The Carnival, Circus, Exposition and Freakshow together produced, for a shimmering moment, a uniquely American form of outdoor entertainment. Characterized as exercises in size, novelty and exploration, each of these separate forms intertwined at various points. They developed, separately and jointly, quite differently than European forms. This "shimmery moment" first glimmered in 17931, flickering out in the early 1960's2, spanning one hundred fifty years. The Golden period was not so much as half that long.
A carnival combines rides, concessions, games, and shows into a massed production.3 Its precursor seems found in European medieval fairs, where various acts and amusements briefly formed a raucous whole. In America, two basic carnival forms originated. One, the traveling carnival, circuits fairs and still dates4, while the other is the stationary amusement park. The American traveling carnival's history is uncertain, largely as a result of the first ones, logically, being very small. The present minimal definition of a carnival is a carousel, and a few "grind store" games5. The amusement park on the other hand is more traceable.
The amusement park seemingly developed from pleasure gardens, located outside cities. These pleasure gardens, often sponsored by breweries or trolley companies, provided outdoor congregational space for urban people, for picnics and generally unwind. At some point, hand-powered rides, maybe first a Venetian swing6, shortly followed by a round-about7, were added.
The amusement park might have been born with merry-go-rounds' increasing complexity, as the stationery rides could become elaborate confections of woodwork, paint, mirrors, lights and sound. At first, the animals grew larger and more detailed, thus heavier and more fragile. They still traveled, but only in civilized regions with adequate roads and numerous customers. The rides themselves grew larger, gaining additional banks of creatures, producing power problems. Steam and, later, electricity's employment, again allowed greater size, but further limited travel from additional weight just in the power plant, let alone the actual ride. In America, traveling shows carried smaller, less ornate, and mechanically simpler carousels than those found at ends of trolley lines.
The amusement park, a particularly American carnival form, served two major functions. First, it provided weekend destinations for trolley routes. Without steadily flowing riders throughout the week, trolley companies couldn't operate profitably. Second, these parks provided spaces where people, largely regardless of class or language, could find release from their daily troubles. In fact, for recent immigrants, amusement parks provided somewhat familiar environments8 teaching American behavior.
The American Circus began, as in England, with exhibitions of horsemanship, combined with other acts, like rope-walking or clowning. This indubitably relates to English horse love, and probably also stems from the specialized space requirement for horse acts compared to other early circus acts.9 Until sometime in the 1820's, circuses were held in buildings. These buildings were often temporary, sometimes actually portable. The Circus, limited to large towns, needed either suitable structures pre-existing or space where draws justified building one. With introduction of tents, seemingly inspired by canvas walls of menagerie shows, the circus could play smaller towns. The circus became an ephemeral mirage punctuating rural life, blossoming and blowing away in a single day, leaving just straw and memories.
The first tents were small affairs, round with a single center pole10, seating about 800. In 1840 the Philadelphia Circus performed in an oval tent. In this form, a tent consists of two semicircular ends, two or more center poles, at least one straight section of canvas, and a number of quarter poles. Each show contained at least four tents11, not counting those for any sideshow attractions. In 1872 the Barnum Circus took to the rails, changing forever the nature of circuses.
Previously, circuses had traveled treacherous roads, often getting mired in the middle of nowhere, due to their extreme weight. In order to "cover the nut"12, the show had to go on each day after traveling, limiting circuses to the more heavily populated parts of the United States. The railroad both opened up for the circus large new expanses of America, and made even bigger shows possible. More numerous acts, grander street parades, gargantuan tents.
These larger tents produced a problem. The audience was steadily finding itself further and further from the ring. Circus horses were and are trained to a standard 42 foot ring. Regardless of the size of the tent, the ring must stay at 42 feet, least the show have to give up on horse acts entirely. The solution was simple; increase the number of rings. Generally, at any given time, similar acts were appearing in each of the rings, allowing everybody to have a good view of one ring of action. By the 1890's the three-ring had become the standard for the major American Circuses, though at various times particular operations would present four or even five rings of excitement.
The early tents had been around 75 to 90 feet in diameter. In 1878, when more than one ring was starting to be used, the Cooper and Bailey was under a tent 150 foot round with 100 feet of expansion. 1882 found Barnum and Bailey with a 216 foot round and 162 feet of extension. Forepaugh in 1880 had to install two bands in his 180 foot by 360 foot tent. And the crowds got immense. The 1872 Coup Barnum tent could pack a house to 5,000. The 1898 Barnum and Bailey could handle 14,000 spectators.
The difference in scale between an American Rail Circus, and a small European show makes them very different beasts. American clowns ceased to talk, depending heavily on very broad slapstick. At times they have become almost totally relegated to the walk-around spectaculars. European clowns, however, continue to exchange witticisms with the ringmaster. The highwire, swinging trapeze, and prevalence of exotic animals were other outcomes of the larger tents. The first two because of their visibility and space requirements, the last as a way of whittling down the nut.
The great increases in size allowed by the use of rail resulted in a new problem. Finding enough people to fill the tent. The extensive amount of land needed to set up a major circus was increasingly hard to find near the large population centers that could fill a house well into the thousands. Barnum13 struck upon the idea of rail excursion fares to encourage people to travel out a distance to see the show, and managed to get the railroads to comply with special "circus runs" that gave a special discount to people going to the show.
It must be remembered that the Circus didn't travel alone, but instead carried along various forms of sideshows. These sideshows were not so much a part of a given circus, or even circuses in general, but separate units that might contract with a number of different entertainments, including Odditoriums and Museums, Carnivals, Amusement parks, Fairs and Exhibitions, as well as the Circus. A popular sort of sideshow were freaks, who were often, but not always, physiologically different.
