Circus Detritus
I found this heading on a display at Circus World in Baraboo, Wisconsin. It took me back for second to conceive of the circus not as a way-down-the-list variety of entertainment, but as the “premier” variety. It sounds far-fetched. But then looking at posters with their emphasis on the sheer size of the circus, it starts to seem believable. One hundred train cars of exotic stuff?
That image reminds me of the celebrated images of giraffes and monkeys coming back to Egypt from the expedition to Punt (as inscribed on the walls of the ancient temple of Hatshepsut). The emphasis in the text at the end is that the “ten thousand wonders form every land” are coming to your city.
As far as delivering the world goes, the circus is a rather impoverished institution. It hardly competes with the Internet or a hundred other deliverers of the world. The circus survives now more as a historic curiosity of old America.. which is certainly the spirit with which I took my daughter to see Circus World, the historical grounds for the Ringling Brothers Circus. I was glad that my daughter could get an introduction to the arts of the circus, from tigers leaping through hoops to jugglers, clowns, and acrobats.
The grounds were littered with the detritus of circuses past. There were old wagons and railcars.
The stuff had its own allure. It had the look of things that had been designed purely with an eye for immediate effect. The colors are thus vibrant. The words clear. The motifs making reference to the surface of traditions, but never getting at the heart of anything. Circus art is thus the very definition of kitsch.
It is nevertheless hard not to take pleasure in all this. From our vantage point it has a kind of shiny originality. Just as the pipe circus music strikes us now as an evocative time capsule, so do the plumes and golden gestures of the wagons. And any premier form of entertainment cannot just vanish and become a mere sideshow to the three rings of culture. It’s a better bet that the aesthetic of the circus is with us, and governing the entertainment that we most enjoy.
