Response #3

        A film like Freaks could not be made today. I found it to be a very good movie but barring the obvious fact of Tod Browning's antiquated style which would now get any remotely similar film categorized as indie or some other equally niche label, the film would likely be heavily criticized and probably protested under modern political correctness due to its apparent exploitation of the actual freaks that appear in the movie. That's not to say that the film was accepted when it was first released in 1932 either. At the time, it was panned by critics calling it “disturbing” or “horrible” showing that even their sense of political correctness didn't even accept the film although it could be argued that it was more their sensitivity to horror that caused this reaction as opposed to our current day desensitivity. In fact, the film would likely not even have been released two years later with the beginning enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934.

        It's interesting to note that even while the film is rightfully considered somewhat tasteless exploitation of the freaks in the eyes of most viewers, the most prominent “freak” of the movie, Harry Earles (Hans), was actually the one who approached Browning over the idea of the film in the first place. It begs the question of whether the actor who chooses to be exploited is really being exploited at all. Of course, that doesn't excuse the treatment of some of the less mentally capable “freaks” featured who might not have been even fully aware that people would derive entertainment value just by gawking at them. Although it's still not entirely the choice of the actors such as Hans to be exploited per say, like the film says that most of the freaks are otherwise normal people who by some chance were born with a crippling deformity or condition. In these cases, the “freak” doesn't have very many ways to work out a living, so from their point of view, it seems reasonable to assume that it's better to survive through exploitation than to not survive at all. In this way I think that the freaks are very sympathetic characters.

        Throughout the first half of Freaks, the viewer naturally takes on the role of a spectator, moving throughout the carnival and getting to peer into what the film presents as the daily lives of the freaks. By presenting them as a living community, the freaks are humanized to an extent although the viewer would be hard pressed to fully identify with any of them due to some of their quirks which might create distance between the character and the viewer. For example, most people would find it difficult to relate to the situation of the conjoined twin's romance life where they must effectively have two partners and share them with another man.

         This role is reversed later in the film; however, when the freaks are rejected by Cleopatra and learn of her malicious intentions to kill Hans. From this point on, there are plenty of close up shots of the freaks peering into the camera or at Cleo and Hercules. These come off as incredibly eerie and add an unsettling vibe to this part of the film. This could be an effort to recreate for the viewer what it feels like to be stared at much like they did to the freaks for the majority of the film.

An evaluation of physical characteristics in Freaks

            As one can expect from a movie about a freak show, a lot of the characters are proportioned differently than the average person and often have physical and personality traits that make them appear and act out of the ordinary. However, Tod Browning utilized this aspect of his actors to physically portray their personalities. In this regard, all the characters display personality traits that are synonymous with the way that they look.

            A first example of this can be seen in Hans as well as Frita. They are both people who are a lot smaller than everyone else in their height and size. Because of this, they are taken advantage of a lot in the film, just as you might expect of a small person. Hans is continually misled and lied to so that Cleo and the strong man can get a hold of his inherited fortune. In addition, several times in the film he is picked up against his will and treated like a child. As for Frita, Hans decides to leave her for Cleo and so she is seen as small, with things out of her control. Furthermore, Cleo makes her feel even smaller when she mistakenly tells Cleo about Hans’s fortune.

            However, on the other end of the freak spectrum is the strong man. Since his character is known for being really big and strong, he acts this way as well. He acts very masculine and as though he can be in charge of any situation. He also helps Cleo to fool Hans into getting married, which makes him more bigheaded and confident. Cleo as well is the other “villain” in this film. Her character is a normal person in the film however, with no physical abnormality. Because of this, she acts as though she’s better than everyone else. She displays this throughout the film by acting like she’s superior to Frita and thinking that she can cheat Hans out of his money. Cleo even shouts at the other freaks and says that she is above them when they tell her she is one of them now after marring Hans.

            Another interesting way in which Tod Browning utilized the appearance of his actors to mimic their personalities was with the half boy half girl character, as well as the conjoined twin. These characters contribute to the voyeuristic aspect to this film. The half boy half girl exists to show both views of gender and to sort of put anonymity to the voyeur itself. Showing two genders on one person helps to get across the message that it could be anyone watching, and this character often is seen observing on other people’s conversations unknowingly. The conjoined twin however represents multiple views in the same person. This is shown by having each of the separate people convey different emotions and have different opinions on things. Although they are connected at the hip, these twins don’t like the same people always and one of them is very submissive while the other is more assertive and talkative. It is an interesting way to represent opposing views in the same person.

