Résumé :
Clowns can be seen as enacting catastrophe with a small ‘c’. They are experts in ‘failing better’ who perhaps live on the cusp of turning catastrophe into a metaphorical whirlwind while ameliorating the devastation that lies therein. This chapter begins by proposing a big picture view of earth-life wherein, across inconceivable aeons, huge physical catastrophes have wrought unimaginable damage on the ecological ‘completeness’ of the time. Small-scale clowns tend to be tiny bundles or, sometimes, gangly unbundles of ineptitude, careering through the simplest tasks with preposterous incompetence or, alternatively, imbibing complexity with virtuosic delicacy – take Charlie Chaplin’s shoe-lace spaghetti twirling and nibbling on nail-bones as an example. The play on a clown’s ‘undead’ propensity, on his/her capacity to survive at all costs, provides a counterpoint to a tragic lens which has not been able, in human rights terms, to transcend ‘man’s inhumanity to man’.

Localisation : Bibliothèque

Cote : 791.301 T135r 2016