Tosh.0 & The Two-Headed Man

Today I happened to catch Tosh.0’s “Halloween Special” (2011) where he featured some of his “scariest” clips. One of his clips featured a man from China who had two heads. When he revealed the clip the audience responded in a mixture of fear, disgust and laughter, as Daniel Tosh ran through his jokes, one of his jokes including the difficulty the man must have flossing. I felt that this episode revealed how “modern-day freaks” are still viewed as “scary” and depicted as “exotic” and “foreign”. The fact that some of Tosh’s jokes focused on the difficulty of him performing what we perceive to be “normal” everyday functions, demonstrates the thought that “freaks” can not perform “normal” functions which able bodies are capable of. However, this is certainly not the case. Many of the people with abnormalities are able to cope and find other ways to perform everyday functions, whether or not it’s the exact way in which able-bodied individuals perform them. Also, the audience’s reaction to his “scary” clip reveals how still today we love to be able to observe the Other, to have the Other serve as a form of entertainment, and to serve as a marker of deviance so we can be reaffirmed in our normalcy.

Angela B.