P. T. Barnum, the Freak Show, and the (Re)presentation of the Anomalous Body

This article addresses the characteristics of the nineteenth-century American museum of curiosities created by Phineas Taylor Barnum in its historical perspective with a particular focus on the stage shows known as freak shows. Considered the founder of American entertainment, Barnum specialized in presenting human oddities—people either physically deformed or with various appearance-related anomalies, including people with dwarfism or gigantism, bearded women, Siamese twins, and many others. The author’s aim is to encourage a discussion on Barnum’s persistent control over the presentation of non-normative bodies that emerge in his museum due to human curiosities employed there—a presentation based on fictitious stories. Aiming to fulfill Barnum’s guiding principle, which can be summarized as “it doesn’t matter how, it matters that they talk,” the micro-story–embedded text simultaneously addresses the problem of the rhetoric of advertising based on an imagined narrative, evoking characters such as Joyce Heth, General Tom Thumb, and William Henry Johnson.