Hi guys, excuse the light. I'm just trying to make it brighter in here today. Now this video is one that I hadn't been planning to make but I find myself needing to make it and I apologize if it's a little all over the place, but I am quite frustrated and angry and I just would like to get my thoughts out there, and I've scribbled some things down but. You know. Like the narrative of the film that I'm going to talk about, my thoughts are probably a little bit all over the place The film I want to talk about is The Greatest Showman which is a new film that is directed by Michael Gracey and it stars Hugh Jackman, it is about P. T. Barnum. I had seen an advert for this film last year sometime and while it has songs in it that feel empowering I sensed it was probably not gonna be a film that I was going to enjoy and I would be frustrated with it However, I received so many messages on Twitter and Instagram from people saying Jen have you heard of this film, it's got great representation in it, I think you would love it. I think you should go see it, so I decided to go and see it. And on the one hand I'm glad that I did go and see it because now I can talk about it having seen it instead of just assuming it was something that I wasn't going to enjoy I will say that when I went into the cinema I did think I was going to enjoy it because I had received all of those messages I didn't go in to hate watch something, what is the point in that but I was severely let down by this film. Now in case you are new to this channel Let me preface this video by saying that I have— well— first of all that I'm Jen, hi, but I have a particular interest in the history of the Freak Show because had I been born 150 years or so earlier than now I quite possibly could have been a member of a freak show, as someone who was born with EEC syndrome, ectrodactyly, syndactyly— I will leave links to videos about that in the description box down below— I feel I have a personal interest in this. As I said my thoughts may be all over the place today so I'm gonna leave lots of resources in the description box down below, links to articles about PT Barnum, links to books that you might want to read, links to videos where I've talked about the representation of disfigurement and bodily difference in the media and other things like that— everything in the description box down below PT Barnum is responsible mostly for the way that we think about the circus these days. He was, as the title of this film would suggest, a great showman. He was also a trickster, he used to con people, especially audiences He wanted to give them a sense of wonder. But he also exploited people and treated animals very very badly If you didn't know anything about P. T. Barnum before going into this film which is about his life, very very loosely, you would be forgiven for thinking that he was a really nice guy. Let's talk about how that's not true. In the film, we're introduced to P. T. Barnum as a young boy who was roaming the streets stealing food. He has nothing and no one, his father has died, and he's just trying to scrape a living. This is not how PT Barnum was brought up. Again, I will leave articles in the description box down below but we are showing him as this vulnerable boy who has huge aspirations and wants to achieve because he sees the beauty in things where other people don't and this is demonstrated by a woman who has a facial disfigurement giving him an apple on the street when he has no food at all, This woman in the film, the actress, doesn't have a facial disfigurement in case anyone was wondering. It's just prosthetics and special effects Heaven forbid they actually hire an actress who has the condition that they are portraying in the film. More on that later. So P. T. Barnum feels like he has a connection with people who are different because this woman has given him this apple And he also loves fairy tales and is reading Tom Thumb a lot And he really feels like he identifies with people who are different because he feels that he is different. [pause] He's not different. So in real life P. T. Barnum had several different businesses before he set up his Museum of Human Curiosities, which he toured He had things in his care which were fake, such as the Fiji mermaid, and there were a lot of people who were sewing together various different animals to put on display as curiosities. But he wasn't just doing that, he also had actual people in his care. I use the word "care" loosely. One of these people was Joice Heth, who Barnum bought in 1835 and she was a former slave, she was partially paralyzed, and she was blind. And he— put her on show without her permission because he "owned" her So that the public could pay to come and see her, because he claimed that she was 161 years old and she was the slave of George Washington. He made $1,500 a week, reportedly, from putting her on show and when she died he then charged people to come to her autopsy where a doctor performed an autopsy on her and said this woman is not 161 years old, she's about 80. At which point P. T. Barnum said, "oh! Joke's on you actually, Joice never died. She's just somewhere in Europe, and this is a fake. A fake Joice that I have made you dissect. Joke is on you. P. T. Barnum also expanded his cabinet of human curiosities and also created a circus. Now a couple of the people who were in his show were in the film The Greatest Showman. so I would like to compare the real-life version and how they are portrayed in the film. The first person that I want to speak about is Charles Stratton, who was also referred to as Tom Thumb or The LIttle General. He was dressed up as Napoleon and rode on a horse in Barnum's show. And he had a form of dwarfism. And in the film Barnum recruits him by choice when Charles is 22. It is his decision to go into the circus. He wants to do it because he's been hiding at home for all of his life and this is his chance to shine. In reality Charles was "hired" by Barnum at the age of four. Now Charles Stratton, along with a lot of other people with body differences who went into freak shows, could control how much money they earned as they got older. It was a form of empowerment in some sense because… Because it was a way for them to earn money when they weren't able to do that because society rejected them. But this film gives a false sense of agency and ownership to the decisions of people who were in fact exploited in real life, and and that is not okay. And they must know that that is not ok otherwise the filmmakers would not have changed what actually happened and made the characters older. Another person that they do this with is Annie Jones who has hirsutism She was called the Bearded Lady. In the film, again, she is recruited as an adult who is working, washing clothes and sheets, and Barnum hears her singing And he says, "Please