Clown/PAGLIACCI
Why clown?
Clowns have been culturally corrupted. They are seen as monsters. They have been deemed sadistic, scary, sad, or stupid.
When I explain my take on clown to people, they often suggest that “call it something else.” How about “comedic character”? “Physical theatre”? “Mime”? Or, as advised my Italian father-in-law, “pagliacci”?!
Just don’t say clown. People are scared of clowns. People hate clowns.
My response is that sure, it might be easier to call it something else. But to do so means running away from the root cause of just why people hate clowns.
Clown is the child part of ourselves, the part that has not yet learned to conform. The part whose laugh is inappropriately loud and whose tears cause waves. The child self is not scary. Our world is scary, because our child self is not safe there.
Clowns have existed cross-culturally throughout history as upside-down contrasts to societally approved norms. For thousands of years, clowns (also known as jesters, fools, shamans, and more) have been seen as a necessary, healthy piece to a functioning society. A fool as a foil. Pagliacci offers perspective. A piece of absurdity reminds us of our choice to live in a cooperative, rational civilization. Without the structured reminder of what absurdity looks like, that civilization risks becoming absurd. As ours has done. When fools abound in politics and positions of power, the clown becomes redundant, empty, and scary. It is a purposeless and painted fool. It means nothing. And that, that IS truly frightening.
This is why the clown must be reclaimed. The clown embodies the joy of difference and the euphoria of vulnerability. It represents resilience and the drive towards love and acceptance in the face of enormous obstacles and odds.
What is we lived in a society where we didn’t have to edit out our oddities? Where what makes us different from each other was a source of celebration, curiosity, and delight? THIS is clown. A total lack of fear of Other. A total revelation of true self.
Not so scary!
Perhaps it is scary for a culture of capitalist consumerism, which benefits from our desire to be accepted by selling us short-term solutions to this problem. Perhaps clowns are scary for authoritarian, uninformed government, who, if put in perspective, riss being seen for what it really is: absurd.
A clown is within all of us. The child self is in everyone who has ever been a child. Everyone has access to wonder, hope, elation, and presence, to vulnerability, love, and humor!
So long live the clown! Let her be resurrected! Let his name be cleared! Towards a better world where everyone has their feet firmly on the ground and their heads dreamily, busily, passionately in the clouds! Except for the one or two jesters walking on their hands and tickling our noses with their toes…