Circus as Multimodal Discourse

Performance, Meaning, and Ritual

Paul Bouissac

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Academic
• Jahr: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781441135759
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Thema: Sprachliche Semantik

Now available in paperback, this volume presents a theory of the circus as a secular ritual and introduces a method to analyze its performances as multimodal discourse. The book's fifteen chapters cover the range of circus specialties (magic, domestic and wild animal training, acrobatics, and clowning) and provide examples to show how cultural meaning is produced, extended and amplified by circus performances. Bouissac is one of the world's leading authorities on circus ethnography and semiotics and this work is grounded on research conducted over a 50 year span in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. It concludes with a reflection on the potentially subversive power of this discourse and its contemporary use by activists. Throughout, it endeavours to develop an analytical approach that is mindful of the epistemological traps of both positivism and postmodernist license. It brings semiotics and ethnography to bear on the realm of the circus.

1

Circus Performances as Rituals:
participative Ethnography

Circus online

As I surf the internet in search of circus itineraries, I come across the website of Zirkus Charles Knie which advertises its traditional program and indicates the German cities where it will perform in the weeks ahead. The dates for Heidelberg are ideal. I can make a stopover in this venerable university town on my way to Munich, the city from which I am due to fly back home a few days later.

The traveler in search of a circus can easily follow its tracks on the World Wide Web. Most circus companies maintain websites that list their current programs and display some visual documents, even in some cases, brief videos of the acts they want to highlight. For Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, www.circus-gastspiele.de/Gastspiele/TourneeKarten/ provides such information in great detail with, in addition, links to the city maps on which the ephemeral locations of the circuses are indicated. Similar information can be found for France in the daily updated website www.aucirque.com. In early 2011, I had reviewed 31 such websites for Germany alone when Zirkus Charles Knie caught my attention. Not only was it going to be coincidentally on my path but also its traditional program, as far as I could judge from the brief video clips it had put online, was extremely attractive for my research purpose. The whole array of circus specialties was represented in this program: ground acrobatics, flying trapeze, lions and tigers, clowns, exotic animal displays, and three different kinds of equestrian acts. It was obvious from the glimpses offered by the clip that the show was staged with artistic flair, a treat for an ethnographer of the circus in the twenty-first century.

Research on contemporary circus indeed starts online. The websites put up by individual artists, troupes, agencies, and companies provide a wealth of information not only on the organization of the trade but also on the contents of the spectacles they advertise. Virtual data, both visual and verbal, and the musical background that comes with the video clips are relevant to the inquiry of the ethnographer who endeavors to explore the interface between the circus and its audience. Such websites are modern versions of the posters and placards which were once displayed in cities and villages in advance to announce the forthcoming visits of circuses as the only means available to reach potential audiences. The modern websites are also extensions of the traditional façades which decorate the front of circus tents with their banners, painted panels, loudspeakers that blast alluring music, and other devices, which call the attention of passersby and entice them to purchase admission tickets. Many circuses also provide the means of buying seats online ahead of time rather than queuing in front of the wickets after the traveling circus has set up its tent on the lot. Contemporary information technologies, though, have not cancelled the traditional publicizing strategies. They reflect and expand them beyond the printed media and the direct displays which require larger budgets than the fees of a single webmaster. In fact, most circuses now use all these promotional tools in combinations which maximize their public exposure toward enticing and securing audiences.

This book endeavors to document and analyze the circus as a multimodal discourse which plays an important part in the contemporary landscape of mass entertainments and feeds people’s imaginations with rich icons and narratives. To do so, it will exploit all sources of information available, both through perusing circus websites and providing detailed descriptions of actual performances in all their multisensorial dimensions. Indeed both virtual and live experiences belong to the modern enjoyment of the circus.

But speaking about the circus in general terms, as is often done in essays and journalistic reports, misses a crucial point: each circus is an organization with its own social identity and symbolic character. Although all traditional circuses present the same kinds of acts, each company has a unique profile that is rooted in its history and the past experience of several generations of spectators. Some circuses have been family-owned for more than a century; others have kept the name alive over several transfers of ownership when the company identity tags were purchased with the animals and equipment. There are some brand names in the circus world which are important assets because in some populations they evoke rich associations with exotic and daring displays. These names mean “circus” and they radiate such an aura of magic that retired owners of such names often lease out the right to use them as a marketing device for lesser-known companies. It is interesting to note that the value of these prestigious names is grounded in their history and the memory of the spectators who attended the performances which were delivered under their labels over several generations. The symbolic value of these names is purely historical and circumstantial. In most cases, there is nothing fancy in their phonetics and semantics with respect to the languages of the countries in which they operate.

There was indeed nothing extraordinary in the name of a circus which periodically illuminated my childhood in southwestern France. Cirque Bureau could hardly have borne a more pedestrian name, the equivalent in English of “Circus Office” or “Circus Desk,” given the double meaning of this common French word which can also occur as a family name, hence the name of this company which had been founded by Jean Bureau in 1851 and was still owned by one of his descendants in the 1940s. In my preteen years, “Bureau” was for me endowed with all the glamour of another, marvelous, world. My grandfather was speaking with awe of the shows he had seen in this circus when he was younger. Circus Bureau’s slogan was Le cirque sans bluff [the circus that does not bluff]. It cultivated an ethos of respectability and, at the time when I saw it, presented only horses and, occasionally, dogs, in addition to the expectable assortment of acrobats and clowns. Its posters were considered reliable reflections of the actual program that would be seen under the big top. “The musical horses,” for example, were depicting six horses engaged in producing sounds from some adapted instruments: an oversized keyboard; a drum connected to a pedal that a stomping hoof could activate; bells that could be shaken on command; two honking horns that could be squeezed by a horse’s mouth; and a podium for the conductor which was briefly holding a baton between its teeth or, otherwise, agitated its head furiously as if it were giving the beat that was actually produced by the circus musicians.

