Abstract
For the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago, a cartoonist named Robert Ripley would create his first odditorium, a public archive of his personal collection of curiosities. While Ripley was not the first to capitalize on the display of “exotic” and “monstrous” curios, his odditoriums illuminate pervasive ideas about human difference circulating in public discourse in the early twentieth century. The odditorium and the freak show are seemingly anachronistic phenomena, but the forums and yearnings for “oddities” still surface in popular culture today: the proliferation of podcasts that detail the lives of serial killers and cult leaders, the massive audiences drawn to viewing cystic acne popped in YouTube videos, and youth makeup artists who cover and uncover dermatological conditions with myriad skincare products and makeup in self-produced video tutorials. This paper will investigate odditoriums as a specific—and troubling—form of public pedagogy, shifting between readings of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in New York’s Times Square and the role of body-as-mannequin and haptic simulation in contemporary sites of popular learning.
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