The Freak Show Analysis

In the Freak Show, the main attraction is the imperfections of the people on display. The people come and see the Freak show because they love to see the freaks and make a mockery of them. Even the director of the Freak Show, when introducing Will, talks about Will as if he is God's mistake because he had no limbs. What makes it even worse is that the director of the Freak Show not only welcomes, but encourages people to make a mockery of the "freaks." In the Butterfly Circus, Mendez encourages his team to put on display their special abilities. In Mendez's circus he doesn't try to get his audience to make a mockery of his crew, but rather to be inspired by them. There is one scene where a young boy goes up to the strong man from the Butterfly Circus with his father and we can see

In the opening scene, from the dialogue between the director of the Freak Show, Will, and Mendez the audience sees the drastic difference in the mind sets of Mendez and the director. The director addresses Will as the person "who God Himself has turned His back on", whereas Mendez goes up to Will and tells him he is "magnificent." Just from the dialogue we can see how different these two directors see things and that information alone is enough for the audience to make an inference that the Freak Show and the Butterfly Circus are on two opposite sides of the moral spectrum. With the differences between the directors and the show itself we get to see Will become a completely different person at the end of the movie. In the beginning he was a person that believed he was a mistake. He had no belief in his mind that he was worth anything, which is why he spits in the face of Mendez when he says that Will was magnificent. Will believed Mendez was making fun of him like all the other people that came to the Freak Show had. Once Will joined the Butterfly Circus, he believed that he was a person