Clowns, Prometheus, and Satan: Sunday Musing
Clowns are all all about the intrusion of chaos and the irrational into the rational world. So its appropriate that this post was triggered by good old Jungian synchronicity. I had been thinking of a post about clowns for a couple of weeks. Then a colleague at work bought a copy of Stephen King’s “It”; that night I watched an old Boston Legal episode about Alan Shore’s morbid fear of clowns; and the next morning, there was Unrepentant Old Hippy taking on the same topic.
(So thanks, JJ and Chimera, and forgive me for covering some of the same ground you did. But there’s somewhere else I wanted to go with it.)
When we think Clown, we think Ringling Brothers and Ronald MacDonald, or (for the Stephen King fans among us) Pennywise…big fake nose, white makeup, large feet, outsized clothes, and slapstick physical comedy. A child inhabiting an adult’s body.
That’s what Clown has become in our century. But JJ and Alan Shore both expressed some unease about that ostensibly merry stereotype…and with good reason. Our twentieth century Bozo, with his rubber nose and klaxon, is just the most recent iteration of an older, stranger, thing.
Clowns – all of them, in all their iterations- carry the same message. It’s a simple one, powerful, and deeply true. Clowns say: we all exist within an eggshell-thin shack of “order”, a tiny shelter that we have built between ourselves and chaos. That shell is a fragile construct that we maintain by a collective consensus; what lies beyond is a huge, gaping void. And I am going to poke holes in that shell.
This isn’t a truth we want to ponder too long – our civilized existence requires that we accept the struts and beams of this illusory shelter – government, good manners, religion – as “natural”, “necessary”, and sometimes even divinely ordained.
But somehow or other, every culture manages to come up with a culturally acceptable figure whose job it is to mock the existing order. To kick Power and Dignity in the ass. To turn structures on their head. The unbound outsider, the mocker, show up in everyone’s folklore, mythologies, and religions. There is ALWAYS a trouble maker out of step with the rest of the community/animals/gods – restless, adventurous, proud, but mostly – outside.
Our oldest indigenous cultures have them. Trickster, Coyote, Raven – the rule breaker. The trouble maker. The clown. The one not bound. The liar. In Aboriginal stories, these guys are ALWAYS getting into trouble, and frequently getting their asses kicked by the community for it. And yet this same figure is the being that finds fire and brings it back to the people. Or finds water. Or brings winter to an end. Or, in some Aboriginal cultures, creates the universe.
Trickster lives in everyone’s myths. Prometheus, the rule breaker who defied the gods to bring us fire. The clever fox of the British folk tradition. Bugs Bunny AND the Roadrunner. The Signifyin’ Monkey in Afro-American folk tales, always outwitting and mocking the vastly stronger Lion. Loki. The Court Jester or the King’s Fool – a “clown”, yes, but a figure with special authority to speak the truth, however unpleasant, with impunity. Because there HAS to be someone who can do that – someone who speaks for the Real that underlies the Rules. I am going to poke holes in that shell.
I once got to see this dynamic in action. In 1983, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference met in Iqaluit, and I was working with the broadcast crew covering the event. It was a very intense three day meeting, some very serious issues on the table – participation by Siberian Inuit, the shipping of Liquid Natural Gas through the Arctic, the emerging Land Claims. There were dozens of delegates from Canada, the US and Greenland, international media coverage, and long, hot, passionate debate.
At the height of the discussion, the conference room doors suddenly burst open, and in tumbled some of the strangest people I had ever seen. Their eyebrows and cheeks bulged, they were clad in torn furs, their hair was long and matted, their eyebrows were bushy. Think of the characters in Quest for Fire, but not quite so well dressed.
They scrambled through the huge conference hall, jumping up on tables, poking curiously at the documents and sniffing at the waterglasses. They ran up to the Very, Very Serious Inuit Leaders at the head table, and began to tug at their clothes, remove their glasses, and tried to sniff their butts, as the leaders, the delegates and the audience howled with laughter. One of the creatures, obviously female, took a shine to Hans Pavia Rosing from Greenland, who moments before had been declaiming. She grinned up at him salaciously, clambered up on the podium, and waggled her bum in his face. He literally fell on the floor, holding his sides laughing.
When they suddenly exited (by climbing a lighting grid and disappearing out a balcony door), the conference adjourned briefly – and when sicussion resumed fifteen minutes later, it was at a whole new level of civility, from a much saner and grounded perspective.
They were the Tukkaq Theatre Company from Nuuk, Greenland – all accomplished actors, musicians and mimes. But this shtick was something they occasionally did – at political gatherings, business meetings, religious events – to remind participants not to take themselves so bloody seriously. I am going to poke holes in that shell.
There’s one other great Trickster we are all familiar with. Satan is what happens when the traditional trickster figure needs to be accommodated within the framework of a monotheistic and authoritarian religion. He has all the hallmarks of a traditional trickster figure – he’s a deceiver, a joker, a tempter. Like Prometheus, he rebels against divine authority from pride, and is cast down and punished. But unlike pretty much every other Clown or Trickster, his rebellion against authority is unmitigated evil. When the source of your authority of God, I guess no-one’s allowed to laugh too much at the Big Kahuna. Of course, Christians being humans, they’ve found other ways to celebrate the reversal of authority and mock order – Mardi Gras, Carnaval, the Feast of Fools, Mummers Balls. Commonly viewed as opportunities to party, events like this actually serve a deeper purpose, reflected in their imagery and tradition. Men dress as women, commoners as kings, drunks as bishops. Social order is revealed for the artificial construct it truly is. We all become Trickster for a day. And poke a hole in that shell.
[ratings]
Interesting musings.
So just what are you smoking or injesting these days?
Nothing more interesting than Bridgehead coffee, I’m afraid.
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Wonderful!
Excellent!
We need to get some clowns into Parliament.
Er…
What a great analysis of the clown persona, a perspective I hadn’t considered.
Before you even mentioned them, as I started reading I automatically thought about my favourite characters in first nations folklore — Coyote and Raven. These guys could be such badasses — Raven was such a troublemaker that he once stole the sun, (which is why coastal Salish art always depicts him carrying an orb in his beak.) But they always seemed to make up for it by doing good things, like Coyote discovering fire.
One of the nicknames I’ve always called my dogs is “Trickster” (after Coyote), and one of my dogs was named “Loki”, another troublemaker. Little did I know that I was naming them after clowns!… maybe clowns do have their place in the universe after all, to shake things up.
Thanks balbulican, this was excellent, loved it.
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