PLAGUE DIARY 42: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

Freaks (1932)
So much bilge has been spilled about this movie that it’s incumbent on me to clear the air. Todd Browning’s cinematic images are certainly carefully framed and composed and at times, beautiful. But the acting and the dialogue are execrable. The film is dead boring. The primary actors — Olga Baclanova (as Cleopatra) and Harry Earles and Daisy Earles (as the midgets Hans and Frieda) are unwatchable. This is not because they are ‘freaks’ or ugly (Olga Baclanova is a ‘normal woman’ - and all three of them are quite beautiful in their own way), but none of them can act. After the first screening of Freaks, a woman sued MGM for causing her miscarriage. Could it have been the acting? There is only one really thing good about Freaks, and that is that the actors really are ‘freaks’ — period. And the only other sorta good thing about Freaks also happens also to make it  lousy in conception (if not execution). Freaks is perfect propaganda. Early on, the presumptive mother of the ‘freaks,’ Rose Dione (as Madame Tetralini) gathers the pinheads around her, protecting them from ridicule, cooing ‘these are my children.’ I won’t make fun of the sentiment, because it is in fact, noble. But Freaks has only one noble sentiment to express: that ‘freaks’ are human too, and of course, the corollary — it’s not ‘freaks’ that are evil, but the so-called humans who do violence against them. Freaks was banned in England for 30 years, until 1962, when (brutally, a year after Todd Browning’s death) it was hailed as masterpiece. Though Browning is certainly well meaning, his politics are fiercely inconsistent. The film — when it is not loving the ‘freaks’— gives free rein to the audience’s voyeurism — from ‘ The Living Torso’ (actor Prince Randian) lighting a cigarette with his mouth, to the armless woman eating dinner with her feet, to the bearded lady having a baby. The most pornographic scene offers us a gratuitous glimpse into the sex lives of female Siamese twins. When the husband of one meets the fiance of the other they say: “You must come and see me sometime.” This phrase mimics the politesse one brother-in-law might display for another. But the question on the everyone’s mind is — are all four of you going to be having sex at the same time? I don’t despise the film for it’s voyeurism, but rather for the hypocrisy of those who watch it and praise it’s nobility. Recently the ‘woke folk’ and the disabled community have embraced this film because its stars would today probably self-identify as transgendered and/or disabled. For me (and perhaps it’s my own problem) the most horrifying ‘freak’ of the bunch is ‘Schlitzie. Schlitzie was a real disabled man, who had (see Wikipedia) “microcephaly, a neurodevelopmental disorder that left him with an unusually small brain and skull, a small stature (he stood about four feet tall, myopia, and severe intellectual disability.” I’m not going to say it was cruel of Todd Browning to put a disabled person on display and make fun of him as a woman (which is what happens in Freaks). Nor am I going to tell you Schlitzie was a person too — though undoubtedly he was. What I’m going to say is that for myself, and other people, Schlitzie was fascinating, horrifyingly and bewitchingly odd. And, come on, be honest, if you had seen him on the street you would look twice, or maybe a third time, —and that third time you might stare, like it was a car accident. Those who made money off Schlitzie knew this, and Schlitize himself seemed to enjoy the attention, and missed it when it was gone. And it’s a good thing to admit all this. Because not to admit it, is to join the ranks of those ubiquitous people of good will who deny that there is a difference between you, me and Schlitzie. But we are all very different, and it is natural to react in a frightened, fascinated and/or horrified way at that difference. (I asked a biologist once; and she said that such a reaction is tribal and inbred). We have to LEARN HOW not to kill or beat or humiliate those who are different from us, but it doesn’t help to pretend that they aren’t different at all. Woke culture deals with difference by telling us we are all the same. The newest transgender theory is that— not only is there no such thing as gender — but to desire one gender over another is hateful and cruel. There is no heroism in denying that Schlitzie is different. But Schlitzie is not just the same as you and me, he is completely alien — in many many ways. Such is the enormous challenge of being human; to somehow come to terms with that which we may never like, love, or ever want to have sex with.  I know this because I am a freak, I have been since I was a little boy and well-meaning people asked me why I talk with my hands. I am, and always will be, a little girl in a gigantic scary man’s body. I know how freaky that is, and I don’t expect heterosexual men to like me, and not very many of them do. Am I allowed to say this? Gee, are you allowed to say, in these COVID-19 times, that hospitals are actually empty? Oh sorry, the approved truth is this ‘we must stay away from hospitals unless it is an emergency because we have to make room for the massive influx of COVID-19 patients,’ Well I know three people who have gone to the hospital recently (cut finger, herpes vaccination, and cancer). Apparently the nurses are all sitting around filing their nails because THERE IS NO INFLUX OF COVID-19 PATIENTS FLOODING OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM! (Where I live in Hamilton, 19 people have died.) So since this lie is being propagated, I’m not sure if I am allowed to say that the hospitals are empty, and since we are all supposed to pretend that 'freaks' are not different or scary or horrifying because we are all the same, I’m not sure that I’m allowed to say that Freaks is a well-intentioned mess that misunderstands the principle of difference. Twenty minutes of Freaks was censored in 1932. People are outraged by that (and they should be, that footage is dead and gone, lost —never to be seen) — but for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes what is censored is a fact you don’t want to hear -- like that nurses are bored in hospitals while you are suffering deeply — and sometimes it's a scene you don’t want to see. Like the last minute of Freaks (which they cut) — when they castrate Hercules. Yeah, castration. Those who claim to love this film also claim it was censored because people couldn’t handle the idea that 'freaks' are just the same as you and me. What they actually couldn’t handle was a man singing in a girls voice because somebody has just snipped off his nuts. Hey, I really wish I coulda seen that. That should tell you something about what’s a freak and what is not.