The freak show, like several other sorts of sideshow, first developed indoors, in a common ancestor to both academic museums and Odditoriums. Bred out of Cabinets of Curiosities14, and Arks and "Museums"15, this primeval form looked something like an explorer's attic combined with a flea market. At times, some of the specimens were both human and alive. While the museums were trying to be educational, the dependence on ticket sales as well the state of science at the time, tended to produce a very different enterprise than the typical modern university museum. Often, these establishments had a virtual monopoly on entertainment, as "educational diversions" weren't under the taint of "amusement", regardless of how many sing-alongs16 were in the program. It is to be noted that while museums eventually divided into "legitimate", scientific institutions, and into the "Odditorium" school, the separation was never total17, as seen to this day in the occasional live ethnographic exhibit.
During the Victorian period, which was the flower of the freak show, the ten-in-one18 was a completely respectable family entertainment. P. T. Barnum's American Museum was in an eminently tasteful part of New York City, and many of his best exhibits had met various important personages, both in America and abroad.19 Science had not yet declared midgets, Siamese twins, or most of the other freaks "ill". Nature was allowed to produce the bizarre as a demonstration of Possibility.
It is important to understand that freak shows displayed "exotic natives", self-made freaks, and the now "medicalized" freaks together, with a fair amount of blurring the distinctions. Many times "exotics" were simply Americans that could be presented as such. Additionally, various kinds of "medical" freaks were presented in exotic modes, such as "Aztecs" who generally were pinheads (microcephalics).
It is important to note that all freaks are made. Regardless of whether the presentation mode is exotic, high aggrandized, or "respectable freak", physical difference is but a starting point. Height alone can't make a giant; props, such as platform boots, tall hats and other oversized apparel are essential20. Often, particularly in the case of certain self-made freaks, the main prop is a bizarre story made of equal parts of sexual titillation and violence. These "abnormalities" were thus pushed out into some part of the exotic realm, which made them "safer" for vicarious consumption.
The three forms of outdoor entertainment treated above developed from long standing roots. The entertainments certainly reflected the beliefs and concerns of their operators and customers, but generally were not motivated by an explicit ideological imperative. Motivated by fun and profit, circuses, carnivals, and freak shows, provided at most a mirror of the world around them. The World's Fair was a much different creature.
Between 1851 and 1939, the European world developed a strange new way of demonstrating power, to each other, to their populations, to the planet. Termed Exhibitions, World's Fairs and Exposition Universelles, they were designed to proclaim the superiority of European culture, to make known what their machines and their minds could make possible. These fairs produced temporary cities, often using innovative materials such as glass and iron, only to tear them down six months later. Fully landscaped, they symbolized stability within the transitory. They additionally classified and displayed the world, transporting products and people, in the name of Progress.
Unlike other forms of outdoor entertainment, the Exhibitions were the creation of a small, powerful elite, with a ideological mission. The major backers sought to profit not through gate fees, concessions and individual attractions, but through manipulating minds. Sometimes this was as simple as introducing products and processes, with hopes of latter purchase, either directly or through word of mouth. More often, the controlling shareholders wanted to shape thought and perception, to gain the acquiescence of the mass to the elite's hegemony.21
More so than any other outdoor entertainment, the Expositions quickly cross-pollinated, producing an international, rapidly changing form. Unlike the ultimately conservative productions of showmen22, the Exhibitions were redesigned each time one went up. As such is hard to encapsulated how American Fairs were different. What is much more evident is how American Fairs changed, from the first in 1876, the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, to the last in 1939, the New York World's Fair.
The Philadelphia Exhibition was carefully constructed as propaganda for educated and refined high culture, in opposition to the more primitive ways of "debased" peoples. Stately buildings, fountains, even a butter-carving titled "Iolanthe"23, all worked as signifiers of a cultured Nation. Native Americans and African-American were represented as savage children, the first mainly by the chaotic ethnographic display in the Government Building, the later through the concession "The South" or "Southern Restaurant" where "a band of old-time plantation 'darkies' ... sing their quaint melodies and strum the banjo".24
Unplanned by the Centennial organizers, a "Centennial City" popped up just across from the Main Building. Here, colorful and flimsy buildings served as bars, dime-museums and other amusements. Representing the very things the Exhibition was trying to counter, the "Centennial City" was razed after some fires and other occurrences provided an excuse. Yet at the Chicago World's Colombian Exposition in 1893, the Midway25 Plaisance was a planned and important part of the show. A gigantic Ferris Wheel was the American retort to the Eiffel Tower. Ethnographic villages and a Street of Nations, were situated near various sideshow entertainments.
What was the effect of this juxtaposition? Rydell would argue that the "taint" of the freak show increased the racism of ethnographic villages by mere proximity. This argument ignores that the freak show had yet at least thirty good years left26. I would argue that a more complex relation is at work, which stretches well into the current perceptions of race and culture both enterprises tapped. Additionally, it is entirely possible that we have a hidden cultural division, one side Barnum's respectable clientele, another side representatives of some "cultural temperance" league27.
The Exhibitions came to an end not even a hundred years after the Crystal Palace started the genre. It, like the Rail Circus, Freak show and early Amusement Park28 died when the world changed. Without Empire, the Expositions were both too expensive and redundant to continue. The Rail Circuses could not deal with the increased cost of labor, loss of open land, or, ultimately, competition from newer forms of mass entertainment. Freak shows were robbed of their stars by medical institutions, whose rhetoric won over that of the carny. Amusement parks were forsaken as public transportation fell to the personal auto.
