On clowns

I should point out before I start, in light of my fulsome and embarrassing outburst of typically British mediaeval servility yesterday, that I very strongly and passionately believe that all people are equal, whatever their gender, skin colour, ethnic origin, religious belief, sexual preference or orientation, height, weight, blood type, star sign, shoe size or IQ, and whatever they may choose to wear on their heads. I also think that we as human beings should treat one another as equals, spontaneously and because we want to (since no attempt to enforce such treatment has worked (properly--equal pay and voting rights and such are always worth striving for, but they're mostly symptoms) as yet, and wouldn't solve the problem if it did), and I look forward to the day when that happens.

I hope that's cleared up any confusion.

More whining about gardening and banks will doubtless follow in due course. But now, clowns.

I can feel people shrinking away as I type the word. It's taken for granted, in most of the circles in which I move, that clowns are at worst scary and at best desperately sad, and (I think) that they always have been, really. Obviously the circles in which I move aren't all-encompassing, because people do still put on the funny clothes and the extreme make-up, in contexts which suggest that they still think clowns are harmless and comical. I was once accosted by a girl clown with a collecting bucket in Penge High Street, and I'm ashamed to admit I froze up and tried to pretend I wasn't there, which is my usual reaction to, you know, anything. (Zander the Human Hedgehog.) It's also obviously true that clowns have not always been figures of horror and revulsion. Certainly, apart from Mister Bob "Pennywise" Gray, no clown that I know of has actually been a scary monster, so it's not an obligatory part of the costume (fright wig, red nose, big shoes, chainsaw), otherwise they would not have been part of circuses and street performances and Shakespeare plays and such like, which were all designed so that people would have fun, not be scared or embarrassed.

Aha. I said the word. Well, typed it. "Embarrassed." I was embarrassed by the girl clown in Penge. Not frightened. Not pitying. Not contemptuous, and not indifferent. I didn't want to react in the way I might spontaneously have reacted, and so, too quickly even to know myself what that reaction would have been, I stifled it and adopted the hedgehog posture, and whatever charity was being collected for that day lost out by whatever change was in my pocket. Perhaps I had been going to be charmed, or amused (I have a vague recollection that under the parti-coloured face she was young and rather nice-looking). I'll never know. But I think, personally, that it's embarrassment that makes us insist that clowns aren't funny, that the antics which when performed by Laurel and Hardy or the Carry On crew are "classic slapstick" become suddenly completely devoid of humour when done by people in springy braces with painted-on grimaces.

So why, then, are some people embarrassed by clowns? Is it because we class them, in our minds, with "freaks" and grotesques and strange men who bite the heads off chickens and other people at whom it used to be acceptable to point and laugh, but quite rightly is no longer? Or is there some other, more embarrassing reason?

Here's a theory. Seriously, it's just a theory, and if I'm wrong I'm wrong.

One thing I know about the political species to which I belong (Liberalus Woolliensis) is that we do like to think well of ourselves. We like to think we're "better than that"; not actually better than other people, no no no, heaven forbid, but...you know...more mature, maybe, more compassionate, more aware. We like to think we're "grown-up" (and some of us adopt that attitude from the age of around seven) and not the sort of person who would laugh at something childish. We like to pretend that if the slapstick were real, and not simulated, we wouldn't feel the same shocked, guilty little impulse to laugh that undercuts our conscious sympathy for the victim. We wouldn't laugh at a person who actually slipped on a banana skin and probably broke her coccyx falling down, because that would be coarse and cruel, and we're not like that. We don't laugh at people who look funny, and we teach our children not to, because again, that would be cruel, and there is no cruelty anywhere in us. We have no dark side, really, nothing there, doesn't exist, stop looking. So we don't laugh at slapstick. We don't laugh at clowns. We're embarrassed instead. We stifle the natural human reflexes we share with every other maladjusted ape on this planet. We turn away, roll up into a ball, pretend it's not happening or at least if it is it's nothing to do with us, and whatever we do we do not laugh.

And, because being embarrassed is pretty embarrassing in itself, we parlay our embarrassment into "it wasn't funny anyway" or "actually I think those clowns are rather upsetting, children shouldn't be exposed to such things, it might give them nightmares" or whatever. All because we are so precious about our maturity and our compassionate liberalism and our stainless self-image that we can't enter into the simple social contract of laughing at someone who is trying to make us laugh. We have to pretend Ricky Gervais is funny instead.

As I said, just a theory. Feel free to discount, discard or knock into a cocked hat, possibly one with a plastic flower stuck in it.