I Panic the World: Benevolent Exploitation in Tod Brownings Freaks and Harmony Korines Gummo

J AY M C R O Y A N D G U Y C R U C I A N E L L I

Introduction

N CUTTING EDGE: ART HORROR AND THE HORRIFIC AVANT-GARDE,

Joan Hawkins links Tod Brownings Freaks (1932) with antihumanist trends in postmodern photography when she claims that contemporary counter-cultural trends, such as body modication, evidence a similar radical refusal of the standards of normal beauty (164). Such a comparison raises important questions regarding the politics of identity and the variably exploitative lenses through which audiences view cultural difference. In what ways is freakishness constructed socially, culturally, and visually? Does otherness reside in the object being perceived or in the narrative and spectacular economy that informs the processes of perception itself? Is it possible to not be a freak? In the pages that follow, this essay explores Tod Brownings infamous examination of alterity and Harmony Korines 1997 lm Gummo as episodic narratives that collapse a documentary/cinema verite aesthetic with a visual rhetoric vacillating between the sympathetic and the parodic. Comprising meticulously composed sequences that at once align audience sympathies with the object of the cameras gaze and maintain the viewers distance from the spectacular bodies on display, Browning and Korines lms reinscribe the very binary logics through which normalcy is policed and reafrmed. As a result, both Brownings backstage peek at circus life and Korines postmodern col-

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lage of daily events in a small Ohio town reveal themselves as lmic palimpsests that, through the presentation of contradictory narrative and visual tableaus, illustrate the impossibility of achieving objectivity within cinema, an inevitably subjective medium.

Revenge as Spectacle: Exploiting the Code of the Freaks

The scrolling text that constitutes the disclamatory, somewhat apologetic, preamble of Tod Brownings Freaks is reported to have been added by exploitation distributor Dwain Esper who, it almost seems, hoped to mitigate the lms odd impact and initially negative critical reception, while clarifying some of Brownings contradictory intentions. Yet the terminology of the preamble is itself so ambiguous and obscure that, just as it distances itself from prejudicial ideas of difference by suggesting that such discriminations were practiced only in ancient times [when] anything that deviated from the normal was considered representative of evil, it continues the conditioning of our forefathers by sensationalizing the division between normal and abnormal. Through simplistic, didactic prose, it at once moralizes the humanity of sideshow performers and reinscribes them as blunders of nature [whom] modern science is eliminating from the world. Along with this self-canceling plea for tolerance, the preamble also hints ominously at a mysterious code among the freaks, thus establishing them not merely as other, but as other-worldly, supernatural beings capable of alter[ing] the worlds course. Owing to its somewhat high-minded tone, the preamble glosses the message movie in a narrative already so genre-laden (e.g., backstage circus farce, horror lm, romance, revenge fantasy) that it seems to elide genre-categorization altogether. Although its internal contradictions are exemplary of the lm as a whole, the preamble both simplies and complicates the lms dynamic nature; its moralizing language weakens the more imaginative scope of Brownings technique, while its tacked-on textuality complicates the visual cohesiveness of a lm that is largely concerned with the power of the visual image. Brownings intended opening is much more visually exclamatory: at the lms production title card, the word Freaks is ripped away and, in the next shot, the torn paper is crumpling in the hands of the circus barker. Compared with the preamble, this opening is far more cinematic, as well as sensational; it is an obvious

