Send in the Clowns

When I launched this series last month I said that we wouldn't be focussing exclusively on feature films (although there will still be plenty of those; don't worry); we would also be showcasing some short films, a few television episodes and even a couple of ballets.

Well, this is the week that I make good on all that (and there will be others to come). We're going to have a triple bill no less (quadruple, if you count the "Out of the Inkwell" cartoon) all directly relevant to the topic at hand. 

Don't worry; there's no need to panic; I did tell everyone that there would be a lot more diversity in this series, but I guess this is finally the moment when we can fully dispense with any archaic notions about this being just a "weekly film night". (And if anyone still persists in referring to it as "Vicky Park Flicks" after all these years I will personally descend upon them with the very Hounds of Hell. And we will show no mercy...)

Molly, aka The Thing of Evil (on loan from Stephen King) is watching you...

And if you're wondering why I am suddenly sounding so... demonic... it's because the unifying theme this week is Clowns. Lots and lots of Clowns.

How do you feel about clowns?

Do they make you feel warm and fuzzy? Do you find them irritating and annoying? Do they terrify you? 

Do you actually find them amusing?

For a character type that is supposed to be fun, clowns often seem to generate a surprising level of negative emotions. Fear of Clowns even gets its own scientific (sounding) name: Coulrophobia. (I worked with a guy in the 1990s who had a pathological terror of clowns. This week's presentation is definitely not for him...)

But curiously, clowns (or at least these specific clowns) are the perfect metaphor for many of the concepts I have been exploring in this series thus far.

Who are we? What are we? Where are we??

Why do clowns provoke such strong emotional reactions? 

For one thing, clowns are always performing. 

Everyone has a persona that we present to the outside world: an image of ourselves that we want others to see. This persona may or may not be a mask for our true identities; it may or may not correspond to the person we present to ourselves... but clowns make that mask explicit and permanent. Their emotional state is a performance, and it's also their defining characteristic. 

When a clown "performs" joy or sadness or fear, it's difficult to know what (if anything) lies beneath the surface, because for that moment, the clown is joy or sadness or fear.

You can strip away the surface clown, but underneath the mask there is just... more clown.

The specific clowns in the works I have selected for this evening all, in their own way, represent "constructed personas".

In the 1961 Twilight Zone episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" (spot the subtle Pirandello reference!) a group of random, unrelated people find themselves trapped in an environment with no explanation, no memory of how they got there, and no knowledge of their lives before their arrival. They only know what each of them is: an army major, a bagpiper, a hobo, a ballerina and a clown. In other words, their persona is their identity.

Do they have any existence beyond these signifiers? And perhaps more importantly, can they transcend those signifiers to escape the constraints that have been placed upon them? Like Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, these five lost souls are trapped by a narrative they did not create, and constrained by the identities that have been imposed upon them. The question is whether they can transcend all that to take control of their own narrative...

Our next clown turns up in a neighbourhood where you don't normally expect to encounter clowns: in Star Trek.

Like so much science fiction, Star Trek is practically bursting with explorations of "artificial intelligence": robots with aspirations to humanity; deep space probes that believe in god; computers that think they are god.

But it's an oft-overlooked 1996 episode of Star Trek: Voyager that (surprisingly) manages to touch on issues that feel relevant to modern A.I. of the "Large Language Model" variety. Michael McKean (probably most famous as one of the founding members of "Spinal Tap") is an AI manifestation of the primal fears of a group of scientists who have sought refuge inside a virtual environment. The algorithm that creates the environment they inhabit is designed to generate characters and situations that will service the needs and desires of its users. 

Unfortunately, the system also gives form to their basest fears. And as Captain Janeway observes, "How do you negotiate with fear itself?"

The final clown in our little "world tour" is technically not a clown at all; he is a puppet.

Petrushka is a classic Russian stock character from the early 19th Century, and a close cousin to the British "Punch" (of Punch & Judy fame) and the Italian "Pulcinella". Frequently seen as a sideshow attraction at Russian carnivals and festivals, Petrushka was the subject of a radical and revolutionary ballet staged by the Ballet Russes in 1911, with a musical score by Igor Stravinsky.

Originally danced by Vaslav Nijinsky, this version of Petrushka is a tortured soul, doomed to live out the bawdy narrative constructed for his character, forever in love with the ballerina he can never have, and forced to inhabit his tragic character even when the audience isn't watching (and no one is "performing" the puppet).

This is a "Petrushka" show from the inside out, showing what that silly little carnival sideshow might look like when you're the one stuck in the narrative you have been given; the role that has been forced upon you.

Sound familiar?

These are not the "horror" clowns of a Stephen King story or a Batman comic, but they are the very pith and moment of "identity" distilled into a Commedia dell'Arte character. They are what happens when a narrative construct strives for agency.

We will pay these various Bozos a visit at 7.30 on Thursday, the 23rd of October at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.