This was a brilliant film that was attacked by the audience of its times for the use of real circus freaks. It is definitely in the vein of social activist filmmaking that is designed to challenge the audience. Todd Browning blatantly forces the audience to square their morality with the common issue of calling people who are different than themselves "freaks" and making the “normal people” the villains of the film. The failure of this film shows the fine line of escapism in the American audience’s diet. They desire something that is foreign and exotic and different but that isn’t really real. This film while featuring individuals that were very different and exotic framed the story in a way that was very real and had a lot to say about people’s prejudices towards each other and it hit a nerve with the audience causing them to turn on the film.
The intense reaction of the audience of the day to this film shows that in the early 1930's American film-goers need their moral lessons to be extremely sugar coated for them to swallow it. This is something that is reflective of the fact that they were suffering greatly from the Depression and felt that anything that sermonized to them was just offensive and a kick in the stomach while they were down.