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expression of the directors afnity for, and grasp of, what might be called the circus mentality, as had already been illustrated in his previous lms with actor Lon Chaney, most notably The Unknown (1927) and The Unholy Three (1925). The effect also foregrounds the performative aspect of lm itself. The trick of the title being torn away locates Freaks as less the moral tale indicated by the preamble than as entertainment, a cinematic routine put on by Browning. By opening the lm in this manner, Browning links the circus spectator with the cinema spectator. As the camera tracks the barker from over the heads of a curious group of onlookers, the lm viewer becomes another member of the circus crowd, stretching her neck to get a glimpse of the sideshows most astounding living monstrosity. As the barker pitches the hidden attractionthe mutilated form of what was once a beautiful womanthe lm dissolves to a ashback, seemingly severing the link between circus and cinematic spectator, but ultimately expanding its implications. Through this dissolve the audience is given a spatio-temporal access never allowed a circus spectator, as we are transported, not only behind the scenes, but to a past behind the scenes. The ashback begins with ve brief shots from the arena side of the circus, before the camera dollies through a curtain. As there are few traditional exteriorssave for the early sequence of the circus owner in the woods with the freaks and the lms nal revenge sequencethe camera remains strictly backstage. Yet despite this privileged glimpse into an area that is usually off-limits, what we see represented backstage is basically a live-action circus in cinematic terms: a series of routines, parodies, and humorous scenes supporting a thrilling and climactic main attraction. Freaks central narrative is almost pure melodrama: a greedy woman plots to marry, then fatally poison, a wealthy man who, upon discovering her plot, enacts his own fatal revenge. Yet the lm compounds this familiar plot line, rst by setting it strictly within the connes of the circus world, and second, through an exaggerated, parodic representation that becomes increasingly dark and foreboding. The courtship and wedding of Cleo, the big woman, and Hans, the dwarf, are presented essentially as humiliations and manipulations endured by Hans, all centered around the discrepancy between his and Cleos physical statures. Cleo systematically infantilizes and emasculates Hans, condescending to his advances, leading him on both sexually and emotionally. After their wedding, when Cleos true perception of Hans

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as a baby and a dirty, slimy freak is revealed, the lm invert[s] the marital homecoming ritual by having Cleo carry Hans limp body across the threshold (Adams 80). It is only when Hans reaches his most vulnerable statesick with poisonthat he asserts himself. In one of the lms more frightening moments, Hans undergoes a strange transformation as he privately mocks Cleos fateful insult: . . . dirty, slimy freak! As Hans and the other freaks enact a peculiar and terrifying revenge, the primary narrative main attraction of the Hans/ Cleo relationship links directly to the monstrous attractions of the lms opening and closing. Whereas both the lms notorious wedding sequence and the nal revenge scenes are more clearly dened in terms of where our sympathies might liein the former, the freaks warrant our sympathy, in the latter, our fearthe majority of the narrative contains a more complex, layered thematic. Throughout the central narrative line are a series of disparate sequences involving the actual freaks in their backstage environment. Episodic and seemingly random, these scenes do not support or progress the plot so much as destabilize it. Often when the lm is spoken of as creating a sense of compassion for the freaks it portrays, it is these scenes in particular which are referenced, for they seem to stress the humanity of the performers by revealing them as living ordinary lives. Relationships are established, routine tasks are performed, and even a baby is born. Yet these sequences are much more problematic than they appear. While aim[ing] to acclimate the viewer to seeing the freaks as multidimensional, as individuals who have accommodated their disabilities by developing other ways of performing everyday activities (Adams 69), the lm only sets into further relief the freaks physical differences. Through a very de` ne that combines naturalism with theatrical conliberate mise-en-sce trivance, ordinarily normative routines, from dining to giving birth, are transformed into performative routines. For example, a sequence displaying an armless woman eating dinner with her feet is not merely a record of the daily backstage activity of a sideshow performer but an exploitative gag based around the reality of the performers physiology. While Joan Hawkins posits that the presence of sympathetic big people in nearly all these scenes helps to mitigate the performative aspect, such a presence seems, also, to do just the opposite. While certainly meant to indicate an uninching camaraderie among the circus folk, and to invest the freaks with an emotional complexity in

