A Reflection on P.T. Barnum

For this blog post, I would like to respond to our reading of P.T. Barnum. We read an excerpt from his essay, The Humbugs of the World, which he wrote as a “diatribe against billboards” (McKibben 81). In it, Barnum condemns people who “advertise in the midst of landscapes or scenery” because it injures the natural beauty and smears it with distasteful associations (81). He calls out advertising in nature as selfish and destructive to its beauty. Barnum particularly uses the words “purity” and “romance” when describing the earth that is violated by advertising and, therefore, greed and desire.

One of the first points we made in class that I agreed with was how hypocritical the essay came off as to us. P.T. Barnum is credited for being the first one to use billboards in New York City, and he did so to promote his shows that capitalized off of people’s abnormalities and displayed them as freakish entertainment. He made his living by being a self-promoter and a promoter of hoaxes. While some see that he gave typically marginalized people a platform to navigate society and make money for themselves, one can also argue that he exploited vulnerable people’s genetic defects without improving society’s respect for them as human beings. However, I suppose Barnum meant to convey in his essay that even he believed business had its limits. There was a time and place for advertising, and the disruption of scenic serenity in order to promote one’s business crossed the line for P.T. Barnum. I think he saw business as an overall good player in society, but also as a representative of human greed and exploitation. It confuses me how he was not affected by these beliefs when considering the personhood of his ‘freaks,’ but I propose that he must have seen nature as a separate realm that should be unpolluted by man’s worldly desires. 

If so, on this point of his I can agree. However, at the same time I do not think that principle is realistically feasible. I wish that we could keep our business ventures confined to the cities, but expanding business inherently requires geographic expansion. A business must reach further and further to connect with more people as cities physically enlarge with population. However, one thought I had upon this reflection is that social media and the internet could help decrease the amount of advertising that corrupts our views of nature. We will still be bombarded, probably in even higher volumes, with advertising because it is in intimate proximity to us on our smart phones, but at least the billboards lining the country roads that Barnum so despised will likely dwindle.