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Some of the other clowns in the circus might pull a stunt like that, but Trump is the Whiteface, the clown that emphasizes pride and arrogance.
He would never allow himself to do something that he thinks will look bad. Not to say his bungling incompetence doesn't do that for him, it's just that he won't do it as a conscious choice.
Clowns are somewhat interesting.the Whiteface is the know-it-all straight man, and the Auguste is the bumbling doofus who is the butt of every joke. The Auguste is the first to get a pie in the face. You laugh at the Auguste.
The Whiteface on the other hand is the person telling you who to laugh at. They tell the mean jokes to get the audience to laugh at others. This makes it so much more satisfying when the Auguste finally hits the Whiteface with the pie.
Anyway Trump couldn't tell a joke if his life depended on it, but he still fills the role of Whiteface in this circus. He'll pull stunts, but only if he thinks it will make someone else look bad.
I think you just explained why I always hated clown shows.
I think it's more likely the fact that clown shows used to be something aimed at adults, and then they got dumbed down to be kid friendly.
Old school performances had lots of jokes about murder, sex, suicide, and other dark topics.
Look at it this way, the Three Stooges was actually a clown show. Moe was the Whiteface. Larry, Curly, and Shep played the role of Auguste.
That's how it sort of went, the actual clowns ditched the makeup and started performing on TV or in movies, and the children's performers threw out all of the rich history and defined roles and instead focused on bright colors and loud fart jokes. Not that fart jokes weren't a rich part of that history. They really were.
Other contributing factors in the death of the clown show were things like The Joker, and John Wayne Gacy.
BTW, the Joker is a classic Whiteface clown taken to a sadistic extreme, he wouldn't be caught dead wearing a red nose. To the Joker, jokes happen to other people. That's what he finds funny. The fact that no one else laughs is what drives him mad.
(As a note, the Auguste is also sometimes called the Red Nose, because they wear the over sized red nose, the white face might paint their nose red, but will never wear the prop)
I saw a troupe at the circus in Brasil growing up (this was well after the 3 Stooges, I'm not that old), and the vibe very much was mean-spirited like you described in the first post, not the Bozo Show kiddie version you're talking about here.
I preferred the elephant kicking soccer balls into the crowd, she boomed the shit out of those little suckers.
Excellent point about the 3 Stooges though, I had thought of it primarily as borscht belt wordplay + slapstick on film, but the social dynamics really do match circus clowns.
Yeah, the Whiteface is a sort of archetype that can be off-putting if done wrong.
Look at modern comedians who often follow the clown archetypes, if loosely. George Carlin was a prime example of the Whiteface. He pointed at a wrong in the world, and people laughed at it.
Robin Williams was an Auguste. He took pratfalls, he had zany antics, pure physical comedy matched with rapier wit. You laughed at him as often as you laughed at something he said about someone else.
There's also a third archetype, mostly American in the clown world, the Tramp. These guys are like the Auguste in that they're the butt of the joke, but unlike the Auguste, they never have a moment where they win. They're the downtrodden, the bumbling idiots who never suceed in pointing and laughing, only at being pointed at. The trope is the life so bad that it's funny.
Another piece of media to really understand clowns is the play, Waiting for Godot. You can find versions of it on Youtube, and the Internet Archive. It's a darkly funny play that is actually a clown show pretending to be a play. It's surreal and kind of fucked up, but in a good way.
This is a very unique take and I’m here for it.
I've spent far too much time thinking about clowns and clown history for someone who doesn't tell jokes. I spent some time researching comedy and how it's changed over the years.
For example, the classic roles of comedy still sort of carry over to modern comedians. For example, Goerge Carlin was a classic example of a Whiteface. His comedy was almost always about telling you who you should be laughing at. He pointed, and you laughed, he never took a pratfall, You never laughed at him.
Robin Williams on the other hand more often took on the role of the Auguste, the Red Nose (Because they're the only clowns that wear the red nose prop). He was loud and boisterous, and took pratfalls. You laughed at his antics, his physical humor, just as much as at what he said.
The Auguste is almost always the butt of the joke when there's a Whiteface, but can be the one playing the jokes when paired with a Rube (A straight man who isn't in on the joke)
There are more classic clown roles that exist, the Tramp is an American clown (but the underlying concept is global) that is always the butt of every joke. Their makeup is usually patterned after the 1930s hobo, they take the sad clown motif to the extreme. The sort of "my life is so shit that it's funny" kind of archetype. Or they can show up in a sort of "the prince and the pauper" situation where they're either slobs in a high society setting, or show refined manners while eating out of a trashcan.
The Tramp is like an extreme form of the Auguste. While the Auguste might get revenge on the Whiteface, the Tramp never will. Also, the Auguste will abuse the Tramp in exactly the same way that he in tern is abused by the WhiteFace.
The Three Stooges come to mind for this dynamic, although none of them were really the Tramp. Larry was firmly an Auguste, and Curly and Shep were closer to the Tramp side of things, but were still Auguste. Moe was a Whiteface.
Anyway, I hope that helps to explain the circus that is the Trump org. They aren't trying to be clowns, but they fit the roles.
Thanks for that little lesson. That's some interesting info.