a review of

I had to watch this after seeing the doc Code of the Freaks (2020) where this ended up kind of being the only film the disabled people in the panel said they actually respected in any way. The tagline to that documentary also came from this film, "Offend one, and you offend them all". At the time in which it was made, there were "Ugly Laws" that decreed that people deemed visibly disabled should not be seen in public except in a side show like this. This is even depicted in the film with a horrified man in a park. Working in a circus etc was kind of the only option. It's a little exploitative, yeah. It was 1932. But it's also *even now* very rare for disabled people to play disabled characters. These folks are humanized quite a bit in the film, having their own inner lives. It is infamous for having been banned but exactly why was it banned? Because it showed these people's bodies? I'm just now looking up all the folks who were in the movie, many of whom had real circus performer careers. I wish that a big chunk of the movie hadn't been edited down and lost to history.