Freak Show in \"From Stage to Page:

Freak Show

In "From Stage to Page: Franz Kafka, Djuna Barnes, and Modernism's Freak Fictions," Blyn argues, "we can find direct links between Kafka's and Barnes's notoriously opaque fictions and the premier low culture form of their era, the freak show or display of human curiosities," (135). Moreover, the authors' respective engagement with the trope of the freak show serves a distinct political motive: to subvert modernist aesthetics and to ironically predict the twisted horrors of fascism and Nazism. Written prior to the emergence of fascism and Nazism on the world stage, Kafka's body of work and Barnes's too seem prescient in light of their mocking the carnevalesque. Central to Blyn's argument is an understanding of the difference between the carnival and the freak show. The freak show was, for one, a side attraction at a carnival and thus deviant even within the spectacle of the carnival. The freak show was compelling because it was abusive and fetishistic at the same time. The object of the freak show was exploited within a capitalist framework and objectified in ways that have clear implications for gender, race, and social power metaphors. Therefore, it is easy to see why authors would be able to capitalize on the imagery of the grotesque and phantasmagoric as represented by freak shows.

Furthermore, Blyn claims "it is their engagement with such spectacles that differentiates Kafka's and Barnes's work so significantly from the avant garde circles each traveled within." (135). In so doing, these two authors represent the most visible and poignant bridge between modern and postmodern sensibilities and aesthetics. The carnival and freak show collectively represent modernist aesthetics, and reveal also the differences between that which was deemed low-brow and high art. By championing the freak and freak show through the novel, which can be considered a high art, Kafka and Barnes subvert common modern aesthetic discourse. Yet Kafka and Barnes have not yet fully engaged the postmodern worldview either; their work exists on the precipice of it. Whereas "their contemporaries were concerned with subjectivism and the invisible, psychological depths of characters," though, Kafka and Barnes focus on "the surfaces of bodies as they are manufactured for display by the dynamics of spectacle," (135). As such, Kafka and Barnes employ the spectacle to highlight the relationship between capitalism and exploitation. Through narrative, and especially through the elevated station of the novel, the freak show is redeemed. The underlying message is that all subjugated and fringe people are likewise redeemed through their taking back their own power.