Enfreakment as an Invective Mode in US-American Popular Culture

该项目旨在（重新）概念化娱乐作为美国流行文化中长期存在的、可塑的、强大的实践。它源于这样一种假设：暴露的过程，即“怪胎”形象被建构和上演的过程，可以被理解为一种谩骂的流行文化的特别强大的形成——一种商业大众文化，它从贬低和贬低的表演中产生大众吸引力，其谩骂的价值不断反映在文化本身中。在这种谩骂行为的背景下接近启蒙，既可以对广泛的、多方面的怪异文化有新的见解，也可以对美国流行文化中的谩骂传统和动态有新的见解。在此背景下，该项目将参与作为一个可以在不同类型、媒体和历史星座中观察到的过程。它将这些过程作为行为过程来处理，这些过程构建了一些越轨的，总是历史上的身体非规范性实例，并将这种“越轨”耸人听闻，并赋予其社会意义。该项目希望通过两种类型（集群）来考察这些过程，这些类型（集群）跨越多种媒体和历史星座，并且在表面上非常不同：1)集群可以被描述为区域开发-小说，电影和电视格式，以一种耸人听闻的方式，将农村地区及其居民描绘成离群叛群；2)超级英雄小说类型，在构建“超级英雄”和“超级反派”时，经常利用与怪异有关的越界行为。该项目的研究设计利用模态批评的冲动和表演的概念来探索娱乐的过程特征。此外，它还借鉴了贬低的文化概念，特别是将对贬低价值的反思与流行文化中关于社会规范和规范性的更广泛的社会谈判联系起来。

This project aims to (re-)conceptualize enfreakment as a longstanding, malleable, and powerful practice in US-American popular culture. It proceeds from the assumption that the processes of enfreakment, i.e. the processes by which figures of the ‘freak’ are constructed and staged, can be understood as one, particularly powerful formation of an invective popular culture – of a commercial mass culture that generates popular appeal out of performances of disparagement and debasement, whose invective valences are constantly reflected on in the culture itself. Approaching enfreakment in the context of such invective practices promises new insights both into the extensive, multifaceted culture of freakery, and into invective traditions and dynamics in US-American popular culture. Against this backdrop, the project addresses enfreakment as a process that can be observed in several genres, media, and historical constellations. It approaches these processes as performative procedures that construct as deviant certain, always historically situated instances of bodily non-normativity, and that sensationalize this ‘deviance’ and charge it with societal meanings. The project wants to examine these processes in two genre(-clusters) that span across multiple media and historical constellations, and that are quite different on their surfaces: 1) a cluster that can be described as regional exploitation – novels, films, and tv-formats that, in a sensationalizing manner, stage rural regions and their inhabitant as deviant; and 2) the genre of superhero fiction which, in constructing its ‘superheroes’ as well as its ‘supervillains,’ regularly draws on freakery-related registers of deviance. The project’s research design uses impulses of modal criticism along with concepts of performativity to explore the processual character of enfreakment. In addition, it draws on a cultural concept of disparagement, especially to bring into focus how reflections on the disparaging valences of enfreakment tie pop-cultural instances of enfreakment to broader societal negotiations of social norms and normativity.