Overview

In 1973, a five year old girl known as Pookie was exhibited as ""The Monkey Girl"" at the Canadian National Exhibition. Pookie was the last of a number of children exhibited as 'freaks' in twentieth-century Canada. Jane Nicholas takes us on a search for answers about how and why the freak show persisted into the 1970s. In Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body, 19001970s, Nicholas offers a sophisticated analysis of the place of the freak show in twentieth-century culture. Freak shows survived and thrived because of their flexible business model, government support, and by mobilizing cultural and medical ideas of the body and normalcy. This book is the first full length study of the freak show in Canada and is a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of Canadian popular culture, attitudes toward children, and the social construction of able-bodiness. Based on an impressive research foundation, the book will be of particular interest to anyone interested in the history of disability, the history of childhood, and the history of consumer culture.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jane Nicholas
Publisher:   University of Toronto Press
Imprint:   University of Toronto Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.480kg
ISBN:  

9781487522087

ISBN 10:   1487522088
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   12 April 2018
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable  
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Table of Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Pookie's Story Chapter 1: Monsters and Freaks: Exhibitionary Culture and the Order of Things Chapter 2: The Carnival State: Protest, Moral Regulation, and Profits Chapter 3: The Carnival Business in Canada: Paternalism, Belonging, and Freak Show Labour Chapter 4: The Twentieth Century Freak Show: Medical Discourse, Normality, and Race Chapter 5: Not Just Child's Play: Child Freak Show Consumers and Workers Chapter 6: The Spectacularization of Small and Cute: Midget Shows and the Dionne Quintuplets Epilogue: 'I guess it really is all over': The End Which is Not One Bibliography

Reviews

This work is a demonstration of how original historical research, carefully and imaginatively deployed, can be usefully combined with contemporary culture theory of exhibitionary logics, embodiment, and difference. It is a story well told by a skillful historian. -- Kenneth Little, York University * <em>University of Toronto Quarterly: Letters in Canada 2018</em> *

"""This work is a demonstration of how original historical research, carefully and imaginatively deployed, can be usefully combined with contemporary culture theory of exhibitionary logics, embodiment, and difference. It is a story well told by a skillful historian."" -- Kenneth Little, York University * <em>University of Toronto Quarterly: Letters in Canada 2018</em> *"

In Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body, 1900-1970s, Jane Nicholas seamlessly weaves together multiple histories: the history of the body, of children and childhood, of the working class family, of the cultural and social history of the carnival and the 'freak show, ' among a number of others. Meticulously researched and sensitively argued, Nicholas adds immeasurably to our understanding of the central role that marginalized Canadians, particularly those with embodied differences, played in shaping broader ideas of normalcy, social acceptability, productive work, and cultural consumption. - Mona Gleason, Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia Original, careful research combined with insightful analysis makes this book an important contribution to our understanding of popular culture and human variation. - Bob Bogdan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Syracuse University This book represents the first in-depth scholarly examination of the freak show in Canada, an institution with deep roots in our popular consciousness. Jane Nicholas has produced a significant addition to our understanding of the history of Canadian entertainment, attitudes towards children, and the social construction of able-bodiedness. - Keith Walden, Department of History, Trent University Working backwards from the last CNE 'freak show' in 1973, Nicholas demonstrates the workings of state and business that made the shows fundamental to a burgeoning modern popular culture - hence consumer culture. She positions the freak show as integral to a 'modern exhibitionary complex' focused on the body as spectacle, an innovative approach to the power relations inherent in race, gender, and class, as well as the lesser discussed, but nonetheless critical, categories of age and ability. In this provocative and exciting book, above all a welcome addition to the growing historiography on disability, the author adds much to understandings of the 'normal' body as historically contingent, socially defined, and culturally performed. - Cynthia Comacchio, Department of History, Wilfrid Laurier University

Author Information

Jane Nicholas is an associate professor in the Department of History and Department of Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies at the University of Waterloo.

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