Ailantha
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"One Of Us! One Of Us!"

4/30/2018

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...Continued from yesterday:
      
As it turns out, two readers knew the answer to yesterday's riddle as evidenced by their posted comments. The two readers who knew the answer just happened by coincidence to be two of my daughters.

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     Anyway, here's the answer:
    In 1932 the movie “Freaks” was released.
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​       Starring a cast of real side-show performers that both shocked and scandalized the general public,
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 ... “Freaks” was a horror movie that was too horrifying for its time.
       The story line of “Freaks” goes as follows:
      The circus sideshow freaks are a good-hearted and sociable group and among each other they form a close-knit, supportive familial circle.
​ A kind-hearted dwarf named Hans who is well-loved within the freak community  and his sweetheart, a tiny dancer named Frieda, are engaged to be married.
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      A beautiful but evil-hearted trapeze artist named Cleopatra learns that Hans is due to inherit a fortune, though Hans  does not yet know this. Cleopatra and her handsome evil lover, a circus strong man named Hercules, plot to get their hands on  Han‘s money.
​        
      Cleopatra pretends to fall in love with Hans and seduces him away from Frieda, then prevails upon him to marry her, which, completely smitten with the irresistible Cleopatra, he does.
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      Cleopatra, however, intends to poison Hans on their wedding day so that she will inherit his money.
     Hans and Cleopatra are married, and the freaks joyfully celebrate at their friend’s wedding reception, 
except for heart-broken Frieda.
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      While the guests sit around the banquet table feasting and drinking, Cleopatra surreptitiously drops poison into her groom’s wine. The freaks, tipsy and happy, propose a toast to Cleopatra, telling her that even though she’s different from them, they will accept her as one of themselves.
       Then proceeds the famous (among the film savvy), iconic scene from “Freaks,” in which the Freaks chant over and over again to the horrified Cleopatra:

   “One of us! One of us! Gooba gobble, gooba gobble, we accept her, we accept her!”
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     Here's the Youtube link to the "One of us! One of us!" scene in case anybody would like to watch it and become a film savvy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Bnk6VU53Y
     
Cleopatra throws the wine at the freaks and she and Hercules threaten them and insult and shame Hans, who succumbs to the poison.
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      Hans eventually recovers and he and Frieda are reconciled, but not before the freaks, who have discovered that Cleopatra and Hercules tried to murder Hans for his money, go after the evil pair  and deliver to them their just desserts, carrying out a special vengeance on Cleopatra: they capture her and turn her into a sort of squawking duck-woman so that now she, too, is a circus sideshow freak  and one of them.
     "Freaks" was considered so horrifying when it opened in 1932 that the final "duck woman" scene caused audiences to run screaming from the theater. One woman claimed the movie caused her to miscarry.
    However in the 1960's the film was rediscovered and has since picked up a cult following among hard-core movie buffs such as myself (I'm not actually a cult-follower of "Freaks," just a hard-core movie buff) and the line  "One of us! One of us!" is a frequent in-joke reference (that few get but from now on you will) in pop culture, as it has been on The Simpsons,  Big Bang Theory, South Park, 
in a hilarious kiddie book my grand daughter likes called Dog Man,
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​...and now at the Columbus airport.
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​     I wonder if whoever thought up the Columbus Airport slogan  googled it first?
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Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaks

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