            Through the work of his actors themselves, Tod Browning was able to portray different types of people with the help of their physical appearances to help give them their personalities. Most obvious examples can be seen in Frita and Hans as well as the strong man and Cleo, while more abstract personalities can be seen in some of the characters such as the half boy half girl and the conjoined twin. Through using this technique, Browning made the film have a deeper meaning then what lied in the dialogue and actions of the characters. Each body type became its personality and lead to a large array of differing “freaks”.

Cat People: Flouting "The Rules"

In the beginning of filmmaking, a set of standards for films and filmmaking was put in place to protect the public; one could not possibly subject civilized people to such obscenities as such a personal and private act of sex. “The Rules,” so to speak, paint a pretty specific picture of what was, and was not, allowed to be seen or discussed in a film. These restrictions, though very specific, left just enough room for interpretation and loopholes.  The film “Cat People” is an example of how a filmmaker could flout these rules with many implications and metaphors for sex. The way in which Jacques Tourneur presents the relationships between Irena and Oliver and Alice, and even the doctor, gives the audience just enough information for them to infer an unfulfilled desire for sexual contact leading to an affair without an outright explanation of the situation.

Irena and Oliver’s love develops quickly, a little too quickly since Oliver says, “I love you” within 2 days of meeting Irena. While the romantic notion of “love at first sight” may be the acceptable interpretation, it’s easy to see that Oliver has a purely sexual attraction to Irena and it needs to be presented in an appropriate way. He cannot act on the attraction if the couple is not first in love, and then married; in other words, in order for Oliver to get to have sex, he has to marry Irena. After becoming man and wife, Irena, for fear of becoming a cat monster, still refuses to even kiss Oliver. We are given a scene where Irena refuses to kiss (and subsequently have sex with) Oliver and they are on either side of Irena’s bedroom door. With the door between them Irena gets on her knees while Oliver remains standing, and the audience is allowed a view of what Irena should be doing as a dutiful wife to her husband, performing fellatio. As their seemingly weeklong marriage unfolds, Irena’s continued fear of intimacy leaves Oliver unsatisfied; Irena is not fulfilling her wifely duties and Oliver is beginning to question his decision to marry her.

This doubt comes forward most clearly when Oliver intimates to Alice that he is “unhappy” for the first time in his life. This is not the first time a question of “happiness” is discussed. In this movie, we can interpret “happiness” as sexual satisfaction. Irena is upset because she wants to make Oliver “happy” but she is afraid to, Oliver is “unhappy” because Irena has not yet touched his penis, and Alice would love nothing more than to make Oliver “happy.” Even the doctor assumes Irena’s assumed delusions stem from a lack of “happiness” and eventually tries to provide her with “happiness” with an extremely passionless kiss. The overall effect of using “happy” as a code word for sexual satisfaction provides a publicly appropriate expression that the audience can understand but also not be offended by.

            The recurring images of keys and locks in this film are also obvious representations of sex and sexuality. Irena is in control of the key to the leopard cage, just like she is in control of the sexual relations (or lack of sexual relations) between her and Oliver. Having a key to the leopard’s cage also represents how sex is primitive and animalistic but under control since it is caged. There is also the obvious sexual motion of a key being thrust into a lock, or rather lack thereof in regards to the relationship between Oliver and Irena, since the lock on her bedroom door remains keyless.

            The overall effect of this manner of sexual implication allows the public to be in a sort of denial of the sexual nature of the film, and instead take the movie at face value. Thus, “The Rules” remain in play while the more sexually literate are able to enjoy the innuendo provided by “Cat People.” 

Response #3--Cat People and Some Uncanny Camera Work

Val Lewton’s Cat People (1942) explores notions of shifting gender roles and the anxiety surrounding them in its depiction of Irena. Given the era in which the film was made—in the midst of WWII—and the rapidly shifting notions of gender, it is hardly surprising that the film articulates this in the omniscient threat posed by the figure of a foreign woman who resists assimilation to the apple pie Americana ideal in her very embodiment. This resistance is achieved by framing shots of Irena alongside particular objects at certain instances in the film, and is supported by observations made by Rick Worland, and Sigmund Freud himself, who explores the notion of the uncanny in The Uncanny—the unsettling phenomenon undergirding the entire film, which leads the audience to recognize it as belonging to the horror genre.