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excess of their onstage personae (Adams 70), such presentations only exaggerate the lms entertainment aspect by providing a conspicuous diegetic spectator. Even backstage the freaks have an audience. The scene of Randion, the Human Torso, lighting a cigarette with his lips, seems particularly designed as pure performance: as the lm cuts to a close-up, Randion ruptures conventional economies of spectatorship by looking directly at the camera in open acknowledgement of our presence. Although ostensibly off-stage, the action is portrayed as essentially the same curious trick which would, no doubt, have been a part of the mans actual routine. Such images are both true-to-life and rigorously articial. While these scenes convey an undeniable realism, such authenticity is achieved only through the meticulous application of a ` ne, and it is this discrepancy within conventional Hollywood mise-en-sce the mise-en-sce`ne that informs a contrary viewing. The lm distances itself from the viewer, so that, like the world it represents, the lm remains on display, and even apparently sympathetic scenes become suspect. Instead of the performers being freed from their stage personas, they are grounded further within them. Browning allows us a glimpse into the ordinary lives of extraordinary performers only to, essentially, poke fun at them. In light of Brownings known afnity for his subject matter, these examples may perhaps appear largely well-intentioned. To a showman like Browning, this must have seemed like priceless material, gags that practically wrote themselves. How could he resist an extended joke on the marital/physical predicament of the conjoined twins (when Daisy gets kissed, Violet swoons); or a gag about the bearded ladys baby having a beard? As Rachel Adams notes, Browning became fascinated with the performers remarkable abilities and sought excuses for working them into the diegesis (65). So, while these jokes are obviously at the performers expense, they also contain an element of the directors own personal attraction to, and fascination for his subject matter, and it is this layering of spectacle with sympathy, personal afnity with comic aversion, that characterizes the sort of benevolent exploitation to which the title of this article refers. As these assorted vignettes featuring the actual freaks conate the practical with the sensational, they invert themselves, emphasizing difference through a playful stress upon commonality. Such contradictions not only destabilize the plot, but inculcate within the viewer a contrary position of sympathetic detachment, thus challenging the whole notion of the necessity for subject identication in cinema.

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In addition, Adams justly links Freaks with what Tom Gunning calls the early cinema of attractions, a mode of lmic discourse which used spectacle to stimulate the viewer instead of . . . identication with the characters (67). By the 1930s, the time of the lms production, the Hollywood paradigm of the cinema of identication was rmly established. Perhaps hoping to generate a greater tolerance for and acceptance of his subjects and their ways of life, Browning effectively combined the cinema of attractions and cinema of identication. The result was a commercial paradox, a mixture of genres caught between poorly understood changes in formulae (Larsen & Haller 165). In other words, Freaks is ultimately structured to reproduce, not counteract, the sideshows transformation of bodily difference into freakish spectacle (Adams 67). Hence, as Browning frames (or focuses in on) certain corporeal details or activities in short, nonnarrative episodes shot with a relatively static camera (66), he presents the performers in much the same way as the sideshow culture, coding them as either comedic or horrifying. Consequently, Freaks promotes divergent responses, simultaneously refuting and reafrming the dichotomy between normal/abnormal, and denying explicit identication at every turn. Certainly one cannot identify with Cleo and her lover, Hercules, who both become monstrous representations of malice and greed. The characters of Phroso, the clown, and Venus, the seal trainer, while much more sympathetic are just as remote, existing along with Cleo and Hercules, exclusively within the enclosed, private arena of the circus. Both Phroso and Venus express as much in individual scenes. At one point, Venus declares, [M]y people are decent circus folk, not dirty rats what would kill a freak to get his money, thus aligning herself implicitly with the decent circus life, yet never explicitly with the freaks; in fact, she more or less denes herself against the freakish. At another point, Phroso boasts, I panic the world, with panic functioning here both as classic vaudeville slang for entertain, and in the more literal sense of frightening or unnerving people. Either way, the lms narrative, as it is, remains rooted in its sideshow origins. The only remaining characters with whom we might identify are the freaks. Yet especially here the lm undermines any empathetic response with its duplicitous representations. First the lm presents the freaks as helpless children, cowering around the protective gures of decent circus folk. Then, after disabusing the spectator of the

