The movie characterizes the segregation of classes that was present in the early 1900’s, when today “class identity is shaped by income and wealth” (Zandy 103). It is sickening to see people classified, judged, criticized, and humiliated by circumstances that they cannot change like how Browning was able to show in this progressive motion picture. After understanding the ideologies and perceptions of society in this era, one might question what would have happened if a physically disabled person with extraordinary mental capacity, like Stephen Hawking, would have grown up in this society? Would they have been praised for their intelligence or ridiculed and humiliated for their abnormal physical disabilities? Unfortunately, the film “Freaks” and historical analysis of the era would lead one to believe that it would be the
The movie characterizes the segregation of classes that was present in the early 1900’s, when today “class identity is shaped by income and wealth” (Zandy 103). It is sickening to see people classified, judged, criticized, and humiliated by circumstances that they cannot change like how Browning was able to show in this progressive motion picture. After understanding the ideologies and perceptions of society in this era, one might question what would have happened if a physically disabled person with extraordinary mental capacity, like Stephen Hawking, would have grown up in this society? Would they have been praised for their intelligence or ridiculed and humiliated for their abnormal physical disabilities? Unfortunately, the film “Freaks” and historical analysis of the era would lead one to believe that it would be the