When talking about PT Barnum, we need to forget the word mediocrity. Barnum, we can say, by refusing to act in accordance with the dictionary meaning of the word “normal”, created a frightening and strange circus. Having devoted his life to surprising, entertaining and even scaring people, Barnum has built a dark entertainment empire. Get ready, we’re taking a trip to a circus full of “weirdos!”
One of the Ways America Follows: Utilitarianism
One of the concepts we will encounter frequently when we examine American history is pragmatism. Also known as utilitarianism. We can summarize this approach briefly and quite plainly as follows: The effort to achieve a result, by eliminating some values, and to do a job quickly, successfully and with maximum efficiency. This is not the dictionary definition, of course, but American pragmatism is much more reckless than other pragmatism understandings, but it is just as successful. It is more possible to explain this first definition better as follows: Suppose you own a company. Your goal is to achieve 10% growth in that year. Again, let’s assume you’re embracing the old American pragmatism too much. If you embraced this ideology, you would expect your employees to work day and night unknowingly to achieve your goal. You wouldn’t care about the time they spend with their families. In the end, you saw that production and sales were not enough, this time you would fire your employees if it meant making more profit, and you wouldn’t care about them again. That’s roughly how the old American pragmatists took this approach, knowingly or unknowingly.
A Dark Entertainment Industry Is Born!
Do not worry that the connection between the title of the article and pragmatism is quite disconnected at this point. Soon this link will be much more visible.
American history, especially after the 1850s, gained much more momentum and entered a period where they were able to establish a new way of life for themselves. In this period, people live in big cities and have come to benefit greatly from the benefits of capitalism. It was during this period that a brand new person emerged to make people spend more money and entertain them, and that was PT Barnum . Barnum actually portrayed himself as an innocent person operating in the entertainment industry. After all, how could he harm someone in the entertainment industry? Barnum had started his career as a circus operator.Interestingly, instead of lions jumping through flaming hoops in these circuses, there were people with four arms, hairy women, dwarves, and albino people, the kinds of people audience don’t often see. Barnum called these people “Oddities”. People also come to the circus and look at the interesting talents of these strange people. (If you’d like to learn more about these people and what Barnum exhibited, you can also check out the “Bibliography and Further Reading” section.)
Barnum Gets Rich
As time went on, the circus was attracting more and more people, and Barnum’s pockets were brimming with money. What about “weirdos”? Are they getting rich too? Of course not. They were simply not accepted in society, and now making very little money at a job that only they were disgraced. Barnum was getting more and more hungry by the day. This made him lie to get tickets sold. For example, Barnum said that a woman he claimed to be 161 years old and was the babysitter of George Washington. He had this woman in the circus as well. Of course, the truth of the matter was that this woman was neither Washington’s babysitter nor was she 161 years old. The woman was actually just an old woman aged 79-80. During that period, Fiji Mermaid was a popular myth. So, to attract people to his circus, Barnum made “mermaids” by cutting off the upper body of dead people and adding fish tails to the lower part. He attracted people’s attention with his manipulative moves. So much so that Barnum wasn’t just making money from the circus anymore, he was also putting things he called ‘rare’ in his own museum. In this way, Barnum quickly managed to climb the ladder of fame and money.
Successful Businessman
However, Barnum’s life was turned into a completely innocent story, although of course the facts were known, with the movie “The Greatest Showman” starring Hugh Jackman. Barnum, shown in rosy pink, is an incredibly successful businessman in real life. He is an entrepreneur who quickly understands what people will love and understands incredibly easily how to turn it into money. American history has been filled with successful entrepreneurs like Barnum, especially from the second half of the 1800s to the present. Again, this proved how pragmatism brought power and money, even if it surpassed some values. It is an indisputable fact that ethical values do not always intersect with succetufss. Perhaps for this reason, we should be careful about while choosing what we consider successful, success does not only consist of tangible rewards, and not every tangible return is an achievement to be appreciated.
References and Further Reading
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (nd). T. Barnum Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved March 30, 2023, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/PT-Barnum
Magazine, S. (2017, December 22). T. Barnum isn’t the hero the ‘greatest showman’ wants you to think. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved March 30, 2023, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-pt-barnum-greatest-humbug-them-all-180967634/
Serena, K. (2021, October 5). 13 of P.T. Barnum’s most unusual sideshow attractions. All That’s Interesting. Retrieved March 30, 2023, from https://allthatsinteresting.com/pt-barnum-oddities
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