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traditional association between disability and monstrosity (Adams 77), the freaks become enigmatic monsters in a world of their own, decidedly un-childlike as they plot and kill with ruthless calculation. In each case, they remain apart, other; they are gures requiring either our pity or horror, yet never entirely our empathy. Failing to identify or see themselves in the diegesis, the audience remains estranged from the gures onscreen, responding to them as mere attractions, however ordinary or familiar their daily activity. The lms subjects generate what Harlan Hahn terms aesthetic anxiety, that is, the fears caused by someone who diverges from the typical human form and may have physical characteristics considered unappealing (Larsen & Haller 169). This anxiety springs, in large part, from the social construction of disability and the value placed by twentieth-century western society on personal appearance (169), which anticipates not only standards of beauty but the treatment of its supposed oppositethat is, freakishness. How, then, is one to approach or view disability and/or differently formed bodies in cinema? Such a question evidences the level of cultural anxiety produced by so-called freaks of Brownings lm and the extent to which, as David Hevey has noted, representations of the disabled body become the voyeuristic property of the non-disabled gaze (Haller, quoted in Larsen 169). Faced with something or someone so apparently different in form, an allegedly healthy social body enfreaks or subordinates (169) that form, prompting a superior response in the form of pity, compassion, or foreboding. Each of these emotions is tinged with varying levels of an anxiety that is less aesthetic than psychic, an overriding psychological fear that [m]onstrous bodily surfaces correspond with monstrous interiority (Adams 70). As portrayed in the lm, the freaks remain other much less in their supposed physical differences than in their own continued stress upon a private, insular society. Both Browning and photographer Diane Arbus (herself renowned for her photographs of circus performers) remarked on this supposed elitism of freaks. In promoting the lm, Browning somewhat sensationally claimed that learning their language is exceedingly difcult and that freaks were the monied aristocracy of the circus world (Skal and Savada 154). Arbus, too, perceived this aristocratic aspect, turning it into something both magical and psychological: Theres a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you

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answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading . . . a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. Theyre aristocrats (quoted in Hawkins 141). While both of these quotes reect the personalities and perceptions of their speakers more than they dwell upon the corporeality of their subjects, the notion of freaks living a sort of rareed existence is one that the lm retains. In this sense, even a real-life portrayal is bound to display the freaks as other. A circus, as a nomadic community, must acquire its own way of life, with its own signs or codes. Consequently, by its very nature, it is a specialized, if not a secret, society. However, even within this enclosed realm there is stratication and categorization. Through a subtle distinction held within the private arena of the circus, the small faction of actual freaks are marginalized within their own community. The freaks are outside the outside. They are displayed in self-contained clusters, tableau shots that emphasize the fearful collective power of the freaks (Adams 81) by banding them together while setting them aparta combination of solidarity and solitude. We are made to suspect them of belonging to some insular order complete with a code that is never truly elaborated upon, but merely referred to in cryptic bits of dialogue, as when an armless woman makes ominous threats in regards to Cleo: She dont know us; but shell nd out. The secret interior of this code is never fully revealed. While the wedding sequence expresses the codes communal, initiatory aspect (Gooble gobble, we accept her!), and the revenge sequence displays the results of offending the code, we never really see the code in action, as it werethat is, we never actually see what the freaks do to Cleo to turn her into a chicken-woman. By linking such horrifying results with an unrevealed code, the lm dramatizes the freaks as magic monsters, capable of some strange supernatural, even surgical, mutilation. The humorous empathy that has been established throughout is transformed into an unnerved spectatorship. Just as the lm appeals to, and for, diversity and difference, it panics us as to the existence of the other. Ultimately, however, the lms contradictions place the burden of prejudice onto the viewer. If [l]ooking is the primal activity that produces freaks in the rst place (Adams 83), then visual exploitation, such as a circus or the cinema, is wholly dependent upon spectator perception. Though cinema is undeniably capable of generating the kind of psychological empathy championed by lmmakers from Sergei

