The greatest ceramic artist of all
“The greatest ceramic artist of all, of course, is Mother Nature. With the tiniest speck of clay, a mere particle floating in the air, she seeds the magic crystals we know as snowflakes.”
—Suzanne Stauback, from Clay: The History and Evolution of Humankind’s Relationship with Earth’s Most Primal Element, 2005.
the camera’s elevated eye
“[Let us consider] the paradox of the “immobile tracking shot”, in which the camera does not move: the shift from reality to the real is accomplished by the intrusion into the frame of a heterogeneous object. For an example we can return to The Birds, in which such a shift is achieved during one long fixed shot. A fire caused by a cigarette butt dropped into some gasoline breaks out in the small town threatened by the birds. After a series of short and “dynamic” close-ups and medium shots that draw us immediately into the action, the camera pulls back and up and we are given an overall shot of the entire town taken from high above. In the first instant we read this overall shot as an “objective”, “epic” panorama shot, separating us from the immediate drama going on down below and enabling us to disengage ourselves from the action. This distancing at first produces a certain “pacifying” effect; it allows us to view the action from what might be called a “metalinguistic” distance. Then, suddently, a bird enters the frame from the right, as if coming from behinid the camera and thus from behind our own backs, and then three birds, and finally an entire flock. The same shot takes on a totally different aspect, it undergoes a radical subjectivisation: the camera’s elevated eye ceases to be that of a neutral, “objective” onlooker gazing down upon a panoramic landscape and suddenly becomes the subjective and threatening gaze of the birds as they zero in on their prey.”
—Slavoj Zizek, The Hitchcockian Blot, from the collection Alfred Hitchcock: Centenary Essays, edited by Richard Allen and S. Ishii Gonzales, 1999.
“The North Star brightens the ring”
“The . . . equestrian called “The North Star”. . . Levi J. North was small, only five feet six, but so proportioned that he looked his best on the back of a horse. . . . Just twelve years old, he made his debut in 1826. . . . Before long, North’s dark-skinned, light-haired good looks and consummate grace on horseback had made him the leading principal rider in the United States. . . .
In fact, using the word star to mean a person distinguished in his field may have originated with North. “The North Star brightens the ring,” one newspaper put it, and so it was for forty years, either in his own circus or those of others.”
—John Culhane, from The American Circus: An Illustrated History, 1990.
Every clown face in the world
“All circus clowns are of only three basic types. Every clown face in the world is a variation of the whiteface clown, the auguste (rhymes with “roost”), and the character clown.
The whiteface clown derives from the classic Pierrot, the white clown of French pantomime. . . . His clown face is all white, with the features (eyebrows, nose, mouth) painted on in black and red, and other decorations, if wanted, in various other colors. . . . When interacting, the whiteface quickly becomes an authority figure—the adult or parent or boss.
The auguste is the scapegoat, the recalcitrant child, the foolish employee, the country bumpkin among city slickers. He is overtly funny, so he wears the most comic clown face. . . . The base color is pink or reddish instead of white. The features (red and black) are of enormous size. . . . The mouth is usually thickly outlined with white, and white is often used around th eyes. The auguste is the most slapstick of all clowns; his actions are wilder and broader, and he gets away with more. . . .
The whiteface represents order and authority and the auguste represents disorder and rebellion, the two most basic psychological types of the human race. . . .
In contrast, the character clown is a comic slant on some of the roles we play: cops, farmers, ethnics; and the makeup is a comic slant on the standard human face. . . .
The most well-known character clown is the tramp or hobo, and has been for decades. In the 1890s, jugglers on the vaudeville stage often dressed as tramps to burlesque the then-popular ‘salon jugglers,’ who wore white tie and tails and juggled top hats and canes. Tramp jugglers wore rags and juggled old plug hats and cigar boxes. . . .
Charlie Chaplin made the tramp character clown universally popular with his film comedies, starting in 1914 and continuing through such masterpieces as The Tramp (1915) and The Gold Rush (1925) to Modern Times (1936).”
—John Culhane, from The American Circus: An Illustrated History, 1990.
Royal Golden Chariots, Made in London, Forty Feet High
“THE GREAT STREET PAGEANT with its Royal Golden Chariots, Made in London, Forty Feet High, Surmounted with Revolving Tableaux of Golden Elephants, Lions, and Tigers, Mingling with a gorgeously caparisoned [sic] retinue of living Elephants, Camels, Gnoos, and Zebras.”
—advertisement from 1871, the first year of P.T. Barnum’s Circus, from Barnum’s Struggles and Triumphs, 1877 edition. As quoted in The American Circus: An Illustrated History by John Culhane, 1990.
pretty ladies in fluffy gowns riding white horses
“Clowns, elephants, pretty ladies in fluffy gowns riding white horses. That is the circus!”
—John Ringling, as quoted in The American Circus: An Illustrated History by John Culhane, 1990.
two elephants in pink tutus and cupcake hats dancing in a golden, star-studded spotlight
“When Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus opened at Madison Square Garden in the spring of 1942, the program listed as ‘Display No. 18: THE BALLET OF THE ELEPHANTS. Fifty Elephants and Fifty Beautiful Girls in an Original Choreographic Tour de Force. . . . Music by Igor Stravinsky. Elephants trained by Walter McClain. Costumes designed by Norman Bel Geddes.’. . .
There were 425 performances of this circus ballet. . . .
The poet Marianne Moore [saw] the ballet, and rhapsodized in Dance Index over the dancing elephants: ‘their deliberate way of kneeling, on slowsliding forelegs—like a cat’s yawning stretch or a ship’s slide into the water—is fine ballet.”
What remains today of that elephant ballet is the music, of course: Stravinsky’s “Circus Polka”; plus some motion picture film of the elephants in action; and a wonderful circus poster showing two elephants in pink tutus and cupcake hats dancing in a golden, star-studded spotlight. The “strong linear” poster with its frankly flat elephant shapes, “a radical departure in the history of poster art,” according to poster connoisseur Jack Rennert, was designed by E. McKnight Kauffer (1890–1954), who is known in Europe for his many London Transport posters.?”
—John Culhane, from The American Circus: An Illustrated History, 1990.
Marilyn Monroe . . . riding into Madison Square Garden on a pink elephant
“In 1955 Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey actually presented Marilyn Monroe on opening night, riding into Madison Square Garden on a pink elephant.”
—John Culhane, from The American Circus: An Illustrated History, 1990.
this blue lawn
“He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Great Gatsby.
“My Indian Red”
“In the mid-1950s . . . Danny Barker put out four sides of Mardi Gras Indian related material originally on King Zulu Records. Whether Barker was attempting to make a popular Mardi Gras hit from Indian sources is not known but may be the case. With these releases, the Indian prayer “Indian Red” was first recorded as “My Indian Red” with lyrics close to what is sung today.”
—Thomas L Morgan, from an essay on the web, Mardi Gras Indian Influence on the Music of New Orleans, 2002. I heard Dr. John’s version on the radio in New Orleans yesterday. It’s a roll call of indian chiefs, and must be heard to be believed. (This is at least partially because I can’t find the lyrics on this internet nohow!)