As a couple of my friends and I gathered to watch the premiere of the fourth season of American Horror Story, one of my friends questioned the true intentions with the title of the new season. Prior to her question, I really didn't put much thought into the matter. American Horror Story is a television series that play into the different fears that everyone at some point experience as a child and sometimes even into adulthood. The show feeds off many of the psychological fears that as adult we pretend we no longer have. However, for this season the shows takes a more physical appearance approach to what society categorizes as a "freak."
Personally, I feel like the show is trying to show the difficulties but also similarities that the characters have to endure due to being labeled as the "them" within society. Though the show does incorporate extremely terrifying aspects of being a freak, the show illustrates the dynamics of the "us versus the them," which is a constant theme that throughout history and till today still occurs. The show is not at all ridiculing the idea of being different, it is celebrating characteristics and personalities that are often overshadowed by the idea of being "normal."
I personally love American Horror Story as the story line and acting are amazing. However I do get concerned that sometimes it does have stigmatizing effects on disabled communities alike. While I haven't seen this season yet, I can give an example from the Asylum season as it typifies mental hospitals as terrifying places, as is often done in horror films across the board. My issue with this sort of representation is that even if harm was not directly intended upon disabled communities it's still is felt by increasing the stigma. By constantly doing horror shows about mental health patients or disabled people labeled as "freaks" doesn't exactly sync up with the idea that it's normalizing them when they are still playing off the terrifying aspects of them over all. Especially if people never actually watch the show but just hear about it, they normalize the idea that people with mental health or other physical disabilities are freaks or something to be afraid of. Anyways, this is a very sensitive subject as representation of these secluded communities is often only done so for the entertainment of "normal" people and thus is often frustrating as it is done time and time again in the industry with no other story shown to balance it out.
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