            The first notable instance of purposeful camera work is in the scene in Irena’s apartment that Worland says, in any other film at this time, would have “subtly implied the couple had just had a satisfying sexual encounter;” the statue of King John spearing a cat is silhouetted against the moonlit window as Irena “dreamily [hums],” gazing out of it (Worland, 180). Given that the two are so obviously framed together in this shot, coupled with the multiplicity of feline images throughout the apartment, it is clear that, especially given Irena’s subsequent disclosure that King John killed the witches and devil-worshipers in her village, that Irena, the figure of John, and the feline motif are intimately connected. In a sense, it foreshadows the film’s climax, when Tom Conway (who plays Doctor Judd, and also King John in Irena’s dream sequence) fatally stabs Irena through the chest. This framing of Irena alongside this foreign figure lends itself to other her in terms of her nationality, as well as in terms of her uncanniness, when this figure reappears later in the film. While not immediately interpreted as something strange and frightening (as outlined by Freud on page 195 of his essay), it becomes so when it recurs later in the film in the manner I have described because it is wedded to uncertainty and supernatural elements.

            The other instance of purposeful camera framing I would like to note in the film is at the museum, when Irena begins to descend a flight of stairs upon being excluded from the camaraderie between Alice and Oliver, and comes to a pause next to a black statue of Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the afterlife. The camera seems to very intentionally hesitate on this shot. In doing so, this framing posits that Irena is foreign, Other, a figure that demands respect and fear. Like Anubis, she symbolizes death, and represents the uncanny doubling of the identity—both are human yet not human, animal and yet not animal. In other words, there is something strange and frightening within them that is nonetheless recognizable (Freud, 195). This shot may also pay tribute to Universal’s The Wolf Man (1941), as Worland notes that Cat People “shows indebtedness” to this film, illustrating the similarities between them while juxtaposing the masculine figure against the femme-fatale of Cat People (Worland, 179). Like The Wolf Man, a monstrous figure permeates the film, while employing a more suggestive means of conveying this idea, as well as “[floating] artfully between clinical and occult explanations for Irena’s fears” (Worland, 179). This shot illustrates such a departure from overt manifestations of monsters, such as Anubis, to more covert and perhaps more complex and insidious ones, as embodied by Irena.

Response #3- Spectacles on Spectacles in Freaks (1932)

Rachel Adams discusses the history and attraction to sideshow cinema in her piece Sideshow Cinema, as well as how the 1932 film Freaks emphasized the use of spectacle cinema. As Adams writes, not only were the talent for Freaks marginalized on screen and made a spectacle of, off screen they were segregated from the other talent, who regardless of cameras rolling, still thought of them as “freaks”.  Freaks indeed is fueled by spectacles, peppered with pointless clips of the talent cast as freaks, which seem to bare no significance to the story other than to be gaped at.  

We are shown two women enjoying lunch, eating with their feet, we see a man rolling a cigarette with his feet, and more such clips that are for pure shock value. In fact the only real characters that bare any significance to the story are almost entirely made up of the talent not cast as “freaks”. The only “freaks” that play a real role in the story are Hans and Frieda, even though the cast is made up of many more talent. All the other individuals playing “freaks” are only shown in clips emphasizing their supposed “freakiness”. Adam’s writes, “ like the cinema of attractions, early portions of Freaks are characterized by an aesthetic of spectacle that is only heightened by the stiff, self-conscious performances of many of the disabled actors” (p. 67). This stiffness that Adam discusses is very apparent, and it brings a sinister aspect to a film that is supposed to be just a story, since it is clear that in real life, these actors were still very much considered to be freaks and treated as such. It adds an unfortunate but believable aspect to their performances that is both unsettling and upsetting.

While the beginning of the film is infiltrated with these meaningless and exploitative clips of the disabled talent, it still continues as a relatively steady pace through out the rest of the film. Where talent with no legs are seen dragging themselves across the set, giving the audience yet another chance to gape at them. The ending of the film has critics divided on whether the “freaks” are shown in the end to indeed be “dirty, slimy, freaks” as Cleopatra claims they are, or whether they are shown to have out-tricked the audience and those in the circus who treated them so poorly. Regardless of whether Cleopatra finally gets what she deserves, the “freaks” are still shown in an exploitative manner, even in the end as they are seen crawling through the mud in the dark to exact revenge on Cleopatra.

