Early film was more about looking than the overall
experience, focusing on the spectacle and not the story. After this approach
was abandoned at the dawn of narrative, few artists chose to go back to it. In
his film Freaks, Tod Browning
emphasizes looking and spectacle and returns to the cinema of attraction. In
doing so, Browning indulges the voyeuristic desires of the audience which were
largely ignored and largely maligned during the years of the Hays production
code.
During the first
part of the film, Browning focuses more on showing off the bodies and talents
of his freaks than building up the narrative. Theater had its roots in the sideshow;
early productions were often announced with a spiel much as a sideshow
character would be, building an “atmosphere of expectation” (Adams, 67). By focusing
on the Freak’s bodies early in the film, Browning is able to create this same
atmosphere. One scene which exemplifies this idea unfolds as follows: One of
the armless women, Frances, is eating with one of the pinheads. A man comes up
and is talking to her about something entirely irrelevant to the plot. The camera,
however, does not focus on their conversation, it focuses on how she eats with
her feet instead of her hands, favoring close-ups on Frances rather than a wide
shot of the conversation. During this instance, speaking fills a void, but the
camera makes clear that the focus is really on the oddity of Frances’s body; on
its grotesque and unusual qualities. This scene and others like it seek to satisfy
an audience plagued with curiosity of the inflicted body. Browning, however,
does not just indulge practical curiosity, however, but also sexual curiosity.
Early drafts of the script show that Browning had
intended to show the junction between Daisy and Violet’s bodies. This moment
was to occur after the wedding of one of the twin’s as the two are making the
bed. During the scene, their dress was to be unbuttoned in back, revealing where
they were joined. This kind of peepshow provides a titular view by focusing on “the
erotic possibilities of the doubled female body” (Adams, 74). The final version
of this scene, however, is much more toned down, revealing only the bare neck
of the sisters and leaving the rest to the imagination. This demure view may
not be as explicit as what Browning had originally intended, but it may be even
more effective. By showing only the neck, Browning forces the viewer to imagine
what else is beneath the dress; he teases but he does not deliver. This
emphasis on the imagination of the viewer switches their gaze from innocent to
sexually charged. As if these suggestions were not enough, Browning makes it
explicit that these are the viewer’s curiosities as well as his by putting the
viewer in the film, as a voyeur no less.
Browning makes Josephine/Joseph the character with the
power of looking so that the audience can fully reconcile their role as “viewer.”
When Hercules and Cleo share a passionate embrace, Josephine/Joseph looks on in
curiosity. Hercules notices her/him, and chases her/him down. Most classical
Hollywood films seem to focus on the male gaze, but by making Josephine/Joseph
his onlooker, Browning both subverts that idea, but also opens the door for any
kind of audience member to place themselves in that role whether a they are a man
or a woman. By making this type of gaze universal, Browning implies a universal
morbid curiosity in his viewers.
In indulging the voyeuristic desires of his audience,
Browning forces his viewer to confront the baser instincts that they would
normally push deep down. This return to the cinema of attraction is probably
why Freaks was such a catastrophic
commercial failure; People don’t want to acknowledge their perversions. Since
Browning chose to make such an insecurity public, audiences rejected the film,
forcing his career into ruin. The world of 1932 was not yet one of self-awareness.
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