Here come the clowns: critical essays on the circus of popular culture

The circus, the sideshow, the travelling side show, the freak show and vaudeville predate film and television but have been richly important contributors to these later forms of entertainment. Early cinema drew on the talents and performance styles of circus and vaudevillian performers. Since the earliest cinema, the circus itself has been an absorbing focus of interest for the characterful, itinerant and eerie people who populate them. But as a places of entertainment and especially of diversion and laughter, circuses and associated places and spaces have registered recurringly as darkly sinister and frightening, impressions at odds with their purposes as places of amusement. Cinema early registered this uncanny and menacing potential in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) and then Freaks (1932). They are places of entertainment, but when transmuted into other forms the type of entertainment they provide expands in often unexpected ways.

The circus is versatile in dramatic terms, and appearances of circuses or their personnel span genres from spy and espionage (Get Smart, Octopussy, The Avengers), grotesque comedy (The League of Gentlemen, The Goodies), horror (Vampire Circus, Circus of Horrors, It, Killer Klowns from Outer Space), zombie films (Zombieland) period drama (The Elephant Man), noir (Nightmare Alley), rock opera (Repo! The Genetic Opera), the supernatural (American Horror Story: Freak Show, Carnivale), science fiction (Doctor Who) and others. In popular culture, circuses can be everything from covers for international spy rings, a nest of vampires, an alien’s playground or a murder site.

Individual personnel, most especially the clown, register just as eerily from Pennywise in It to the titular The Terrifier and House of 1000 Corpses’s Captain Spaulding and Batman’s Joker, to the dramatizations of real world killer clowns such as Gacy.

However to date comparatively little has been written to explain the place of the circus in popular culture from the sinister resonances associated with them to the circus as a place of marvels.

The intention of this collection is to comprehensively interrogate the cultural messages found in the performances, performance traditions and performers of the circus as these translate into popular culture. The way the circus and other types of performance space and traditions and broken through into popular culture as an influence on film and television as sources of horror, drama or comedy are welcome ideas.

Possible areas include but are not limited to:

High and low culture

The circus and popular culture practices

The representation of circus history and culture

The circus and early cinema

The circus and material culture

Performance types and traditions transferred to the screen

Circus animals

Race and performance

Transgression

Clowns, circuses and fear

Horror in humor

The circus and symbolism

If you are interested in contributing to this collection, we ask that you submit an abstract of up to 250 words by October 25th explaining the focus and approach of your proposed essay. Email marcus.harmes@unisq.edu.au and Meredith.harmes@unisq.edu.au  

The proposed volume is intended to be scholarly but accessible in tone and approach. Each contribution should be 6000 words. 

This collection is under contract with an American publisher.