Review of Freaks (1932) by Grace Y — 04 May 2008

This is a very daring movie especially for 1932. It was banned for most of the years since it's release. Critics hated it and called it grotesque and cruel, but it seems their real problem with it was based on their own prejudices.

So critics were actually openly discriminatory, but many tried to pull some kind of humanitarian garbage to try to say that it was making a mockery of the handicapped or naturally deformed. What if a movie about circus performers was made without the so called sideshow freaks? It's a fact that they were some of the highlight attractions of these events.

A movie could be made where we just ignore their existence and do a movie without them or even have more "genuine" actors play them. I think this would be more offensive. Take away your own prejudices and watch it just in terms of the story and you'll see that it stands on its own.

Many people were born with deformities. Are we supposed to pretend that they don't exist? Do they have no right to be represented in the movies? Seriously, if some critics would say this film exploits them, what other performing avenues were or are available to them? I think this is a really important movie and it's influence can be seen in movies like David Lynch's "Eraserhead," Werner Herzog's "Even Dwarfs Started Small," and also in music.

I actually first became familiar with the film through the Ramones song "Pinhead," even though they got the line wrong. It's "gooble gobil, gooble gobil," not "gabbeh gabbeh hey.

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