Freaks (1932)
Posted on August 13, 2006
Filed Under Black and white, Creepy stuff, Monsters, Movies
In the decades since its initial release, Freaks has lost none of its power to shock. Regardless of whether or not the film is any good it is a unique experience to behold. Tod Browning spared no effort in tracking down real circus and carnival performers to appear in his movie, with predictably genuine results. The problem is that he seems to have spent rather less time in deciding what he would do when he actually found his misfits.
As a result Freaks is quite a difficult film to read. This has nothing to do with the actual plot, which is fairly linear and holds no surprises. What is more problematic is Browning’s ambiguous representation of the freaks themselves. With great fanfare the film opens extolling the inherent virtue of our plucky underdogs, observing that their community is one of mutual support and inherent virtue. There is no wallowing self-pity and mean-spirited vindictiveness here. Though the freaks are obviously different their ‘code’ helps to ensure that their dignity is maintained and their worth recognised.
On this reading the truly unsavoury character is Cleopatra, who has no regard for the peculiar but particular place the freaks have in the circus hierarchy and so sets about manipulating Hans, to the growing chagrin of both his fellow freaks as well as the other circus performers. The conclusion of her machinations is rendered slightly less brutal on this reading, coming across as righteous vengeance against a wicked, unpitying force.
The problem with this is that there is an implicit fault in Browning’s treatment of the freaks, one which renders them susceptible to the wary disregard embodied in Cleopatra. Essentially, we know nothing of them beyond their physical impairments. The overt attempts to elucidate their everyday lives are focused principally on Hans, but this is too quickly overshadowed by his entanglement with Clepoatra. We are therefore left to reflect on the portentous warning delivered at the beginning of the film-that the freaks are a secretive group who have their own rules and who do not look kindly on people who transgress them. It is difficult not to see in the interactions between the freaks and even those befriend them a certain discomfort at an insurmountable divide. One wonders whether Venus does not pity the freaks just as much as Cleopatra, making her befriending of them just as devious as that of Cleo and Hercules. The final scenes, with the freaks advancing out of the shadows, reinforces this characterisation. Emerging from their shadows to enforce their code seems like the most natural thing in the world to Browning’s freaks.
In places it feels as though Browning’s mask drops and we see Freaks for what it is; a celluloid retelling of the traditional carnival freak-show which forms the very backdrop of his film. That it is powerfully done cannot be denied, but its attempts to portray itself as more leave it open to the charge of being just as exploitative as those whom it attempts to demonise.
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