This is such a brilliant essay, may I post it at my blog, please?
Everybody loves a clown, so why don’t you?
A clown has feelings too...
(just kidding)
I’m sick of the clown culture too.
An interesting viewpoint, well-written. Hadn’t thought of it that way before, but it’s certainly a good, valid way to see things.
What is helpful is that it doesn’t resort to throwing flames at homosexuals, nor does it throw moral judgments their way (deserving or not). That is for other writings, and it’s been canvassed at length in the past.
This approach is original. And novel. And very clever.
Well done!
Something else which may be of interest: The Commedia del’Arte is a very old form of improvised street theater. It involves clowns such as Pierrot, Harlequin, and Punchinello.
These characters have appeared in European culture for centuries. The great French painter Watteau is best known for his painting “Gilles” which portrays a man dressed as Pierrot. Picasso was famous for his clown paintings which featured players from the Commedia. Diaghilev was very interested in these figures and much of modern ballet sensibility can be traced to his appreciation of Commedia art forms.
If one probes into the foundations of Modernism, the Commedia makes frequent appearances, and one can also notice how connected it is to the growing importance of homosexuality among the artistic class. Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde are also names that are associated with this cultural phenomenon.
It’s a rich field and I wouldn’t try to provide too much detail in a short space, but my point is that homosexuality and clowns are culturally linked going back for well into the 1800’s. The underpinnings of a great deal of our modern artistic culture are very much related to homosexuality and how it was able to express itself in a relatively safe manner through the activities of the clown. The homosexual elements could be presented with great subtlety or quite flagrantly, depending on the time and place. And, of course, it was all “in good fun” and therefore not to be taken too seriously nor censured.
Homosexuality is inextricably tied in with clown culture.
Interesting parallelisms, indeed. It was an interesting read.
Was it a real clown, or just someone made up to look like a clown?
Excellent essay.