Agency through Otherness: Portraits of Performers in Circus Route Books, 1875-1925

Ethnological Congresses and the Spectacle

by Rebecca Fitzsimmons

Perhaps the circus seems to stand outside the culture only because it is at its very center.
                                      — Paul Bouissac, in Circus and Culture: A Semiotic Approach

INTRODUCTION
The Golden Age of Circus is deeply embedded in the cultural history of the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 The circus had nearly unimaginable levels of dazzle and excitement, coupled with a tremendous geographic reach. Many businesses and schools closed down when the circus arrived in town, making “Circus Day” the almost singular focus of attention. The arrival of a traveling show brought out local residents, but also people from the surrounding area as circus excursion trains encouraged spectators to travel to the centralized venue. In fact, the size of the crowds that flocked to the circus lot were often a focus of attention, with newspapers reporting on the totals as a part of the larger picture of the incredible scale of operations.2 It is through that reach that the large circus shows also had a platform to shout ideas, many of which positioned the circus as a form of mass culture that “had tremendous power to help shape audiences’ ideas about the expanding nation-state and its changing position in world affairs."3

Marian Murray has described the circus as a site where “Brilliance runs side by side with dinginess; comedy with horror; the meretricious with the genuine; the mediocre with the sublime."4 It's in those blurred lines and in-between spaces where the “experiential inversion of reality and fantasy unique to the circus” 5 was probably most able to exert its cultural influence. The authoritative presentation of ideas, billed as “educational and ‘uplifting’,”6 was coupled with the utter immersion of audiences in the brilliant sights and sounds around them. In particular, when applied to the spectacle and menagerie portions of the show, this would have offered a chance for spectators to have an experience that must have truly skirted the line between authentic7 and staged environments. The idea that “the circus acts as a reflective space for not only self-regard, but also for broader cultural evaluation” 8may not have been at the forefront of an average circus-goer’s mind, but as we will explore in this essay the underlying messages would have been there nonetheless.

The circus was a site for myriad forms of entertainment, but the main focus of this essay is on the grand spectacle—often known as the “spec” in the circus world—and the sideshow. It is in these two places that the circus was most outwardly able to project itself as a synthesis of entertainment and education for the masses. Beginning in the 1870s, P.T. Barnum began to relentlessly advertise that his circus was “moral, instructive, and family-friendly,”9 relying in large part on his menagerie shows. The advertising of this instructional aim, however, quickly began expanding to include the sideshow as a site of ethnological study (a presentation framing that had already been in place from earlier museum exhibits). The spectacle was similarly billed as a tool for edification, but the implied hierarchy of Western cultures generally and American exceptionalism more specifically was a deeply ingrained message of these performances, whether historical dramas or patriotic reenactments. 10

It is also these parts of the performance that are likely to be some of the most controversial and ethically tenuous, raising questions about exploiting people and solidifying societal ideas of “normalcy” and “otherness”,11 and about the possibility of agency within a structure that was largely built on “unequal social relations, oppression, and exploitation.”12 

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