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Eisenstein to John Cassavetteswith a particular viewpoint being advanced through directorial choice and technological manipulations an individual shot, or even a sequence of images, may be said to be independent of purport in that a camera merely records what it sees. What activates cinema, so to speak, is the spectators response. Referring to the freak photographs of Diane Arbus, Susan Sontag wrote, [I]nstead of people whose appearance pleases, [Arbus photographs] lined up assorted monsters. . . . Her work does not invite viewers to identify with the pariahs . . . but concentrat[es] on . . . the unfortunatebut without the compassionate purpose such a project is expected to serve (quoted in Hawkins 167). The very notion of compassionate imagery or imagery with a compassionate purpose, as well as certain key words employed by Sontagsuch as monsters and pariahsindicate the subjective and expectative nature of viewing and viewers. Regardless of authorial manipulation, denitions of monstrosity reside strictly within the one observing. What one spectator classies as freakish (and, thus, requiring compassion or pity) may, to another viewer, simply be family; standards of normality are, after all, purely a matter of individual perception. As audiences approach particular works (including Brownings Freaks) with a set of preconceived notions about what they will be seeingor should be seeing, according to Sontags assumptive ideas of artistic purposewhat occurs between image and spectator is a process of mutual projection or psychological exchange. The artist or director may choose what we see, may even manipulate how we view it, but certainly the nal interpretation is determined by us, the lms spectators. While it is inarguable that Brownings sense of compassion or empathy for freaks is grounded in and compromised by his fascination with the performers bodies, the images in Freaks, whatever Brownings intentions, are not necessarily cruel or compassionate in and of themselves; rather they elicit adverse or compassionate responses, depending upon ones own notions of identity, difference and freakishness.

Capturing Something Real: Harmony Korines Gummo

You never can make anyone trust you. You have to somehow appeal to them, I guess. I dont know. A lot of people dont want to be in a movie. It really depends on your rapport with the person. If they can

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see that youre not wanting to make fun of them, necessarily. For me, its never exciting, or I never have any interest in making fun of someone. Its very easy to do that, to lm someone and look down on them or belittle them. But Ive always had a curiosity for all my characters. Its something I want [to] stare at and want to see and examine. So I guess if youre earnest in that way, a lot of times theyre inclined to give you their trust. Harmony Korine on establishing trust with the nonprofessional actors during the lming of Gummo (Sato par. 25)

Since its release in 1997, Harmony Korines Gummo has regularly elicited severe, often polarized reactions from its viewers. Both lauded for its originality by legendary lmmakers like Werner Herzog and Bernardo Bertolucci, and famously derided as exploitative and voyeuristic by critics such as Janet Maslin and David Walsh (the latter of whom labeled the lm a libel against humanity [Walsh par. 34]), Korines Gummo echoes earlier marginalized lmic curiosities like Tod Brownings Freaks (1932) both in its overtly episodic narrative structure constellated about a story of revenge, and in its presentation of what Benjamin Halligan refers to as a questionable voyeuristic experience masquerading as an expose (153). In addition, like Brownings infamous behind the scenes peek at the daily lives of differently abled circus performers, Korines fusion of the melodramatic, the comedic, and the grotesque conates documentary conceits with conventional ction lmmaking strategies to evoke a pestilential collage adorned by moments of almost Bressonian transcendentalism. One could even posit that as a ctional record of life in a town devastated by catastrophes beyond the humble residents control, Korines lm could have been titled Xenia, Ohio: Open City, for like Italian neorealist works such ` aperta, Gummo shares an obvious as Roberto Rossellinis Roma citta pretence toward photographic realism and verist authenticity, while ultimately adhering to an over-riding formalism. Additionally, in both its aesthetic and narrative, Korines Gummo, like Brownings Freaks, uctuates between expressing an afnity (and, at times, a tenderness) toward its subject matter, and exercising a voyeuristic compulsion to gawk. In other words, rather than liberating the residents of his ctitious Ohio town from a nondemocratizing otherness, Korines lens further grounds his subjects within their estranging corporeal and social bodies.

