wytchcroft | week of wonders day 3... ruminations

Welcome, welcome one and two - split in half the best of you
round and round and back to front
magic is the thing you want
mirror, mirror show me more
through the looking glass window to an open door

Ladies and Gentlemen, Royalty and Rogue, Youngsters and Old folk alike
welcome to today’s performance in this week of wonders
today we explore the world of strangeness, the hinterland, the imagination
the illusion and shadow - the other side of the magician and the circus...

many people have found inspiration in the circus and for many reasons -
images of the strange and the fantastical, stories to bring delight, to bring shivers
or else more subtly, the feeling of the circus as home.

Picasso's famous pictures of circus life in his blue and rose periods are still among
the most tender images of circus folk to found - real or symbolic, that is for you the audience to decide.

The cinema (a wonder in itself) has long found the circus a fitting subject - and as with any artist, directors have used the circus as both setting and metaphor.
Some of my very favourite films are circus based. Wings of desire, Circus Boys and Funny Bones (Whose Blackpool location is seen in yesterdays poster).

To Wenders the director, the circus has something sacred about it - the trapeze artist who can become almost an Angel in flight and the Angels who falls to meet her.

The circus offers a hope of renewal for a blasted landscape shared by the rubble and figures of films like Germany Year Zero which attempted to explore the realities of post war life.

The circus is liberation.

For others however the circus is a place of dread - "Clowns are Creepy" - a familiar motto, Stephen King's horror novel IT exploits this to the utmost.
Ray Bradbury too in Something Wicked This Way Comes shows the circus can be far more than simple entertainment.
Even that great Timelord adventurer known as the Doctor has found the circus ring to be a place of apocalyptic trial.

And what of us?

We feel the fascination of both fear and attraction... in the UK the notion of the 'dark clown' has been re-enforced by comedies such as The League of Gentlemen whose clown figure kidnaps people to the circus forever with the shrill cry; "You're my wife now"

And this figure has lately been re-imagined by The Mighty Boosh as the green nemesis that haunts both the stars and whose vocabulary of half remembered cockney slang is a new hybrid of musical hall and rap.

Were these archetypes formed by primitive man - magic with masks and power, from simple tribes to the Ancient Egyptians and so on... or simply the pratt falling fun and satire evolving from the Italian Commedia dell arte???

It must be remembered that executions, operations, experiments ALL have been open entertainment for the public at one time or another.

Fear and fascination - many academics have attempted to explain, to rationalise, to neutralise our attraction to the darker side of the sawdust and tinsel...

and yet... week seek... we walk through fun houses, visit circuses and carnivals, fetes and fayres, from live spectactulars to films and tv...

be it freak show, geek show, mystery, magic even the simplest of illusions - exotic creatures of unknown origin or homemade science...

we are enthralled.

Who is it we think we are watching???

still to come in this Week of Wonders, interviews with magicians and clowns - and magic tricks performed and examined...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Quite interesting indeed, my friend.

I don't have much experience with circus' myself... perhaps it was my fear of being kidnapped one day by a circus that heard about my amazing ability to rotate my arms in two different directions at the same time... what do you think? ;)

I am looking forward to further postings, my most amazing and magical friend!

thank you indeed! actually when i was young i had a similar fear!!:)

but - um, my tongue was somewhat in my cheek for today's lecture! ha ha!

I love the circus! And I love your diction!

Now I have more movies to find and watch!

Yes, I have Carnivale, seasons 1 and 2. Very gritty but very interesting as well!

May I talk of my own experiences with the circus, though they were sparse? May we talk of circus books, for I have attempted a small collection?

most kind Sir, most kind! and indeed any input from yourself would be appreciated:)

as for circus books i would love to know more - i have some circus books myself but from a specific period only (the 1950s) because i love the illustration style, even though it was not really a good period for the circus itself in many ways.

i must apologise though since (as yesterday) i am dashing madly about the place with sundry birthday dealings on top of my usual routine - not complaining about that though!! ha ha! :))

week of wonders day 3... ruminations

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