Geek show

Geek Shows were an act in traveling circuses of early America and were often part of a larger sideshow. The billed performers act consisted of a single geek, standing center ring chasing live chickens and ultimately ending with the performer biting the heads off then swallowing. The Geek Shows were often used as openers for what are commonly known as freak shows. The geek is generally identified with social repulsivity, and hiring people with physical, mental or social debility was typical.

Today

The term Geek Show is often applied to situations where an audience is drawn to a performance or show where the performance consists of a horrific act that is found disdaining but ultimately entertaining by masses. It may also be used by a single person in reference to an experience which they found humiliating but others found entertaining. It is used as a derision.

References in pop culture

A geek show plays a prominent role in the Katherine Dunn novel Geek Love in which the debutante mother of the freaks, Crystal Lil, met their father while performing as a Geek during her summer break from university. Aloysius, the proprietor of the traveling, comments that the college boys often toured as the geek during their summer breaks but at the sight of the lovely Crystal Lil and her eagerness they made an exception. During a recounting of her time as a geek she remarks on how damaged her teeth were from biting the heads off of chickens.

In the 1998 Simpsons episode "Bart Carny", Homer and Bart are asked to perform in a geek show to pay off a debt: "You just bite the heads off the chickens and take a bow". [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Simpsons#Bart_Carny_.5B9.12.5D]

External links

* [http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/g/g0070000.html Your Dictionary entry]
* [http://www.theg33kshow.com The G33k Show entry]