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Framed by, among other disparate images, stock footage of tornados that both evokes such American Midwest-based fantasies as The Wizard of Oz and pregures the lms meandering, chaotic trajectory, Gummos plot presents a glimpse into the economically depressed lives of the residents of Xenia, Ohio. The lms primary narrative constellates around the daily struggles of ve main protagonists: Solomonthe lms sometimes narratorand Tummler, who ride through the towns desolate streets on their rickety bikes in search of stray cats to stock the kitchen of a local Chinese restaurant, and three slender blonde-haired sistersDarby, Dot, and Helenwho, over the course of the lms rst forty-ve minutes, learn that their cat is pregnant, and then spend the remainder of the lm searching for their pet when it suddenly goes missing. Conicts arise when Solomon and Tummler learn that a frail, effeminate local boy has encroached upon their money-making scheme by devising a more effective way of collecting the corpses of renegade felines, and when the three sisters are temporarily abducted by a lecherous gossip columnist claiming to be Chico and the Man star, Freddie Prinzes, brother. But unlike works of mainstream Hollywood directors, texts that regularly provide audiences with the kind of closure they have come to expect, Gummos central storylines lack conventional resolutions. As the lm concludes, the cat meat industry remains competitive; Solomon and Tummler, in a strangely tender scene, turn off the ventilator keeping their competitions bedridden grandmother alive; the pregnant cat is never found. Telling a coherent story in Gummo, however, is less important to Korine than capturing something honest and true (Hack par. 20). Furthermore, in discussions of his aesthetic vision, Korine repeatedly voices skepticism regarding the value of traditional narrative structure in cinema, preferring a lmmaking style that mimics the fragmentary, nonholistic way that the human mind processes experience. If this methodology sounds strangely reminiscent of Godards famous claim that lms may very well consist of a beginning, middle, and end, but that these parts do not necessarily have to come in that order, such a comparison is not altogether inaccurate. Like Godards cinema, Korines Gummo embraces what Peter Wollen describes as a counter-cinematic mode of narrative intransitivity in which digressions compromise the illusion of order to a degree that the basic story, as much of it as remains, does not have any recognizable sequence, but is more like a series of intermittent ashes that rupture the emotional

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spell of the narrative and thus forces the spectator, by interrupting the narrative ow, to reconcentrate and refocus his attention (Wollen 75). Thus, although capturing something real is a priority for Korine, who, in a practice that evokes the works of both neorealist and avantgarde/experimental lmmakers, largely populates Gummos decaying Ohio town with nonprofessional actors (indie icons Linda Manz, of Dennis Hoppers Out of the Blue [1980], and Chloe Sevigny, of Larry Clarks Kids [1995], are notable exceptions), the lms attention-deciency impressionism disallows an evocation of the world in a mimetic fashion (Halligan 156 57). The lms look and feel derives from a schizophrenic collage of multiple lm stocksfrom scratchy Super 8-mm and jumpy hand-held video, to extended 35-mm steady cam and tracking shotsthat variously informs the audiences experience of the texts ethnographic authenticity while consistently disrupting the lms diegesis. As Benjamin Halligan correctly notes, Gummo is by turns a coming-of-age narrative . . .; Godard-like performing/improvising for the camera; a Neo-Realist-like investigation of the world of the lm; abstract video art; and even, at one point, a cable dating service (an albino waitress talks about Patrick Swayze as the ideal man and dances around her car) (157). Additionally, voiceoverssome clearly attributable to Solomon or Tummler, others left deliberately ambiguousvariably compliment or compromise the images they accompany. In other words, as Adrian Gargett notes: Korine dissolves linear narrative conventions, applying montage and a plethora of mechanical distortions to destabilize the [viewers] perceptual plane (par. 22). Consider, for instance, two consecutive sequences from Korines lm, the rst of which relates, via voiceover, the story of two murderous brothers who may or may not be the shaven-headed twins displayed on the screen, and the second of which relays a rst-person account of incest as we watch an anonymous prepubescent girl playing near a large muddy puddle lled with assorted oating litter and the skeletal frame of a discarded bicycle. In the rst sequence, the muscular twins who lean up against a sports car, playfully wrestle with a rotweiller, vigorously pump weights, and engage in a profanity-lled bare-knuckled brawl within the tight connes of their kitchen bear little resemblance to the brothers described in the voiceover as Jehovahs Witnesses who always came to school with clean shirts and their hair combed. In other words, given the extent to which the brothers

