Last week on the X Factor, two teenage friends named Abbey and Lisa strolled on stage to audition in all their gobby, tuneless glory. They were rude, clueless, they insulted the audience, offended the judges, and finally, as they were booed off stage, one of the girls punched the other one in the face. It made for horrendous, cringe-worthy viewing. The audience, of course, lapped it up. It was hard to watch, and they loved it.
This got me thinking. Most of the auditions on these shows are terrible; people with little talent losing all dignity in the most public way possible. One after another, they walk out on stage to be ripped apart by the audience. But this is a concept that has been around for centuries, back when carnival performers, or “human oddities”, were a regular billing. So… are reality TV shows the new Freak Shows?
In the 1630s an Italian named Lazarus Colloredo toured the European Freak Show circuit with his parasitic twin brother, John Baptista, who was attached to Lazarus' sternum. (The upright and otherwise normal Lazarus was often described as courteous and handsome, and marred only by the half body of his brother who dangled from his torso.) Carnivals profited from the likes the Colloredo brothers, or anyone with some sort of deformity. Obese, little, tall, deformed, or diseased people were popular attractions to gawping audiences.
In time, many of the freakish deformities exhibited for entertainment were clarified as genetic problems and diseases, which lead people to feel sorry for, rather than laugh or scream at, the people presented to them. In time the Freak Show circuit began to die out. But not the concept of course.
With television came the opportunity to continue using differences to shock and entertain. People still want to see things which freak them out, and now they can watch, scream, and jeer from the privacy of their own living rooms. Some argue that shows like Extraordinary People or Bodyshock on UK television - which presented the real-life stories of “remarkable” and “extraordinary” people with deformities or disabilities - were just “freak shows” offering a sympathetic angle. They were fascinating, and sometimes inspiring documentaries, yes, but even Chris Shaw, Senior Programme Controller of the Guardian took some issue with them, when he said of Extraordinary People," I suspect your typical twenty-something watched this show with their jaw on the floor rather than a tear in their eye".
An even better example is reality TV – though well-disguised, this is merely a new breed of Freak Show. Programmes like X Factor, American Idol and Britain’s Got Talent offer up a host of willing performers, and no one can deny the most entertaining parts of these shows are the really awful auditions. The audience – live, and at home – are hungry to see the acts, jeering, booing, howling or screaming at amateur performers, bad singers, unattractive people, adults overcome with stage fright, men dressed in drag singing into mops, women dancing with dogs, or, in the case of Abbey and Lisa, simply socially-inept, potty-mouthed teenagers. Viewers are hungry for this stuff. Thousands of people tune in to watch it year after year after year, as these shows are broadcast direct to our homes. Simon Cowell knows he is producing a modern day circus, which is why he’s now a very wealthy ringmaster.
Perhaps this is the best way, however. The carnival performers of yesteryear were usually outcasts of society with debilitating deformities, whose only option was to join the circus. Our present-day “freaks” are average people and willing performers. They want their fifteen minutes of fame, even if it’s at the expense of their dignity. They’re not being laughed at for their illnesses, but merely for their own embarrassment. It’s still cruel, having the audience destroy some poor sod’s dreams of stardom. But as long as people want to be entertained by someone they can jeer at, and as long as people are happy to embarrass themselves in order to get on TV, this might just be the best solution.
Image from the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration