12/21/2020
Clown in The Time of Covid (Or The “C’ Word)
by Sara Toby Moore
It’s not funny. Nothing is.
The many Covid deaths and illnesses, the never-ending quarantine, the near-smashing of our American democracy and the long Orwellian presence of Herr Tweetler has made daily life in 2020 nauseatingly anxious and depressing. Now THAT’S comedy, right?! Wasn’t it Mel Brooks who famously said “Tragedy is VERY funny. World War 2? Hilarious!” That kind of paradox is, in my opinion, the root of being human. It’s our base. Funny-Not Funny, Love-Hate, Real-Fake, I-you, Dead-Alive. The dialectical nature of humanity is where our greatest comedies and tragedies, our greatest stories, are born. It’s still not funny, though. Yet the thing is, we are living inside a clown act right now, even an entire sideshow. Everyone, it seems, is part of a massive multicultural pie fight with real consequences. No banana cream here but rather bricks and bullets and bombs and hate and sneak attacks and ugly reveals and nasty magic tricks and bait-n-switch tactics and quick changes.
I admit I winced when Biden called Trump a “clown” at the presidential debate. I just as quickly found myself thinking: well, but he IS. He’s a cruel clown.
I used to vehemently defend the word “clown” as reverential to the art form and hated it being chucked about as an insult to oily, sh*theel politicians and other malcontents. But you know what? I’m done with all that, even as protective as I’ve been of myself and my fellow professionals. People are right to use the word, especially in relation to an individual with such amplified, entertainment-level cruelty. And also, not all of us professionals are goody-two-shoes clowns. I do love what the sweet clowns do and I deeply admire any artist who can fully enchant children of all ages with an authentically goofball, kind-hearted persona. I’ve loved doing that myself. But to use a Beatles analogy: while many of my beloved colleagues are fully in the realm of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” I am more “The White Album.” There is a mix! And a dark side and I don’t mean a genre like horror clowns. Granted, the codification of clown forms and types is a pretty passionate thing as I learned from my years as the director of a clown conservatory. There’s a very real and often rigid adherence around the definition of who or what constitutes “clown”, sometimes dogmatically so. I think the best clowns always have pathos, darkness, often eclipsed by hope and levity. If we can leave you laughing through sobs we have done our job. If we leave you sobbing and rageful and laughing yet passionate to love and forgive then we are geniuses.
With all that said, I’m still talking more about a systemic, amplified, childlike darkness inherent in all human beings. I’m remembering the Q train in the evening rush hour, packed with grown humans looking like exhausted, scolded children, sitting pigeon-toed, clutching newspapers, everyone unique, dorky, adorable, grotesque, gorgeous in the twilight of a packed subway train clattering over the Manhattan bridge with our Statue Of Liberty visible out on the water. The poignancy of this was inescapably glorious, a mélange of scowls, dyspepsia and boredom on the faces of many races and skin tones. The commonality was as glaring as the individual eccentricities.
How many people could I easily refer to as “clowns” whether it was my weirdo chemistry teacher in 10th grade who smashed chalk on his desk and reeked of vodka or the current outgoing President of the U.S. who really does remind me of a few predatory guys I did shows with in casino entertainment. I can’t honestly imagine him in higher relief than he already is, with his mane of wig-like faux-blondiness and his orange foundation oozing sweat and his barking litanies and repertoire of broad gestures. There’s no denying a certain charisma that’s irresistible with old fools, whether Uncle Alfred at the seder table or say, the owner of a major league sports team: bigliness & super confidence always seem to get the Koolaid drunk by folks eager to be led and dazzled, not to mention being mother’s milk to those who grew up abused by as****es just like them. There is a clownishness that erupts as much from pomposity, self-aggrandizement and the telling of bold lies as from squirting flowers, big shoes or tiny, packed cars. And seriously, come on, how many of us have family members riddled with grotesqueries but we still love them, even enough to allow them their warped opinions if they’re pushy enough, only to slink away later muttering “sh*thead” under our breath. We are everywhere, in every guise, we animated humans.
In the professional realm, there is a certain benign cruelty in a lot of comedy, too, as amply employed by the likes of Sasha Baron Cohen. He’s one example of a brilliant setting-up and punching-out of hapless ignoramuses and man, he does it SO well. The greatest clown acts or characters have some measure of malevolent mischief in them, soaked in bludgeoning silliness and rocketed by love, real love. A longing to expose, face it all, smack down and then check a mirror on the way out. Outside of Cohen, I’ve definitely seen some very mean bouffons & comics and watched with queasy glee the machinations of dragging folks onstage for “audience participation.” I vividly remember Don Rickles, a highly physical stand-up who humiliated his audiences.
There are so many examples.
I guess I’m finally coming to this: if all the world is a stage then each one of us is some kind of clown. I think we first become clowns in darkest childhood. As kids we are at our most real. Kids are part monster, part imagination machine, part silly fool and I think most of us never really travel that far from our childhood to become the weird hodgepodge of scars and longings we are as adults. We just learn to manage it all better.
But we never fully grow out of ourselves, do we?
Some of us decide to put a string of lights and a loud horn on all that and travel the land as professionals on stages and screens, but that doesn’t mean we can deny there are others who channel their own civilian foolishness into ignorance and cruelty, parading their boorishness to grab power. Or on the flip side to amplify all that is joyful, kind and eccentric to create buoyancy and laughter. As professional clowns the realness of everyday humanity’s clowns is truly a treasure trove, a stockpiled casting office of “types” to study and take on. Let’s face it, the profession of clowning depends on the humanity of clowning to fuel and provide the characters and stories we take on.
My first impulse has always been to defend my chosen art form and profession by screaming “We’re here to bring jooooy!” But this is only partially true. The truth is that all clowns aren’t joyful. We are also here to stoke awareness, to invoke danger in order to avoid or overcome it, to tell stories of grace and survival, and also to take a crap on the bed of the self-righteous and run away screeching. Funny stuff, not always comfortably so.
Real life’s clowns are a lot more dangerous.
A moron with power is hysterically funny onstage, in pretend-land.
But in the real world there are real stakes and they are terrifying. I’ll laugh at them anyway and vote them out.
But it’s not funny. Not yet.
