“I filmed the elephant man, the dwarf, a giant, a pair of lobster people, the half woman, a clown and a jumble of jug band musicians. On tour in a 20-year old school bus, travelling 2500 miles across America, the ‘freaks’ worked their way through the wild west. Laughing, crying and drinking – a carnival of the damned – searching for a home…” wrote Richard Butchins, the disabled director himself.

The Last American Freak Show attempts a resurrection of the freak show in order to re-appropriate and reclaim the word ‘freak’ as a positive rather than pejorative term.

The documentary can be seen as a road-movie, during which we get to know each one of the so-called (by themselves) freaks: their past and present, their needs, wishes, desires and aspirations. What brings them together is their difference, their deviation from the norm of the able body. By performing this difference they attempt to produce a certain kind of awareness around their own normality.

The documentary thus aims at making the spectator question his/her perceptions of disability and normality, as well as at re-opening the discussion about the ethics of a freakish spectacle. Going against the tradition which wants freaks to be the object of exploitation and manipulation for the sake of profit, the performances in The last American Freak Show become the motor of empowerment, transforming the freaks from objects to subjects, from means to goals by and for themselves, thus attributing to them agency, a voice of speech on their own.

By bringing deformity to the forefront, on the stage itself, the documentary obliges the spectator to see what is usually invisible to everyday perception thus at times creating a feeling of discomfort. It also forces the viewer to hear the freaks’ testimonies, which go against our ‘morality’ and what is considered as politically correct: that flaunting a deformed body might be as legitimate and correct as flaunting a beautiful body; even more it might be pleasurable and enjoyable for both the performer and the audience.

The Last American Freak Show is not about representation or depiction of the freaks or of disability but about mobilising the power of magic and imagination. Its dynamic composition (consisting of animation, black-and-white night shots, as well as colour images), and the intimate ‘look’ of the camera produce a different image – an extra-ordinary perception that can claim confidently: freaks are amazing!

The Last American Freak Show is an evocative, compelling, often funny and personal documentary that invites the viewer to look beyond the bodies of people living in them; it is with this shift in perception that a whole new world appears, a world we never knew it existed before.

Dr Chrysanthi Nigianni
Visiting Lecturer in Sociology, University of East London

To read our interview with director Richard Butchins, click here.

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