Listen: I had a super-awesome-fun-time-interesting blog planned for today, inspired and everything, but then “life” happened.
…I need to study the super-awesome-fun-time-interesting subject matter some more before I know quite how I wanna wrap my head around it and write it up. The whole thing caught me totally off guard, starting as a click on a FB link, then ballooned out from there, sucking hours of time.
…And it’s still too vast a field to write one blog on. So I need to focus it a bit. Then maybe do something creative-writerly with it as well.
In the mean time, I’ll tell you about how today while I was waiting for one of the SIX times my work computer had to reboot because of network errors, I got caught up in another google-fest because of a picture from the movie “Freaks” that popped up on my tablet FB screen.
…I have always loved that movie…the pre-code 1932 horror film by Todd Browning…most notable for NOT using Lon Chaney makeup artistry to achieve the look…but instead hiring REAL circus sideshow artists with a variety of medical, physical, health, and mental issues to play the roles of the circus talent. While some may see this film as nothing but a PC nightmare, few know that Brown was actually a member of a traveling circus as a young man, and felt nothing but love for it’s family of performers. In fact the film shows, if nothing else, the humanity, trust and honor of this special family of “freaks,” while seeing a few of the average “normal” members of the circus as lying, murdering, conspiritors.
…It’s astonishingly, shockingly, raw, and real…gave work to a slew of performers who would never otherwise have been given the opportunity, and freaked the hell out of everyone so much that they banned it in the UK for 30 years, forced several re-edit cuts (in pre-code Hollywood even) before U.S. viewings, and essentially killed it’s director’s career directly after.
But by 1960, it had been redescovered by new generations, shown at midnight movie houses, and in 1994 was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry, as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
…Which I think it is.
…But don’t just take my word for it.
Give it a look-see.
See it HERE for free.
~D