Freaks is all about spectacles and is the epitome of spectacle cinema because it took individuals that were already seen as spectacles, and put them in situations that emphasized their differences and made them even more of a spectacle. The time period and the way people with disabilities were treated back then is very apparent in Freaks and Adams does a nice job of providing some historical insight into that time period. The discomfort of the actors with disabilities is extremely apparent and the manner in which they were consistently splashed across the screen in ways that highlighted their disabilities made the film the ultimate spectacle. Although uncomfortable and upsetting to watch, the film Freaks demonstrates the popularity of spectacle cinema during the 1930’s and its relationship with fear and horror of the unknown or different.

             

A Disquieting Notion (Freaks by Tod Browning)

            In Tod Browning’s film Freaks, there are a number filming and story telling techniques that are far more complicated than people give them credit.  These various key details are discussed in part in Rachel Adams’ book Sideshow USA: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination.  The first detail I noticed near the end of the film was the clear connection between this film and the fears of the time, being attached to World War I.  The reality of the time was that many young men went off to war and a fair amount came back amputated or no longer whole in some way.  This sort of fear, that you or someone you love, could end up amputated living a much harder life was a harsh reality; one that many of the ‘freaks’ represented.  The scene most reminiscent of this war like connotation is the one in which the freaks are crawling in the mud towards Cleo and the strong man.  This scene is not far from what one might expect to see in the entrenched first world war.  This depiction also somewhat reminds me of the uncanny principle as discussed by Freud in that it is something similar but different to what the men coming home from battle would have seen, making this an effective scare-tactic.

            The attraction of these marginalized people on a surface level could be seen as the embodiment of the cinema of attractions as discussed by Tom gunning.  When taking scenes such as the quadriplegic lighting his cigarette this is a moment the conversation becomes background noise that we do not need to understand the plot of the show.  This invites the audience to just stop, look and be amazed.  This is of course not the only instance so devoted to this voyeuristic way of seeing, take for instance the moment Frita hanging her close.  It’s as if the director is holding our heads and saying look this is what you wanted, a spectacle.  Also the moment where the girl is feeding herself with her feet, the story lulls and we are once again invited to stare.  The cinema of attractions will always be present in circumstances depicting carnivals; the two are inseparable, one and the same.

            The use of scale was quite interesting as well, it had a clear visual representation of underlying psychological qualities of the characters within these sets.  Take the scene where Frita goes into Cleo’s tent after she has been emotionally defeated in her fight for the love of Han.  She is belittled in the sense that Cleo won Han’s affection under false pretenses whilst he and Frita were engaged.  This can be seen in a visual way in the difference of space.  Cleo’s tent is large enough for her and so she looks at home and comfortable where as Frita is seen as small and clearly out of place.  Then take the moments where Cleo is in Han’s place and she is this looming powerful force taking over his space.  The constant shifting between spaces allows for a visual representation of the psychological shifts in the characters.  This can be seen also in the scene after the wedding party where Han is discussing his issues with Cleo and the strong man kissing, while in Cleo’s trailer.  Han looks incredibly small which is how one assumes he is feeling after the humiliation occurring at what was supposed to be celebration honoring him.

            I enjoyed the representation of the audience expressed through the character of Josephine/Joseph, this was a subtle but effective way for the film to point at itself as a medium.  This character is an example we can relate with being an audience of men and women watching from the sidelines with little affect on the goings on within the film.  And the moment where the strong man punched Joseph but not Josephine was an interesting comment on the ridiculous and meaningless nature of gender expression.  The strong man is arguably one of the simpler characters and he places such high value on the expression of gender that he only punches one side of the face as it the other would be unaffected simply because it was wearing lip stick.

            This film dealt with a lot of contemporary issues in a fairly sophisticated manner, while other parts were simply an attempt to draw the eye.  It was odd that the film started with a fantastical description of the history and otherness of freaks while ending on the note that they are people too who have struggled.  This was visually demonstrated when the whole film focused on the difficulties of being an outsider or a ‘freak’, then ending with ew gross look at the freakish duck lady.