Addiction, like disability, has long served as a mirror for societal projections of cultural fears, anxieties and moral judgments. In Nightmare Alley (1947), all these factors emerge in the figure of the geek whose behavioral and bodily demonstrations become a spectacle of degeneration. Expanding upon the seminal work of disability scholars like Robert Bogdan, Lilian Craton, and Rosemarie Garland Thomson, this paper aims to situate the figure of the geek in the historical context of the freak show⸺ a popular form of entertainment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that exhibited human abnormalities and other unusual or grotesque “events” for profit. While the field of disability studies has significantly examined the socio-cultural functions of the freak show, the relationship between addiction and disability has largely remained unexplored. Addiction, as represented in Nightmare Alley operates as an insistent and nagging presence —embodied in the figure of the geek ⸺ that demands attention, but which also positions the body, the addict body, as a contemporary manifestation of the grotesque spectacle. In following these intersections, this article contributes to the broader discussion of stigma, the nature of spectacle and public consumption, and the shift in attitude at how addiction and disability are portrayed and understood.
