1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910255077203321

Autore

Williams Jessica L

Titolo

Media, Performative Identity, and the New American Freak Show / / by Jessica L. Williams

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2017

ISBN

3-319-66462-X

Edizione

[1st ed. 2017.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XII, 188 p. 20 illus., 16 illus. in color.)

Disciplina

791.1

Soggetti

Popular Culture

People with disabilities

Culture

Gender

Film genres

United States—Study and teaching

Disability Studies

Culture and Gender

Genre

American Culture

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction -- 2. The Mediated Freak Body -- 3. Horror Movies, Horror Bodies: Blurring the Freak Body in Cinema -- 4. Reality, Normality, Sexuality: “Authentic” Portrayals of the Freak -- 5. Disability Pornography and the Cultural Politics of Disabled Sexuality -- 6. Born This Way?: Disseminating Identification.

Sommario/riassunto

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. .