Behind the Curtain of a Circus Freak Show

Documentary Focus

This archives focuses on the performers in freak shows in the 19th and the 20th century. The aim of the archive is to look past the stage name and public persona of the performers and instead examine the lives of the performers. Understanding that not much is known of the private lives of the performers, the archive attempts to reveal the person behind the performance. I approached this with an attempt to understand the role and the agency performers in freak shows had in their profession.

Consideration of Archival Concepts and Practices

This archive is not set up as a traditional archive, by fonds or collection. That would have made little sense in the organizational structure I envisioned and it is much less user friendly. The traditional archival structure requires some knowledge if archival concepts to understand and takes time to search through. As this archive is only about freak show performers and the freak show itself, I felt no need to organize it by fonds. It would also limit the users. 
Additionally, as one may notice reading this archive, there is a certain sensitivity in vocabulary. While accurate to the time period and archival material, I felt referring to the performers as "freak" or "midget" would be offensive and demeaning (Brilmyer, 2018). Therefore, the word "freak" is only used in titles or when it's being referred to, or in freak show.  Freak show was deemed necessary as there is no other term that accurately replaces it. 

Criteria for Record Selection

All the digital media in this archive, all the pictures, were sourced from the Victorian Popular Culture archive. I was more selective regarding the source documentation. It is difficult to find formal papers or books about freak show performers, especially the lesser known performers. Therefore, when searching for information there is a proliferation of less reliable documents such as blogs, Wikipedia entries, or un citied and un authored web pages. Whenever I found information and sources for the archive, I made sure I could find several sources for the same stories and those sources had sources themselves.

Target User Group

There is no specific user group such as students or teachers for this archive, rather the user group is any young adult or adult interested in the subject of circuses, freak shows, or disabilities in the Victorian period. The user group would most likely not be younger than adolescence as the language used and reading required is not usually appropriate for that age group.  I have assumed none of my users have archival experience which is why my archive is not set up in the traditional manner. 

Perspectives

The unintentional perspective demonstrated in this archive is one of successful, well-known freak show performers.  This is due to the fact that less successful performers do not have information on their life published or researched and therefore cannot be featured with the other written biographies on famous performers. Without acknowledging this missing perspective, a user could read through this archive and come to the conclusion that freak show performers always became rich and were treated well. While that was true for those featured on this archive, we do not know the individual stories for less well-known performers and what happened to them. 

Author

This archive was created by Megan Pauly, a Michigan University first year master's student in the School of Information. The archive was a project for the class SI 580 in 2020.