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apparent freedom confounds the logical repercussions (i.e. imprisonment) that would inevitably result from the violent actions described, a direct sound to image correlation seems highly unlikely. Korine further amplies this apparent semiotic rupture in the lms very next scene. As a female voice relates a narrative of sexual abuse suffered at the hands of her father, the prepubescent girl playing by the aforementioned puddle looks up at the camera that lms her from a high angle (emphasizing her powerlessness), and at one point apparently says something to the person lming. Shot on hand-held video, the image of the girl by the puddle conveys the authenticity of a home movie. However, as with the brothers depicted in the previous sequence, the relationship between what we hear and what we see remains ambiguous at best. Hence, Korines montage takes on a new sense . . . in order to become the constitutive and of things, the constitutive between two of images. Therefore, with Korine, the interaction of two images engenders or traces a frontier, which belongs to neither one nor the other (par. 14). Viewers must actively connect the speakers voice with the image, a process that Gummos narrative incessantly undermines with its loosely constructed storyline and frenetic collage of image, sound, and motion. Thus, the residents of Xenia, Ohio, are relegated to the status of characters and caricatures. Dened almost exclusively by their physical and class-based traits, they are ctional grotesques in the literary, and most overtly exploitative, sense of the term. Like the eponymous freaks of Tod Brownings lm, the residents of Xenia, Ohio, are ctions. In addition to the albino waitress, a representative cross-section of the towns populace includes: developmentally disabled teenage girls, one of whom is coerced into prostitution by her brother; a gay African American dwarf; mullet-bedecked racists lounging in a semicircle of rusting lawn-chairs; adult identical twins bathing each other in a tub; a scab-speckled child using a framed family portrait to crush the multitude of roaches swarming over his living room wall; a large, angry man wrestling a kitchen table and chairs; and a young boy in a pair of rabbit ears who urinates off an overpass, plays an accordion while sitting in a lthy mens room stall, and skateboards through the streets before, in one of the lms nal images, making out with Darby and Dot in a swimming pool during a rainstorm. Indeed, given the presentation of the lms eclectic personages, it seems strangely appropriate that Nick Sutton, the actor who plays Tummler, was cast by

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Korine after the director saw him on a day-time talk show dedicated to glue-snifng teens. The day-time talk show, with its propensity for serving as an arena for social trends, is, after all, a postmodern revision of the sideshow exhibition, as well as a forum for the most extroverted of exhibitionists. Indeed, the lengthy quote that opens this section, in which Harmony Korine confesses to the spectatorial pleasures he receives from wanting to stare at, see, and examine his characters while not making fun of them, necessarily (emphasis mine)reveals the extent to which Gummos working class and under-employed characters are objectied for our entertainment and contemplation. Korine invites us to peer into their lives, but with the understanding that we, like Korine himself, are outsiders invested with, and ultimately dened by, a critical, ironic distance. Given cinemas voyeuristic economy of spectator and spectacle, in which the viewer assumes the privileged position of an observer behind a one-way mirror, the process of watching a lm is inherently invested with an imbalance of power. This disparity is enhanced by the ` ne, which privileges medium and long shots (often lms mise-en-sce from high angles that amplify the texts politics of objectication), while shunning POV shots and saving close-ups for moments when the perceived proximity of the actors face provides an opportunity for Korines audience to step right up and take a closer look at the estranging physiologies on display. Furthermore, although the characters may occasionally draw upon our sympathies, allowing us to forge temporary afnities with them, their position as objects for our curiosity ensures their ultimately insurmountable difference. Gummos audience is denied a character with which to identify. This crisis in identication occurs as a result not only of the lms styleits narrative intransitivitybut also because the norm, like the assemblage of grotesques on display and the simulacral burgh they inhabit, does not really exist except in the viewers, and Korines, imagination.

