The return of the clown

Meyerhold in his clown costume

Charcot identified a second phase of hysteria that he called “the phase of clownism” or later known as the buffoonery syndrome. Protracted movements, big gestures and excessive behaviour were main symptoms. Mady Schutzman spots this phase of hysteria in contemporary advertising. Hysterical joy, full blasted energy and euphoric uprising appear in hundreds of commercials in relation to a product to be consumed in nowadays capitalism. Bodies of women in commercials are putting the mask of hyperfemininity and are manifesting the buffoonery syndrome. Hysteria in its theatrical visualization can be used in popular culture as a critical tool in reviewing the construction of hyperfemininity as a clown discourse. If Charcot’s patients were considered “sublime comediennes” and studied by actors like Sarah Bernhardt for their melodramatic roles, the popular hyperfemininity can be read as a radical potential of buffoonery inspiration. The hysterical spectacle is an act of self-mockery, where subjectivity is replaced with something bigger, something oversignified, a suggestion of hypersubjectivity. The becoming of a clown implies the abandonment of consciousness that is understood as a lie, a myth that is to be avoided.

The clown manifests hysterical symptoms especially in the area of gender identification. The male clown acts his desire to be the female, the desire for women clothing. In Marx Brothers’ film A Night at the Opera, Harpo is caught wearing the clown costume of an opera singer. When he is ordered to take it off, he reveals the uniform of a naval officer, and from beneath it, a woman’s dress. If the naval uniform is the sign of masquerade, the dress underneath stays on, the unlayering goes no further. If the uniform used by the clown is a mockery of male authority that the hysteric rejects, the dress is the fantasy of femininity attached to the male imaginary, where sexual difference cannot function anymore. The story of the hysteric is as controversial as the story of circus clowns. They both had to disappear in the 20th century, due to their masterful refuse of mastery but their contradictions can be revalued and used in capitalism’s dynamic of its internal contradictions. As Mady Schutzman observed the clown is back especially in advertising, and hysteria is back in neurosciences.