"I never liked your show, but I always thought the people did."

Rating: 10/10 (2 February 2018)

How could this vivacious movie musical not bring joy to the most joyless critic? It brought joy to me, and I'm a tough one to win over. "A theater critic who can't find joy in the theater? NOW who's the fraud?" The audience loved it; I've seen it a few times now, and there is always applause when the final quote comes up. Regarding Barnum, the man, the controllers of Hollow Hollywood only hate him because of his outspoken criticisms of their 1800s ancestors, who, ethically speaking, were not too far removed from the controllers of Hollywood today. They will never tell you this about Barnum: 1) He was a Unionist, activist against the Confederacy. The critics paint him as a racist, claim he "owned a slave", but he only took an elderly frail woman on the road with him, when she was too blind and paralyzed to work, and she could not successfully beg for charity on her own, with nobody to look after her in such a vulnerable state. Consider the 1800s and it's lack of any safety net for the poor and elderly: if you could not pry money from the tight grips of the wealthy, by telling them a wildly tall tale and hoping they believe it, chances were high you would starve. Barnum's show saved many otherwise unemployable people from this fate. 2) He really was invited to Buckingham Palace, and his "Oddities" really did mingle with Queen Victoria. It is said "Tom Thumb", the dwarf, was a multimillionaire, who "regularly traded barbs with the queen" - probably the wealthiest dwarf alive back then, and all that wealth was proudly self-made. Tom Thumb also gave generously to charity. Many of the ways in which the circus recruited would violate our labor laws and employment standards today, but the 1800s was very different from now: it was the Wild West. There was no Americans With Disabilities Act, to protect people with disabilities against discrimination, and to guarantee jobs. There was no PETA. It's sad, but true: Survival was every man for himself. I've seen articles which blame Barnum for the animals that perished in the fires set to his museums. To me, that's really reaching; it would be like blaming a family because their pets died in a fire set by an arsonist, meant to attack and bankrupt that family. Barnum was no saint; obviously far from perfect, but we can't just blame him for everything that went wrong. Back then, The circus was just a gamble and an experiment -one we have learned a lot from. Judge any man by the time period he lived in. Today, as a society, we can afford to be more educated, more civilized, more humane, and provide far better safety nets for our poor and downtrodden, that simply did not exist back then. For the few unfortunate oddballs, from around the world, who lived back then, it was the circus or nothing.