I’ve been exploring clowning. I had it back in my mind by just seeing some of them around in Growl, or like in Brooklyn, but I was so terrified of clowns for so long. Mainly terrified of my own joy, of my own fears. And the answer was there, all along.
The clown is one of humanity’s oldest and most persistent archetypes. Wherever people gather to laugh, there’s a fool showing them what they’re afraid to see.
So, cheers for clowns. I want more clowns. I’m one.
What clowns do?
- Permission to fail! the clown normalizes clumsiness, vulnerability, imperfection. A kind of anti-shame practice in public.
- Speaking truth to power > historically the only figure allowed to mock authority. The court jester as political safety valve.
- Sacred trickster? in indigenous cultures (Hopi, Lakota, etc.), clown societies perform in religious ceremonies, balancing the serious with the absurd. The trickster as spiritual technology.
- Mirror to society <> clowns reflect back our hypocrisies, pretensions, and anxieties through laughter.
- Resilience >>>> especially in hard times (war, depression), the clown holds space for joy.
The terror of clowns might be the terror of the trickster: someone who refuses to stay in their lane, who collapses the distance between performer and audience, who makes your discomfort the show. That’s also what draws me to them.
This week I created freaks.town, a place to gather friends, a digital site to links to others, to unite, to hold space for us, the weirdos.
Connections to explore
- Fear of clowns as Systemic shame made visible. Fearing the one who refuses to perform dignity
- Clowning as performance art. The body as the whole instrument; failure as the material
- The clown figure lives in Queer Theory territory: excess, gender instability, the transgressive body that refuses legibility
- The court jester role connects to hauntology. like figures that persist as cultural ghosts, haunting institutions that no longer officially welcome them
- Internal Family Systems: the clown, the silly was an exiled part for me. It’s a part who holds pure play and silliness, locked away out of shame
Filmmakers who clown
- Charlie Chaplin — the tramp as political clown; suffering made graceful and funny
- Jacques Tati…silence, physical comedy, alienation as farce
Resources
- I want to take a class (so I want to explore):
- Brooklyn Clown Center
- Coney Island Clown Skool
- Parties: Clown Cult
- Explore the history of medieval jesters and their political role