Controlled spaces: Dare to stare (back)

“There is much more at stake, then, in the staring encounter

than meet the eye”.

-Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, “Staring: How We Look” (2009)

“‘Freak’ is a way of thinking about and presenting people –

a frame of mind and a set of practices”.

-Bogdan (1996) cited by Ellen Samuels in “Examining Millie and Christine McKoy: Where Enslavement and Enfreakment Meet” (2011)

It is the “human nature” to be curious and to examine the world that surrounds us However,  when this curiosity becomes an insatiable longing for attraction, innocent curiosity become intimidating stares. From an early age on American children are taught by their parents not to stare or to question disabilities they see in the people they meet. But where is the borderline between looking and staring, and what does it tell us about our society when this borderline gets crossed either in a private or an institutional way? There are even laws against staring (Garland-Thompson, 2009), but to whom do these laws apply? Normally, the laws of a country apply to its citizens. In order to make use of these laws one has to have subjectivity and agency. In her article “Examining Millie and Christine McKoy: Where Enslavement and Enfreakment Meet” (2011),  Ellen Samuels tells the story of the black conjoined twins Millie and Christine McKoy, who were born into slavery and exhibited at “freak shows”.  She illustrates what happens when people get bereaved of both their subjectivity and agency in order to satisfy “normal” people’s desire to stare.

“Staring shamefully bares a staree`s peculiarities

to the prying eyes of a stranger at the same time

that it fully exposes a starer’s intractable curiosity […].

Both starer and staree have failed to properly control themselves.

In this way, violates the civilizing process”.

--Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, “Staring: How We Look” (2009)

Born into slavery, Millie and Christie were not protected against stares. Their shared bodies got exposed, objectified and became an attraction. They became “freaks” of the nature. Samuels states that “enfreakment describes the process by which individual difference becomes stylized as cultural otherness” (56), hence it is a cultural construct which stands for the exploitation and objectification of bodies that are different than the norm. To objectify someone demonstrates social power and a “mannerly bestowal of status upon the other” (Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, 2009).
The question now lies in who has the right to decide what is considered normal and what constitutes as the body being considered different.
The twins were on display their entire life until their death. They were exposed to the painful and intimidating glares of the public and had to endure uncountable examinations of doctors who were predominantly interested in the most intimate body part: their genitalia.

However, Samuels does not intend to tell yet another alleged truth about the twins’ life. She builds her whole storyline to tell a different truth. Through her article she wants to give an I-voice to their story and to everyone else, whose truth was hidden from the public for so long. Their owners told their own version of the truth, in which the twins stayed with them because they loved their owners, in order to justify their “slavery after slavery”. In her insight into the twin's truth, Samules gives Millie und Christie their agency and subjectivity back. After the abolition of the slaves in 1888, the twins were finally able to refuse further medical examinations. One of the most important hidden facts shows a  picture of the twins which was taken allegedly out of medial importance, however, the picture tells a different story. In this picture one of the twins stares back. This stare shows her anger, shame and dissatisfaction about the situation. It’s a stare that tells the viewer to leave the twins alone and to stop this visual violence.

Millie’s and Christine’s story has to be seen through an inseparable lense of race, slavery, and gender. Black women’s bodies were treated differently than white women’s bodies. Black women were not privatized, exploited, on medical display, and marked as racial others. Unlike white women, they were likely not to be covered while gynecological examinations and photographed. How could these differences exist? Samuels demonstrates that it is important to stare back in order to get one’s agency back and to break with these controlled spaces.

Unfortunately, against some expectations, freak shows are not a matter of the past. There are still shows, magazines and exhibitions on humans and their “Otherness”. Whether or not these people were asked to be objectified may differ from case to case. In “Ripley’s Believe it or not ”exhibitions and TV shows, the spectator is invited to find “everything odd, weird and unbelievable”. The description on the website says:

“Escape from the ordinary and step into the shockingly odd world of Ripley. Enjoy your daily dose of weird with Ripley's WTF! Blog, featuring Crazy Animals, Extreme Sports, Body Oddities, Strange Places, Incredible Feats, Weird Foods, Unusual Customs, and all things unbelievable - but 100% true!”.

Although the control (vs. being controlled) aspect of some of the shows might have changed, “otherness” is still displayed as something odd and something that must be displayed to satisfy the “normal” audience’s voyeuristic pleasures. The fact that people nowadays expose themselves voluntarily makes it even worse for those with bodily abnormalities, because the starees grant authorization to stare or even invite the spectators. In this case the audience doesn’t even feel bad staring because they officially bought the permission to do so.

The AMC “Freakshow” takes place in Venice Beach attracts business by “bringing together all things bizarre and unique, including two-headed animals, strange artifacts, eccentric performers and human wonders”  

Source: http://i.huffpost.com/gen/943248/thumbs/o-FREAKSHOW-AMC-570.jpg?6

The fact that these kind of shows still exist shows that we haven’t learned from the past. Objectification of human beings with oddities is still a business.What matters is the Otherness that attracts spectators, not the character hidden behind the facade.