At-Home Humbugs: Freaks and Fakes in the Nineteenth-Century Parlor Museum

In April 1885, a New York Herald journalist rushed to Madison Square Garden for a special reception highlighting Jo-Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy. A feature of P. T. Barnum's traveling show, Jo-Jo was confounding scientists who had requested a stand-alone inspection of the mysterious attraction. Accordingly, the reporter provided an anthropological description of the boy: “He stands about five feet high. . . . His whole body is covered by a very thick growth of long, tow colored hair . . . and the peculiar formation of his head [is] very suggestive of the Russian dachshund.” At first, Jo-Jo appeared docile, but as the scientists prodded him more and more, he started “snarling, showing his three canine teeth” and asked his guardian if he could bite the inspectors. Jo-Jo was decidedly not a dog-boy, or not exactly. He was, in fact, a Russian teenager suffering from hypertrichosis, a condition causing excessive hair growth all over the body, including nearly every surface area of the face. Barnum had signed him to perform a year earlier, and the boy made quite an auspicious debut. However, Jo-Jo was simply the latest in a long line of supposed hybrid species and exotic curiosities that Barnum had been displaying since midcentury. The famed showman built his name in part by presenting human creation itself as a continual spectrum. Barnum's attractions ranged from live tigers and giraffes to enigmatic simian performers to wax statues of America's degraded lower classes. As much of a draw as he became, even Jo-Jo had to share a bill with Tattooed Hindoo Dwarfs, Hungarian Gypsies, Buddhist Priests, as well as a menagerie of animals including baby elephants, kangaroos, lions, and twenty-foot-long “great sinewy serpents.” But Jo-Jo's specific appeal was tied to his inexplicability. Even given the closer inspection of the dog-faced boy, “none of the physicians present would hazard an opinion as to his ancestry.”

On the Record: Sissieretta Jones and Black Feminist Recording Praxes

In this article, I examine how Sissieretta Jones (frequently described as America’s first Black superstar, among other superlatives) strategically leveraged her European performance reviews in order to increase her listenership and wages in the United States. Jones toured Europe for the first (and only) time from February until November in 1895. According to clippings that she provided to African American newspapers, the singer performed at the renowned Winter Garden in Berlin for three months. Sissieretta Jones also claimed that she performed for Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, at his palace and was subsequently presented with an elaborate diamond brooch for her performance. Afterward, the singer told the African American newspaper the Indianapolis Freeman that she would like to live in Europe permanently. Her biographers frequently cite the success of this trip and its symbolic importance for African Americans. And yet, evidence of these events in the archives of major German newspapers is elusive and contradictory at best, if it exists at all. Nevertheless, after the much-hyped tour, her career would take many twists and turns. Sissieretta Jones eventually performed in venues like Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden. She was the highest-paid Black female performer of the nineteenth century and a role model for future generations of Black performers.

May Days

This chapter recalls Judge Moore's ruling on May 2, 2017, which guaranteed that the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson would retain their symbolic presence in the city for some time. It mentions Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler, who were not eased by the ruling over the two symbols of the Confederacy and were not about to let the City of Charlottesville off the hook. It also looks into Spencer and Kessler plan for a May rally in Charlottesville that dramatically understate the breadth of their full agenda. The chapter highlights how Charlottesville in 2017 was linked in mind and spirit to the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. It traces the history of America regarding its impulse to persecute Jews that has been inextricably intertwined with the impulse to persecute the poor, women, Catholics, Muslims, African Americans, gays, lesbians, and immigrants.

What the World Is Watching

More than a vulgar parody of “real” sport, professional wrestling is a sophisticated theatricalized representation of the transgressive, violent urges generally repressed in everyday life. More than a staged fight between representatives of good and evil, at its heart is a Rabelaisian carnival, an invitation to every participant to share in expressions of excess and to celebrate the desire for, if not the acting upon, transgression against whatever cultural values are perceived as dominant and/or oppressive in everyday life. More than an elaborate con game in which spectators are seduced into accepting the illusion of “real” violence, wrestling activates and authorizes its audiences, makes them complicit in the performance. Matches can be described in conventional dramatic terms that remain consistent whether in Madison Square Garden or Gleason’s Arena. Because the fight is fixed, the contest is for heat—for the fans’ attention—rather than for victory per se.

Last Words (For Now)

The move to Aotearoa New Zealand was transformative in ways I could not have imagined when I left New York City “temporarily” in 1994. From the cheap seats at Madison Square Garden to the VIP tent at Te Matatini National Māori Performing Arts Festival, I continue to embrace the excitement (and terror) of entering into theatre and performance arenas that are emphatically not mine, and to be touched, always, by the generosity of performers and audiences no matter where I find myself. It is tempting to picture Johnny, Larry, and the others frozen in time and space, still at Gleason’s right where I left them. And indeed, Johnny is still there, still teaching youngsters the game and maintaining his claim to fame. He has a website: the ...