Sujets :
Exhibitions de phénomènes
Histoire des Sideshow - États-Unis
P.T. Barnum's Museum
Fêtes foraines - États-Unis
Parcs d'attractions - États-Unis
Exhibitions ethnographiques

Dépouillement du document :
Preface
1. Introduction: In Search of Freaks
I. Freak Show: The Institution
2. From Tavern to Madison Square Garden: A Chronicle of the Freak Show in America
3. Step Right Up: The World of Popular Amusement
4. Exotic and Aggrandized: Modes of Presenting Freaks
II. Profiles of Presentation
5. The Exhibition of People We Now Call Mentally Retarded
6. Illusions of Grandeur
7. Cannibals and Savages
8. Respectable Freaks
9. Self-Made Freaks
10. Conclusion: Freak Encounter

Résumé :
From 1840 until 1940, freak shows by the hundreds crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. By today's standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitative—the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America's most popular forms of entertainment. He [Robert Bogdan] describes in detail the flimflam artistry behind the shows, the promoters and the audiences, and the gradual evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. [editor summary]

Collection : Bibliothèque de l'École nationale de cirque

Localisation : Bibliothèque

Cote : 791.350 973 B6744f 1990

• Ex. 1 — disponible