On Sunday, May 21, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus gave its final performance, at least for now. Given the length and breadth of the franchise, I find it hard to believe that someone won't revive it in some way soon but at least the current version of it has shut down. At this very moment, dozens of clowns are all driving in one tiny car to the Unemployment Office.
Speaking of those clowns, here's a lovely little tribute to them set to a tune by Kermit T. Frog…
I'm not sure how I feel about this, except of course that it's sad when any enterprise shuts down and lots of folks are out of work. I would imagine some of those folks worked long and hard to perfect certain skills that they can no longer count on to yield a paycheck.
Beyond that, I have my mixed feelings because of some aspects of circuses. One is that I'm not sure how I feel about animal acts, a subject I may delve into in a future blog post. I am, however, sure how I feel about clowns: I find a lot of them creepy and not in an entertaining way.
I am talking here about the make-up, not what they do while wearing it. I like the spirit of clowns. I like the mania to amuse. I like pantomime. I like clever gags when they have them. I just don't like clown make-up. (Actually — and this is also a subject for a future blog post — I don't like a lot of make-up on women for cosmetic reasons, or cosplayers or anyone for that matter.)
But clowns…when I was a kid, I wasn't so much scared of them as bewildered. It was like, "Why would someone do that to themselves?" I never thought "it's a tradition" was, all by itself, a good reason to do anything. I'd see clowns perform and I'd think, "Gee, this might be funny if it were a human being doing this." Clown make-up makes the performer distant, alien and sometimes demented.
With all the great pantomime comedians I ever loved — Laurel, Hardy, Keaton, Langdon, etc. — most of the humor was in the face and in the expressions — or in Mr. Keaton's case, lack of expressions. Some clowns design their faces to enhance expressions but some pretty much paint the expression on and there it is. And like I said, some of them seem creepy as they hide behind those masks and their frozen faces. The one or two professional clowns I've known personally were all funnier and more expressive without all that stuff on their faces. I'm sorry some of them have no place to clown anymore. Or anyplace to wear their huge purple shoes.
Trying to think…it's been a good thirty years since I went to a circus, unless you count the "du Soleil" variety. Longer than that, probably. I remember the clowns working real hard and looking like they put more effort into applying and removing their makeup than they did coming up with jokes. I remember liking the acrobatic feats that demonstrated skill and artistry and not liking the ones that were sold as dangerous with constant reminders that we could be out to see someone lose their lives or break every bone in their sequin-bedecked bodies. And I kind of felt bad for the animals, though I have since seen acts where I thought, and later confirmed, that the animals led very good, healthy lives.
So I don't know how I feel about the Greatest Show on Earth going away. Given how little attention the closure got, I'm obviously not alone.
When I started writing this, I planned on closing with a quip about how no one has to go pay good money to attend a circus anymore. They can just flip-on C-Span and see pretty much the same thing, only not as amusing. But now that I'm here, what I'd planned seems kind of obvious…
…so let's just bid a fond farewell to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus — a throwback to another era. I'm already missing the parts of it I'd expect to miss and none of the others. If you feel as ambiguous as I do about the whole institution, maybe that's why they had to fold their metaphoric tents and steal away into the dim recesses of childhood memories.