History is full of clowns! I don't mean politicians, or idiots, or any other degradation of the name. I mean performers who subvert social norms for comedy. Clowns blend art, physical comedy, buffoonery, and other self-expressions to entertain (or to critique). Whether you call them jesters, fools, tricksters, heyokas, chou, or ne'wekwe, clowns around the world serve an important social role.
By doing the wrong thing, the clown shows us what is right. By doing the right thing, but doing it wrong, the clown teaches us to live. By doing all the wrong things in all the wrong ways and calling on us to laugh, the clown simultaneously reinforces the social order and provides a sort of release valve. Like Halloween (a rite of reversal) only by turning the social order on its head can we understand what society is meant to look like. We then reinvest ourselves in upholding its standards. Only by letting clowns laugh at society can we identify its excesses.
Well, maybe not only. Humor is an important attack on authority, but it can punch down as easily as it bounces up. Blackface minstrels are also considered a type of clown, and though some of the most popular blackface performers were themselves Black, minstrel shows gave the United States many of its most insidious racial stereotypes. Clowning can be oppressive as much as liberatory.
Anyway, when it's used to liberate and reflect, I think clowning is the most fun and whimsical form of social subversion there is. But maybe I ought to clarify-on the homepage, I suggested that we are all of us always clowning, because to live in society is to engage in a clownishly farcical performance. But if we're all clowning, then clearly we're not doing a very good job, because most of us follow the rules of society. You'll see below that many clowns come in pairs: one clown gives orders and appears intelligent, the other is either a total idiot who mucks everything up or a clever cheat who gets around things, and the humor comes from that tension. So there you have it: we're all living by the rules so the other clowns can look sillier.
BLAH BLAH BLAH ENOUGH OF THE CHATTER LET'S GET TO THE CLOWNS! We're going to talk about the European tradition of the circus clown, because that's the kind I like best, and so there. There's great information out there about Puebloan clowns and Chinese dramatic Chuo, but I've only ever been to an American circus, and this is my story, so I'll tell it however I want to.
Suck it.
To attempt to categorize clowns is as useless an endeavor as to attempt to faultlessly juggle a six-piece set of Faberge eggs while balanced on a rolling barrel. Clown archetypes are defined against one another, descended from each other, and as infinite in variety as there are individual performances by individual clowns.
Let's juggle!
A descendant of comedic theater and variety characters, the circus clown wears exaggerated, colorful costumes, often including recognizable props like oversized shoes and multi-colored wigs. Circus clowns simply perform at circuses, and therefore may also be characterized as one of the sub-types below.
Circus clowns are the only kind of clown I have ever seen in reality and I also believe they are where the clown outside of reality came from. Before there was Monarque, I must have seen clowns at Circus Osorio.
I would have first encountered clowns on the street shaping animal balloons in downtown Santa Cruz, but I have a more striking recollection of the clowns at the American Crown Circus, with their large red noses and faces caked in makeup.
Vibe check: circus clowns are silly, but approachable. The easiest type to make into a scary clown, but why would you? They're perfectly good just twisting balloon dogs. Look, one's made your cursor for your (it was me, you're welcome). Isn't that cute?
If I was a circus clown, I would spend most of my performances sticking my fingers into cream pies and licking them off, only to be hit gently by a car and retaliate by throwing open the doors and pieing every single clown inside directly in the face. I have a love for pie, a need to "win" in social situations, and an overblown sense of cognitive dissonance.
More serious and sad than their Harlequin counterparts, Pierrot have long been borrowed from pantomime to represent the suffering clown. With whitened faces, frilly white blouses, and a penchant for massive buttons, the Pierrot presents an almost cute tragic figure. I mean, look at that face. Who couldn't love that little guy? (It's me.)
The Pierrot is perhaps my favorite variety of clown, because I find the sad clown archetype so compelling. The clown subverts through humor. The sad clown subverts even the idea of humor. It's a rich cultural vein; so many of our famous comedians are using humor to cover a deep trauma, sadness, or emptiness. What does mirth look like when it exists only as a red velvet cloth draped over pain? It looks like a ruffle-collared clown in white face paint.
If I was Pierrot-you can see a visualization above-I would completely ignore the Columbine performer I am meant to pursue and instead lie around near the edge of the stage, looking yearn-y and spinning my buttons around. I love yearning. Sometimes I think I like yearning more than I like actually caring for people.
Originally paired with Pierrot, and later with a character archetype called simply "Clown," the Harlequin is a comic servant character from the commedia dell'arte. The Harlequin wears a checkered costume, wins the love of Columbine from the miserable Pierrot, and is always light-hearted and nimble.
Harlequin gained its modern romantic sensibility in comparison to its Grimaldi-pioneered Clown partner.
Originally, the Harlequin was the Hellequin, a club-welding giant who led a pack of devils. It would seem that demonic clowns have a rich cultural history. Hellequin first appeared onstage fully hooded in 1262. Again, the clown hides its true face from the world, humor and pranking a modulating mask that protects it from social judgement for its subversive antics.
I'm definitely not a Harlequin, but if I was one, I would spend a lot of time onstage looking into mirrors and preening. And if having a catchphrase like "I'm hot and perfect" makes me a Harlequin, then perhaps I am one. I can be whatever I want to be. I'm hot and perfect.
