

Inhalt

1. Introduction2. The Mediated Freak Body3. Horror Movies, Horror Bodies: Blurring the Freak Body in Cinema4. Reality, Normality, Sexuality: “Authentic” Portrayals of the Freak5. Disability Pornography and the Cultural Politics of Disabled Sexuality6. Born This Way?: Disseminating Identification

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 4.10.2017
• Zusatzinfo: XII, 188 p. 20 illus., 16 illus. in color.
• Verlagsort: Cham
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: American Freak Show • Body Modification • body politics • circus on screen • critical race theory • disability on screen • Disability Studies • Feminization of Disability • Freakish Bodies • freakish music videos • Freak Show Film • Horror bodies • Human Monsters • Lady Gaga • Marilyn Manson • Media Representation of Disability • Performative identity • Spectatorship and Mass Media • The Elephant Man • the freak body in cinema
• ISBN-10: 3-319-66462-X / 331966462X
• ISBN-13: 978-3-319-66462-0 / 9783319664620