Word: freak
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...more pitiful existence than that lived by John Merrick, the Elephant Man, could not be imagined. Born with a deteriorating disease that infected his body with gruesome deformities, he was treated by Victorian England first as a freak show amusement and then as a society oddity. His story is currently the basis for a first rate complex play about conflicting motivations, and this rather simple-minded black-and-white (in more ways than one) movie...
...Life--" the carnival barker shouts, striking a frightening pose and pausing dramatically, his crazed face illuminated by the kerosene lamp, "is full of surprises...behold the Terriblele Elephant Man." The curtain is swept away. In the mist and shadows, only the silhouette of the sideshow freak is visible--the twisted, lumpy torso and the horrid, enormous head. The place is London, the year is 1883, and John Merrick, a victim of fate and society, meets Dr. Frederick Treves, the man who will change his life...
...streets and alleys, where the loud chugging and whooshing of factory machines creates an incessant, maddening clamor. In one night-marishsequence dozens of dirty, sweating, barechested laborers slave over a huge, clanging machine that wheezes black smoke. The process of dehumanization is in full swing, with the appearance of freak shows and the degradation of John Merrick just a small part of the whole. In a world that is becoming ever more cruel, Merrick is one of many victims...
...Merrick and various excessively slimy and sinister persecutors flirt with melodrama. Rather than concentrating their fire on these caricatured villains, the writers might have more thoroughly examined the subtler exploitation that Merrick suffers under Treves' care. The doctor worries that the hospital has replaced the carnival as Merrick's freak show, that the Victorian socialites come to have tea with the Elephant Man only to stare at him and "to impress their friends." He begins to question his own motives in taking care of Merrick, wondering if he sought only recognition and not social justice. It's an intriguing idea...
Except for a few shaky moments for the Harvard defense--which yielded its first goal of the season on a freak play--the game never seemed as close as the score indicates...