'Elephant Man – Otherness Essay Essay\r'

'In Victorian capital of the United Kingdom, Dr. Frederick Treves with the capital of the United Kingdom Hospital comes across a circus sideshow attraction run by a man happen upond Bytes called â€Å"The Elephant homo”. In actuality, the savage on display is indeed a man, twenty-one year old toilet Merrick who has several physical deformities, including an oversized and blemish skull, and oversized and disfigured right shoulder. brute(prenominal) Bytes, his â€Å" bearer”, only wants whatever he send word get economically by presenting Merrick as a freak.\r\nTreves manages to bring Merrick chthonian his c be at the hospital †non with bulge out several of its own obstacles, including world questioned by those in authority since Merrick can non be cured. Treves ab initio remembers Bytes’ assertion that mute Merrick is an imbecile, but level(p)tually learns that Merrick can speak and is a wise to(p) and articulate man. As news of Merrick hits t he capital of the United Kingdom newspapers, he becomes a celebrated specialness amongst London’s upper class, including with Mrs. Kendal, a famed actress. Despite treated oft much than graciousely, the question becomes whether Treves’ actions are a further exploitation of Merrick.\r\nAnd as Merrick becomes more famous, others try to get their two-cents worth from who gloss over remains a quirkiness and a freak to most, including to Bytes, who has since lost his meal ticket. The painting is loosely based on the real number story of Joseph Merrick, known as â€Å"The Elephant adult male”, who was thought to exhaust suffered from elephantiasis and was perceived as being defective and different because of it. As portrayed in the impression, â€Å"The Elephant domain” was not classifyed as human but inhumane; a stranger to most. yet who establishes what ab common is? Do humans really believe they have that power? The Elephant Man” is ri pe another example of someone different. To me he isn’t a teras, just misunderstood, and to tag him like that suggest that on that point’s something within him that makes him less(prenominal) human that the tolerate of us. What I found hard to gain was trying to understaning what lies in the concept of being abnormal in order to have an imagination of what being normal supposes. I mean the notion of â€Å"us” suggests that there must be a bulk to differ from; a range of north that constitutes the abnormal. But who decides who’s normal and who’s not? What is normal any counselings?\r\nI mean all it does is overrule, distort, and oppress everything that cannot meet it’s certain demands and qualifications. I rather be anything BUT normal. The main reason â€Å"The Elephan Man” was shund out of society was because of his physical features and â€Å"deformities”. But why should a physical discrepancy come to mark a ration al one? In the movie the audition/spectators come to represent normality or the unit of ‘us’, standing in opposition to tooshie Merrick. Because of his contrariety they study fit to classify themselves as ‘normal’ and different from him. And in a charge they are.\r\nYou find out, unlike them, Merrick was highly capable of school behaviour. The characteristics of his physical appearance are not regarded as simple features but as deformities, as abnormal, even monstrous. why do the spectators react so strongly towards something they name not to resemble themselves? Why do they, the unit of normality, need to nous out that he is being different trance they get to be normal? Why does the representation of normality feel an dispose to define itself through what it is not? I believe that the process of othering in the movie could be explained by the simple idea that we don’t know what we are.\r\nI mean it seems that there is an infinity of thing s we could be as human beings, so why does society try and control something it has no power over? Is it affraid of what we can arrive at, or does it not want us to achieve in the first place? I mean in Merricks case he wasn’t really classified as either one thing or the other. Just… abnormal. In our world those we get a line not to fit into our group are left as objects of either exclusion, repulsion, repression, burdensomeness; or of a kind of fetishism which nonetheless seems to limit the object of obsession. In â€Å"The Elephant Man’s” case he was neither desier nor wanted but feard.\r\nNo one wanted to be-firend him, love him, see what he was like or even just say the odd hello. He was a freak, a caged spectical for people to point and laugh at. Treves, a desex at London Hospital, stumbles upon and discovers â€Å"The Elephant Man” at a circus sideshow attraction run by the cruel and repulise Bytes and appoints himself the his owner so tha t he could present him to the members of his medical society. He’s disposed(p) many detailed, scientific interrogative sentence before being returned to his owner, but, being emergence to his frequent beatings, he falls severely and is hospitalized in secret where Treves works.\r\nTreves discovers that â€Å"The Elephant Man” can talk and begins to referred to him as John Merrick. When the manager of the hospital warns to have Merrick removed, Treves helps him and he is given permission to stay. Merrick’s stay in the hospital is mentioned in the papers, and soon curiosity leads a famous actress to visit him. The London nobility follows and Queen Victoria herself takes an engagement in Merrick and starts protecting him. However, Merrick is not safety device: his former owner forces Merrick back on the road with him and brings him to France.\r\nThe dwarves and other â€Å"freaks” of this show set-apart Merrick from his abusive owner. After being fre ed Merrick finds his way back to England and collapses in a see to it station, chased by a populace attracted by his deformity. Treves brings Merrick back to the hospital, which is now his home, and an actress who forward showed her interest in him arranges the most elegant night of his life: an attendance to the theatre of operations where she works. After this experience, Merrick deliberatedly goes to sleep while evasiveness down, though he knows this will decease him because of his condition.\r\nHe dies in his sleep. From being â€Å"The Elephant Man” he’s turned into John Merrick, both characters who held the ability to frighten and demoralise people by his mere look. In his appearance people recognize their own humanity, but apparently a misshapen humanity. As the movie goes along, John Merrick is restfully humanized. He was dressed up, called upon by name (not nickname) and given conditions allowing him to show creativity. He analyze poetry, went to the atres, and drank tea like a original Englishman, you might say. Indeed, the monster more and more resembles a well taught pet.\r\nThe recognition of Merrick as a human being, the terrible fate to identify with this deformed edition of a human, makes us turn him into a monster; something we do to make the identification less obvious. It leads us to conclude that he is not human. He cannot be human, and if he is human, than he must be dumb, as the load assures his colleague. The ready in this way removes Merrick from the playing field of humanity all over again. The doctor bases his notion of humanity on the armorial bearing of intellect, while according to the public it has to do with physical features.\r\nBy saying this, the doctor distances Merrick from him just as the public does; there is only a small difference of procedure. But when Merrick starts talking and reciting the Bible he suddenly he belongs to our race again? How that makes sense, i’ll never know. Maybe, locked up idler the face of a monster, rests a human being. Reading Merriam-Webster dictionary defination of ‘normal’ it’s interesting to note how normality is overly given a physical and mental connotation. And because of that we can therefore see how megascopic factors that differentiate an individual make him or her a possible target of othering.\r\n'