Everyone’s a freak. No two bodies are the same; we all have unpleasant, wonderful, shocking and extraordinary features; we are all unique. But for centuries the word ‘freak’ has been used cruelly to describe people born with ‘abnormal’ features, or those able perform extraordinary physical acts by contorting or misshaping their bodies.
Exhibitions of live human curiosities had appeared in travelling fairs, circuses and taverns in England since the 1600s. These included so-called giants, dwarves, fat people, the very thin, conjoined twins and even people from exotic climes. Freak shows were a particularly popular form of entertainment during the Victorian period, when people from all classes flocked to gawp at these unusual examples of human life.
Novelty acts relied a great deal on shock, therefore performers were not revealed in the flesh to audiences until money had changed hands. Titillating publicity was crucial, as the people described in these adverts often bore little resemblance to what lay behind the curtain or turnstile. Exaggerated and stylised illustrations lent age to dwarf acts, stature to giants, and plausibility to mermaids and bear boys. The advertisers of these shows aroused the curiosity of the audience by overplaying, often entirely inventing, ‘true life’ stories. The public thirst for stories of adventure, struggle and hardship was quenched by the story of how each ‘anomaly’ came to be. The new and different had strong appeal; and difference was often judged according to popular fantasies of racial and imperial hierarchies, adventurous exploration, and scientific discovery. A boy from Central America or the South Pacific would be considered as enthralling a spectacle as a ‘human cannonball’ or ‘frogman’.
I've mentioned before that I like the idea of various magical and non-human folk either being exploited in this manner or hiring themselves out for the money or the irony or both -- or, you know, A Captured Sorcerer With Staggering Command Of The Blackest of Magics, which is really some showy bloke who can do a lot of scary-looking illusions and wants to make some easy money. At your more common fairs you'd mostly have people pretending to be vampires and werewolves and such (real ones being far too dangerous unless you've got the right sort of money and training and leverage), and some small, tame, but impressive magical creatures. And some of the either seedier or more powerful ones would have captured magical beings -- the fairy-ish folk (no name for them yet), the ones who don't look human at all and don't understand our rules. Possibly even vampires, though this could be very, very dangerous. Weak vampires, kept on just enough blood to keep them from withering -- or very strong, in-control vampires, who are using the people around them and their employment as a sideshow attraction for obscure ends of their own.
--And as I was thinking about all of this I got a distinct impression of a character: a very courtly, subtle, ancient, canny gentleman vampire, smiling coolly and ironically at the crowd every time the curtains open. What is his end? His managers certainly don't know, but they don't feel very safe asking.
Alas, now I need to find where and how to fit him in.
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