Conclusion
Far from cinematic oddities, Tod Brownings Freaks and Harmony Korines Gummo, exist as merely two works in a larger continuum of lms that not only emerge within the perceived interstices between traditional verist aesthetics and conventional ction lmmaking practices, but also negotiate the murky terrain between cinematic

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representation and exploitation. Filmmakers from Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North [1922]) and Werner Herzog (Strozek [1977]) to Andy Warhol (Chelsea Girls [1966]) and Michael Moore (Roger and Me [1989]) likewise conate seemingly antithetical agendas, producing variably compelling works that at once entreat spectatorial sympathies and cater to voyeuristic impulses. To paraphrase David J. Skal and Elias Savada, when seen in the right light and from the proper angle, virtually anyone can be made to appear extraordinary, abject, or freakish (18). Consequently, Tod Brownings Freaks and Harmony Korines Gummo require audiences to recognize the inequities intrinsic in the very practice of lm spectatorship. At the very least, they necessitate a re-examination of the extent to which lm viewers, like the lmmakers whose visions they consume, project their own (pre)conceptions of normalcy and freakishness upon the projected images that have come to dene the very shape and politics of cinema.

Works Cited
Adams, Rachel. Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination. Chicago: Chicago UP, 2001. Gargett, Adrian. The Future of Cinema: Harmony Korine. The Film Journal 3 (2002). Web. 13 Feb. 2009. h http://www.thelm journal.com/issue3/harmonykorine.html i . Hack, Jefferson. Pure Vision: Interview with Harmony Korine. Dazed and Confused Magazine, May (1999). Web. 4 Apr. 2004. h http://www.angelre.com/ab/harmonykorine/dazed.html i . Halligan, Benjamin. What is the Neo-Underground and What Isnt: A First Consideration of Harmony Korine. Underground U.S.A.: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Cannon. Eds. Xavier Mendik and Steven Jay Schneider. London: Wallower Press, 2002. Hawkins, Joan. Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horric Avant-Garde. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2000. Larsen, Robin, and Beth Haller. Public Reception of Real Disability: The Case of Freaks. Journal of Popular Film and Television 29.4 (2002): 164 172. Sato, Kuriko.Harmony Korine: The Anti-Dreamer. Project A, January 15 (2001). Web. 13 Feb. 2009. h http://www.projecta.net/ harmony.html i . Skal, David J., and Elias Savada. Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning, Hollywoods Master of the Macabre. New York: Doubleday, 1995.

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Walsh, David. Thoughts about the 1997 Toronto Film Festival: Film, Social Reality and Authenticity. World Socialist Web Site, September (1997). Web. 4 Apr. 2004. h http://www.wsws.org/arts/1997/ sep1997/tff-2.shtml i . Wollen, Peter. Godards Cinema and Counter Cinema: Vent dest (1972). The European Cinema Reader. Ed. Catherine Fowler, New York: Routledge, 2002. 74 82.
Jay McRoy is Associate Professor of English & Cinema Studies at the University of WisconsinParkside. He is the author of Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema (Rodopi 2007), co-editor (with Richard Hand) of Monstrous Adaptations: Generic and Thematic Mutations in Horror Film (Manchester University Press, 2007), and editor of Japanese Horror Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Guy Crucianelli is a freelance writer whose work has appeared at Senses of Cinema, Bright Lights Film Journal, and Popmatters, as well as the book Monstrous Adaptations: Generic and Thematic Mutations in Horror.