come and work in my show." In reality, how old was Annie Jones when Barnum "hired her" to appear in his show? Nine months old. Nine. And her parents reportedly received $150 a week for their daughter being paraded in front of people. She learnt how to sing and when she was older she was a spokesperson for the freak show, but she was recruited, or sold, to the show when she was nine months old. The actor who plays Charles Stratton does have a condition which means he has a form of dwarfism but everyone else in this show— people who have hypertrichosis, albinism, conjoined twins, hirsutism, gigantism, birthmarks, facial disfigurements — none of the people in this film are played by actors who have those conditions. I consent that some of those conditions, such as hypertrichosis, are very rare I have spoken about hypertrichosis in my History of Beauty and the Beast video, by the way, so if you want to know more about that, up here and down below. But none of these actors are from the groups of people that they are representing and in some cases such as people with birthmarks or people with albinism that is just lazy casting. It's— beyond lazy. What we have in this film is something that we see all the time in books and in films where we are granted a filter, in this case Barnum, who is a white straight able-bodied man, to see the other though. We are supposed to empathize with him because he empathizes with the others so that [pretentious voice] we don't have to do that. And the others — "the others" — in this film are not othered at all. They are people who are dressing up. We have this recently with the film of Wonder which is based on the book by R. J. Palacio about Auggie, who is a child who has a facial disfigurement, something like Treacher Collins Syndrome, it's never given a name. But in the film he is not played by an actor who has a facial disfigurement. He is simply played by an actor who's given lots of prosthetics. Now I know that as an actor you take on the role of someone else and you channel that person, but when there aren't that many roles out there for people who do have disabilities or bodily differences of some kind, why is it not given to those people, those people who can tell that story, not someone who is a filter for someone who is in that position, an able-bodied actor who can then win an Oscar for their brave portrayal of someone who is so very different. The film The Greatest Showman also exists in this contradiction that I couldn't really get my head around. On the one hand Barnum is shown as this understanding man who recruits people who have bodily differences because he wants to show the world that being different is really amazing. But then he has a critic who tells him that everything in his circus is fake. Now as I said, Barnum was a trickster. He used to make up things. He would embellish, you know, the tales of people "in his care" But the people who had bodily differences and disfigurements and disabilities in his cabinet of human curiosities were not fake. Chang and Eng were conjoined twins. He did have people in his care who had hypertrichosis and albinism and birthmarks and many different kinds of bodily differences. The critics seem to be saying that everything in there was fake, which seemed to justify, at least in my head, seems of some kind of justification for using actors who were then pretending to have the conditions that their characters do. Those two things can't exist at the same time, you can't show Barnum as this amazing— empathizer who takes in the different, but then also say this is a lot of fun and japes because nothing is real. How can these things exist at the same time ? I didn't really understand what they were trying to do with that. Now I know that it's bad practice to go into a review of a film or a book and say, this is not what I wanted it to be. I wanted the story to be this. I wanted it to be completely different. Because that's not a review of what you've seen, it's a review of what you wanted to see. So when I say I would have loved this show to have been told from the point of view of people from within his cabinet of curiosities I mean that. But at the same time, judging this film on what it set out to be and do, it failed at that as well. The narrative was all over the place, it was completely surface-level because it was trying to cover so many different things, the lip-synching was ridiculous And the end scene where he — spoiler — turns up on an elephant, a CGI elephant— to a ballet— I— [laughs] There are two redeeming features to this film as I see it. There is a song called This Is Me, which is a very empowering anthem it would be all the more empowering if it was actually sung by people with bodily differences And the focus was on them and not on them admiring Barnum and what a great guy he is. Yes he is flawed in this film, but ultimately He is seen as someone who they really look up to and need. So that song is good. The other saving grace in this film are the characters of Philip Carlisle and Ann Wheeler, I've written their names down Philip Carlisle is played by Zac Efron and Philip and Ann have a relationship. Phillip's invested in the circus, Ann is a trapeze artist and they fall in love but their relationship is frowned upon because Philip is white and Ann is black. Though this is not explored in any detail and we normally see it through Philip there's these sad longing looks and the devastation he feels because society frowns upon the woman he loves it would have been much more powerful to see that from the other side rather than the white dude, which is how we see most of this film. At the end of the film a quote from Barnum flashes up onto the screen that says, "the noblest art is the one makes others happy." I don't know what Barnum's definition of noble was but it is not my definition of noble I don't think this film is as manipulative or cruel as the things that Barnum did when he was alive But I do think that it is hypocritical, misjudged, and quite frankly offensive when you think of all the fabrications that have been— made and put into this story, a story that is supposedly about people who are different, but just ends up being about this slightly flawed white male able-bodied savior. We don't need another story like that. So I think that's everything that I wanted to say today I'm gonna leave lots of links in the description box down below to videos where I talk about other things on this subject, not this particular subject, but discussing disfigurement and representation of bodily difference in the media as well as links to Barnum and any books that you might want to read on this subject as well Yeah I'm gonna go now. I'll be back. I don't know what this was. Apparently I'm going over there I will be back with a video where I talk about books very soon Lots of bookish love. Bye.
