List of images for our midterm exam (Spring 2025)

 Click here for more information.

See that each image has 3-4 elements: 1. Author,  2. Title, 3. Year, 4. Media (when needed)  

Your turn #5

Josephine Clofullia, the so-called "bearded lady of Ganeva"

Gosh, plenty to talk about 19th-century design: 

Comics, political satire: Examiner and Puck, Caldecott's plates and frogs for Children books, Civil War  reportage, Fashion!, Thomas Nast (the nasty), Mackmurdo's Chair (for the history of design), The Pre-raphaelite aesthetic revolution,  Victorian design, chromolithography, Madox Brown's Work,  Paxton's 1851 Crystal Palace, the great William Morris, Talbot's Pencil of Nature...    

Go ahead!

Viva da freaks!

I find that Buzzfeed calls this series "ridiculous monsters."

Let's forgive BF's lack of historical acumen by not mentioning its provenance!

My problem is that BF takes for granted that these "monsters" did not exist. 

Really?

Some of these "freaks" belong on a prominent list! (via the human marvels).
 

Josephine Clofullia (the so-called "bearded lady of Geneva")

It boils down to a distorted representation of the past, or better, blindspotting our present. 

It happens by design.

That is to say, our present antiseptic idea of "normality."

Let's put on the lenses of the late-Renaissance: This Swiss manuscript presents a rational treatment of the issue:

Switzerland, 1557

The title reads "Chronicle of Omens and Portents from the beginning of the world up to these our present times," (Switzerland, 1557). 

The Chronicon is dramatic & naive in its quasi-scientific approach. 

We are looking at early anthropology! The shift in perception of how to understand these human types changes from 16th-century "portents" to 19th-century "freaks" (i.e., we find them as curiosities in the circuses of Europe and America). 

Today's political correctness works perversely. Nowadays, we don't call these people "freaks." In fact, we don't have a word for them. The euphemism "people with disabilities" doesn't work because today people with disabilities can't find work in a circus! 

We think that 16th-century illustrators were, as Buzzfeed calls them, "fucked up."  A total disconnect. Presentists can not look beyond the obvious.  

Bah!  

*****

How about John Merrick, i.e., Mr. "Elephant Man," who became famous in —of all places— Victorian England!

Or General Tom Thumb, a dwarf who worked for P.T. Barnum’s and perhaps one of 19th Century Circus' most famous performers by the mid-1800s. 

Or Schlitzie, the microcephalic sideshow performer known for his role in Tod Browning's fantastic 1932 film Freaks. 

Or Francesco Lentini, "Mr. Three-Legged Man," famous as a performer in the early 20th century. 

Or John F. Kennedy Toole, who, while not a "freak" in the physical sense, was considered weird and "eccentric" (his posthumously published novel <i>A Confederacy of Dunces</i> made him legendary).

Many circus freaks could negotiate lucrative contracts and achieve financial stability through their performances, sometimes even gaining more fame than the showmen. Freaks could shape their public image by crafting narratives around their conditions, choosing how to present themselves, and even developing unique acts to attract audiences. 

Within the traveling circus circuit, these performers, precisely because of their "physical differences," could form a sense of community, supporting each other and sharing strategies for navigating the challenges of their profession.

Isn't that an actual agency? I don't feel one iota of sadness about their place in their respective epochs. They made the best of it!