We showed the film Freaks (1932) to three groups of thirteen year old young people, as part of a research project on ‘disability films’ and identities. All the films discussed facilitated discussions of integration, rehabilitation, independence/autonomy and belonging, but only Freaks encouraged the participants to question conventional discourses on acceptance and tolerance and to reveal the ideological character of the concept of tolerance. The marriage scene, of non-disabled ‘gold-digger’ Cleopatra to Hans, a man with restricted growth, exemplifies the mimetic strategies employed within the film to expose the contents of the disabling gaze/stare. The young people’s discussions of this scene allowed them to perform a group-based ‘ethical encounter’ (Hadley, 2014) with a very different solidarity-based perspective of disability which inverted the normalcy-centred dialogue on tolerance and belonging. Alongside this, the freak-show style vignettes of disabled actors carrying out difficult tasks, provided opportunities for ‘staring’ which, in turn, facilitated discussion of previous assumptions and fascination with ‘extraordinary bodies.’ Overall, not only did Freaks allow them insights into the limited conditions of possibility of the cultural representation of disabled people; the inversion of discourses of tolerance began a process of questioning hierarchies of privilege and what it is to be human.
ORCID: 
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)