LIDF

Richard Butchins’s controversial film The Last American Freak Show raises difficult questions about disability and has scared some people off – Bafta recently withdrew from screening it, for reasons that remain unclear. Kamila Kuc talks to the director about a life-changing experience.

Kamila Kuc: The Last American Freak Show takes you on a trip with The 999 Eyes of Endless Dream – a troupe of performers, which contains self-defined ‘freaks’ and ‘non-freaks’, as you list them in your final credits. Why did you want to make this film?

Richard Butchins: It’s hard to recall my original objectives. I went into the project without any real objective other than to document what I saw, I certainly thought that the idea of a freak show seemed anachronistic, but on the other hand I liked the idea of disabled people charging the able bodied to stare at them

KK: In the film the troupe are travelling on an old school bus. When they lose the bus the group becomes a little estranged and the tone of the film changes slightly. There is a lot more tension among the group members. Where did this leave you as a filmmaker? Was this a difficult film to make?

RB: From a filmmaking point of view the fact that I was working alone became frustrating as it was a very demanding environment both physically and emotionally and some support would have been helpful, but then again it would have been a different film if I had had a budget and a crew – possibly not as good… I did find myself getting involved emotionally with the characters in one way or another.

KK: The film portrays plenty of laughter, tears and alcohol – like in a real Bakhtinian carnival. How did you handle this 24/7?

RB: (Laughs) It was a tough call. I basically tried to keep a little professional distance. There was only one occasion when I let myself get drunk with them and the hangover was immense. That was a real Bakhtinian carnival…

KK: One of the characters in the film, Deirdre, the dwarf, says that people in freak shows are exploited in the same way as models on a catwalk. Would you say that such parallel is valid? Surely watching models on a catwalk or conventionally ‘beautiful’ people, the spectator wishes to be like them while watching freaks, people are happy not to be them….

RB: Exploit, means to use something for its strengths, so in that sense I agree with Deirdre. Unfortunately, beauty and youth are coveted and rewarded in our society whilst (for many reasons too long and complex to go into here) difference and disability are shunned – so I agree with you on that.

KK: There is another film at this year’s Festival, The Skin Horse, [part of the John Samson Retrospective at The Horse Hospital] in which people with disabilities talk about their sexual needs.  It points out that pity is not what disabled people want. What do you think the ‘freaks’ want to get out of being part of a performance?

RB: They get attention, and for once it’s sympathetic and positive attention, they get a chance to be important and to state their case. They get paid (a little) and they gain a status denied to them in everyday life.

KK: Was there anything you decided was too much, and that you needed to edit out?

RB: No not really it’s just that it had to be a manageable length – I mean, I filmed for over 10 weeks, the first rough cut was 6 hours long. I cut out the repetition. How many times do you need to see them stealing grease? All the main events are there.

KK: Nowadays freak shows are seen as exploitative yet for many years they were one of the major forms of entertainment. What are your personal views on the issue of the ‘pornography of disability’, as the author Robert Bogdan calls it in his book The Freak Show?

RB: I am not even sure what the pornography of disability is. It sounds like a redundant activist slogan from the 70’s – remember that for hundreds of years disabled people had no way to make a living in society, they were shut out. One could argue that this is still the case (and I would, the door is just more subtle now). Freak shows were a legitimate way of making a buck. No welfare system etc.

Bogdan says “How we view people who are different has less to do with what they are physiologically than with who we are culturally. ‘Freak’ is a way of thinking, of presenting, a set of practices, an institution – not a characteristic of an individual.” I like the social model of disability but it’s not entirely true. Disability is a physical constraint that is aggravated by social constructs. Activism has been really important in changing these constructs but it can lead to a kind of “Liberal Totalitarianism.”

KK: Why do you think people want to watch freak shows these days?

RB: The same reason as they always did, straightforward curiosity and to feel glad that
they are not freaks. Most people still watch them in the form of those appalling shock docs on TV – the world’s tallest teenagers or the world’s hairiest women.

Don’t think that the freak show has gone away it’s just the format that’s changed – that, and the fact that the freaks don’t get paid anymore. They still get exploited by the able bodied and they still can’t control the way they are presented – but it’s slipped by because its on TV, so you don’t go and pay $1 to see it, and it feels ok that way.

KK: Do you think your life has changed since making the film?

RB: Yes, making this film was a life changing event for me. It has led to me feeling much more connected to my own disability, less self conscious and in a contradictory way both more and less tolerant of people and their beliefs and prejudices.

KK: And on your weblog you say you’ve joined a circus. Is this true?

RB: Yes it’s true!  I’m now part of a circus troupe that features disabled performers.

To read our review of the film, click here.