Chris Schillig: Send in the clowns. Never mind, they're too creepy
In a week dominated by discouraging news, as more and more weeks are, one bright spot was the imminent return of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Like most things, however, it won’t be quite what it once was. But, just maybe, it can be something better.
The venerable — and, for some nostalgia-seekers, venerated — circus folded up its tents for what appeared to be the final time in 2017, a victim of changing mores. Many spectators had cooled on animal acts, and bleachers that were once as packed as the inside of a clown car were starting to be more sparsely filled.
But this week the company announced the circus would reopen in 2023. The most visible change will be the lack of animals, a decision activists are applauding. Company executives are throwing around the buzzword “evolving” to explain contemporary attempts to wow jaded audiences in an era of “Jackass”-style stunts, TikTok and CGI effects.
Based on numerous media reports, the new circus will have an emphasis on human performers and their biographies, making it feel more like an episode of those ubiquitous TV talent shows. You know the ones, where every performer has a sick relative at home or an insurmountable obstacle they’re chipping away at through sheer talent and moxie.
The 2023 circus, as it turns out, may be more about grit than grease paint.
While the thought of a “narrative show,” as the revamped spectacle is described in The New York Times, doesn’t necessarily thrill me, it is encouraging to see the circus trying to change with the times, and doing it without animals.
As a kid, I don’t think I ever made it to an actual Ringling Brothers circus. I do recall some version of a circus that would pitch a few tents on the east side of Alliance, just past Mahoning Avenue. Even then, the elephants and other animals looked scrawny and sad. Although to be fair, I didn’t know what a happy elephant looked like.
The era of animals-as-performers is receding further and further in the rearview mirror, so that entertainments that Americans consumed thoughtlessly in decades past – Sea World, I’m looking at you – are now largely verboten, thanks in large part to well-organized activism that changed hearts and minds.
None of which takes away from the majesty and spectacle of such creatures, nor from the curiosity of spectators, young and old, to see them. A far better place to engage with lions and tigers and bears – say it with me, I know you want to – is a zoo, where animals are kept in environments closer to their natural habitat and cared for by trained professionals.
Zoos aren’t perfect, but the best ones focus on conservation. They shield animals from the stresses of travel and predation. The alternative, returning animals to their natural habitats, is sadly impossible, as humanity has already decimated said habitats too much.
Beyond the animal issue, I wonder if any of the new circus acts will feature clowns, which are as intertwined in circus lore as elephants and lions.
Nobody asked me (which happens a lot), but I suspect not. The clowning profession should file a class-action lawsuit against Stephen King, who took their admittedly always-present creepiness and upped it by a factor of ten in 1986’s “It.” With multiple generations scared and scarred by that novel and its two movie adaptations, it’s hard to imagine spectators chuckling as Pennywise-lookalikes spray one another with water from fake flowers.
Ultimately, consumers will judge if a circus without animals, possibly without clowns, and maybe even bereft of big tops and other bona fides is a place they want to take their families. Or if the circus will go the way of penny arcades and vaudeville.
One thing’s for sure, if it doesn’t work out, nobody can say Ringling Brothers didn’t make a good-faith effort to change with the times and reinvent itself, albeit belatedly, for the 21st century.
Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.
This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Chris Schillig: Send in the clowns. Never mind, they're too creepy