Suck it.
Also called the "sad clown" or the "white clown," the white clown is a broad label for Auguste's more sophisticated counterpart. It wears a pointed hat and has a majestic attitude. How strange that clowns, disruptive of social order as they are, should come in pairs. Even the most repulsive clown has a soulmate. Isn't that comforting?
If you thought "yes," you're probably a clown.
The classic white clown is a child of the Pierrot, but whiteface is common across many clowning modes.
If I was a Clown Blanc, I would put a little pom-pom on top of my hat with enough freedom in its attachment that it could bobble around any time I moved my head. This isn't related to my personality; I'm just saying.
Unlike the sophisticated clown blanc, the Auguste is a buffoon, and ugly besides. Auguste clowns wear clothing that is too small or too big, often with suspenders and in very bold colors. The Auguste's face is pink, red, or tan, with the mouth and eyes outlined in bold white. The outline of the mouth is called a muzzle, though the Auguste is clever enough to survive muzzling.
One of the features that makes me a clown is that I have never been able to stop talking, even when told I am irritating or asked politely to shut up. I have so much to say. I am, clownishly, a natural performer. Like the Auguste, this makes me a buffoon.
As a child, I refused to wear pants, because I was afraid of exposing the fat on my legs. The only exception was black yoga pants. I wore only Crocs, because they were comfortable, and so learned very late how to tie my own shoelaces. In middle school, I learned that short dresses and leggings actually showed my legs more than other pants, and so moved to jeans, and wore exclusively open-toed shoes, because I thought they would be harder to mock. I lost three toenails in middle school. Splat splat splat!
Today, I wear oversized clothes, often with suspenders, and I paint my face white with an oversized muzzle around the mouth. I smile very wide, to contrast the more serious affect of my colleague, Pierrot.
I think I am an Auguste.
Jesters and fools are part of an ancient tradition of clownery. Especially during the post-classical and Renaissance eras, noble families kept jesters around to entertain other nobles visiting their homes and courts. Though commonly imagined as fooling in front of kings, jesters also joked for poor audiences at fairs and in town markets.
Many jesters juggled, told jokes, and did magic tricks, but they also sang, played music, and told stories. Their name comes from the French "jestour," or minstrel storyteller.
Again, I see myself reflected in the face of a clown. The urge to tell stories, and to have those stories absorbed by other human beings, is akin to the urge to juggle Faberge eggs. It is performative. It pleads for attention, for expression, for positive audience reaction. If you clap for me, I will clown for you. That makes me an author.
In my cooler moments, I am a jester, but I am really not a fan of the hats. You'd think I would be, but they never look quite right to me when in corporeal form. Like somehow I have this platonic ideal of a jester hat that exists only in my heart. Maybe I just haven't met the right jester hat.
Also called the "Principayaso," "King Clown," or "Crown Clown," the Monarque is descended from the French clowning tradition.
This was the name it gave itself.
If anyone has any information on this clown, please reach out to me immediately.
I AM NOT. I AM NOT. I AM NOT.
Mime, the silent acting out of narrative gesture, has been popular since Ancient Greece's improvised mimius. Jean-Gaspard Deburau solidified the modern picture of a mime, performing from 1816 until his death in 1846. His version of the mime owes much to his experience as a Pierrot, and all of his incarnations of the mime were Pierrot-like in their attitude and coloration, hence our modern association of white face-paint and melancholy with the mime. We always think of clowns as funny, or at least I try to, so why does each clownish archetype find its way back to the sad clown? You know what they say: there are two wolves inside you. One has depression, and the other is gay. You are a clown.
Miming in the Western tradition owes much to both Italian commedia dell'arte and Japanese Noh theatre. I'd tell you more about that, but I don't Noh theatre. Nyuck nyuck nyuck.
If I was a Mime, I would be absolutely insufferable, because miming jerking off (hand motion) and fucking (full hip thrusts) is already deeply embedded in my vocabulary, to the point that it really has nothing to do with sex. It's just not appropriate for a Mime to celebrate escaping the invisible box by hip-thrusting.
The clown mocks all, even death.
Today, bullfighters and barrelmen are two separate roles: one distracts the bull when a rider falls from its back, the other provides comic relief, and may work in a comedic duo (again, soulmates!).
They used to be one and the same. From the 1920s through the 1970s, rodeo clowns used baggy, oversized clothes paired with clown makeup to hide their protective gear as they baited angry Brahma bulls in the arena. Jasbo Fulkerson (haha, Jasbo) was the first rodeo clown to use a wooden barrel to protect himself from being gored, hence the modern term barrelman.
Vibe check: I love rodeo clowns. Just love 'em. One of the few clowning traditions that hasn't gotten so weird and artsy that I no longer find it funny. I know this site does a lot of contemplating, but the point of clowning should not be active, conscious contemplation. It should be entertainment, plus subconscious processing. If the clown actively articulates that what it is doing is counter to societal expectations, it's gone and ruined the whole bit. You can't explain. ajoke unless the explanation is itself a joke. Anyway, a rodeo is entertaining, and these clowns put their lives on the line to fulfill their duties!
If I was a rodeo clown, let's be real: I would be gored by a bull and die.
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