Far from being a new soul, clown was born at the dawn of society over 10,000 years ago, but to understand the role clown classically plays in one, we have to go back even further: millions of years, a time before we could even speak as a species.
We’d point, scream, grunt, laugh…and laughter just might be the deepest human signal that everything is okay. I suppose we all needed that: a little relief, once we started settling down—into our first societies. The moment we had structure, we had a chief, and the moment we had a chief, we had a clown. More strikingly, we find clowns in every society across time and space “except Totalitarian regimes,” Bernie Collins told me.
“You kill your clowns and your poets first.”
“Their role is to speak out. To defend. To tell the truth.”
Let that statement coincide with the work of political theorist Hannah Arendt who pinpointed “the break of belonging” as the root of Totalitarian regimes and our modern feelings of isolation and loneliness.
In my study, then, looking out the window into the English countryside, I began reflecting on Joseph Campbell’s epically impactful book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I can fit a thousand clowns in one car, I thought, at least, “hardly big enough for a midget,” in the words of Murray in the play A Thousand Clowns. I have that chick’s book, too— tossed it back there— about the woman’s Hero Journey. Didn’t read it. A clown can also say that.
A clown is an outsider like the hero or heroine is, but paradoxically, its significance is belonging, so clown might be a bridge, some link inside ourselves that keeps the whole intact. Clown might have something to teach us about how to do that — stay together. Squinting at the English horses, an animal tamed yet wild still, it just might be what the world needs right now, a figure older than the hero: a healer.
“Why do we laugh at the clown with a red nose that sits on air…?”
The red nose is found on the theatrical clown and not every clown wears one, but Bernie Collins and I attended the same school that Zach Galifianakis’ character in the TV show Baskets failed out of: Ecole Jacques Lecoq. Our teachers gave us that image to help us find the état or state of clown, so why do we laugh at the clown in its most basic?
Collins ascribed it to “the point of befuddlement,” a phrase taken from author John Wright’s book Why is that So Funny?
“The clown might not know…what is going on.”
I have to admit, Collins did make me laugh as a seasoned clown on Zoom, the way he expressed that. He seemed to know nothing, wasn’t sure. “The audience empathizes with that state,” he said, “because we immediately recognize that feeling in ourselves.”
Maybe because we come into this world not knowing. In the beloved iconic play A Thousand Clowns, Sandra confesses to Murray that she hasn’t the vaguest idea who she is. Watching this hero wander out of town, as the clown was there when the first person decided to “do this,” you see, we don’t have to go anywhere to find the unknown.
“Send in the clowns…they are already here,” Sondheim wrote.
This is the point.
The fool or the village idiot by trade or choice lacks “social graces” and “blissfully operates outside the laws of logic,”[1] (Italics mine) while the hero goes in search of it, a touching pair. The clown represents it—true courage.
Murray meets Sandra’s confession with an analogy. It’s like the impossibly tiny red car that pulls up. The doors open and out come a thousand clowns because it’s impossible to imagine, even, how many people out there feel just like her, making noise, “raising hell.”
Charging into the battlefield on horses intriguingly facing the wrong direction is a “contrary group” from the Plain Americans, not Indians. They had many “contrary” or clown societies—fascinating. This group would ride their horses backward, a word often used to describe clown even in analyzing the costume and make-up, and we might automatically associate that word with others such as silly, stupid, and crazy, but that would minimize the power of backward. (Dave Chappelle understands.) It’s strategically intelligent; you can imagine the enemies looking at these people with the same befuddlement.
What are they doing?
Shooting arrows over their shoulders.
I had to laugh.
There’s a way “it” goes, the clown understands that, but it doesn’t have to go that way. They would switch between the known and unknown, flipping forward and back on their horses, confounding their enemies who couldn’t compute the image.
They were the best warriors because of it.[2]
Plains Ojibwa clown doctors confronted their enemies with a dance, and they would keep dancing until they convinced them that they were deities, not threats, and thus, they would receive offerings instead of violence[3].
And you’d think, wouldn’t you? How did that even work?
An approach that doesn’t make sense is outside the framework of thinking that exists. By flipping the logic, the other can be put into a position of not knowing. That can lead to different outcomes. Powerful move. “Otherworldly.” That’s another adjective that floats around the mystery of clown, and it takes on a new meaning: psychological.
It might seem a little crazy, at first, someone who is acting contrary, but then, “you gotta be a little crazy to stay sane,” I’ve heard that, and in a societal context, that seems to be inarguably true, which would be the relief that the theatrical duos and trios give.
[1] Towsen, John H. Clowns. 1976. Pg. 5
[2] Towsen, John H. Clowns. 1976. Pg. 24
[3] Towsen, John H. Clowns. 1976. Pg. 12