This circus had twelve mares, four white, four brown, and four black, whose names we knew because they were inscribed on wooden plates hanging in front of their individual stalls under the tent which served as a temporary stable. There was also a special one, Roxane, the gray mare who every year danced to different tunes and rhythms. For naïve spectators, the behavior of the horses in the ring was nothing short of miraculous. One year, they would enter the ring in haphazard order, each wearing a number fixed on its harness. While they were cantering around with all the numbers mixed up, the trainer would order them to take their right place and, in no time, number one would be first in line and so on until they all had taken the slot indicated on their backs. Another year, they would wear the names of the twelve months and similarly they would rearrange themselves from chaos to cosmic order. They were told to trot two by two, three by three, or four by four. They would all be mixed up and asked to sort themselves out by colors. Some years the horses would wear extravagant yellow and orange plumes and elegant harnesses decorated with shiny copper nails. Some other years, they would perform bare as if they were wild horses, running faster and jumping to a fast, exotic music rather than cantering and pirouetting in perfect order to some Viennese waltz melodies. This was what Cirque Bureau meant for me and for all the families who would not have missed, if they could afford it, the annual visit to the circus which pitched its blue and yellow tent on the central market square of the city, surrounded by its trucks and trailers painted in the same colors as the tent.

The identity kit of a circus, its public profile, is a visual set of qualities that distinguishes it from its competitors and from other kinds of commercial enterprises. Since the late eighteenth century, when circuses became a legitimate business in Europe and America, the printed media extended to a wide audience the interface of circuses with the population at large through images and texts. But the direct impact of the actual presence of a circus in a city depends on its capacity to stand out against a duller background as was the case when traveling troupes were performing in seasonal fairs and were vying to catch the public’s attention. Still, nowadays, traditional companies display distinctive colors and decorative patterns that characterize their trucks and trailers, their tents, and the souvenirs they peddle to their audience. Vivid, even gaudy colors mean “circus” and their particular chromatic combinations which evoke ancient coats of arms indicate the brand, so to speak, as much as their large painted names, which cannot be missed from a distance.

This distinctiveness has been transferred to the electronic media. Clicking on Zirkus Charles Knie in Google brings up pages that introduce present and past programs with abundant pictures and video clips. Other links take us to views of the big top with its elegant white and red stripes, its electric giant sign in the form of an arch which reads “Super Circus” above “Zirkus Charles Knie”; the illuminated glittering front and entrance; its welcoming smaller tent in which visitors will wait and socialize around the booths selling programs, drinks, and circus food before the beginning of the show and during the intermission. At the same time joyful circus music seeps from the computer’s speakers. The current program is announced on a star-studded intense pink background through five blue circles which frame highlights from the show: a young lady facing the muzzle of her seal; a pickpocket who has jokingly robbed an unsuspecting spectator of his watch, wallet, and tie; a five-member flying trapeze troupe with a glimpse of their act in the background; an equestrian whose face is intimately close to the head of his white steed; the charismatic portrait of a trainer with two tigers standing on each side. These are the icons of the spectacle. The blue medallions of three different sizes are artistically circled by a thin yellow line, which makes them appear to be windows revealing the inside of the circus. Parts of the images are protruding out of their frames, thus creating a three-dimensional effect as if the horse’s head was halfway out the window or the smiling pickpocket who is represented with four arms handing back his catch to his victims. This multitude of limbs, evocative of the supernatural power of a Hindu god, suggests that his hands can reach into the pockets of many unsuspecting spectators. He is shown on the poster holding a watch, a wallet, car keys, and a tie as if he were returning these objects to their owners after having skillfully stolen them. The stars display friendly, inviting faces. These images are reproduced on the posters and the printed programs which will later form the permanent anchors of the spectators’ memories.

Clicking on another link provided by the circus-gastspiele hub, I come across the website of Circus William which has titled its current program “World of Circus.” The visitor is immediately introduced to the four brothers who run the company and, obviously, provide the main items on the program. Four medallions decorated by a lion-and-tiger motif feature in succession: Manuel Wille holding a white tiger on a leash; Roberto Wille next to a bridled antelope; Markus Wille close to the head of a black horse; and Manolito with a microphone in his hand, indicating that he is the presenter of the show. They all wear traditional Brandenburg uniforms with gold or silver braids embroidered on the chest symbolizing traditional military formality and heroism. The homepage features buttons which lead to their Christmas festival and to their current summer season programs.

Self-presentations vary as we keep exploring other websites. Circus Constanze Busch, for example, offers a sumptuous red, deep blue, and golden yellow baroque design. Its main page emphasizes the circus team around the larger medallion showing the smiling but bossy director. Ten frames of lesser dimensions portray on the top row the younger men who are in charge of the exotic animal act, the horse displays, and the tiger number respectively, and the woman who is the artistic director of the show. The lower row features the superintendent, the accountant, the public relations person, the office manager, and the transportation supervisor. A successful circus performance does indeed depend on a robust organizational infrastructure, a fact that is forcefully conveyed by the visual structure of this page. As we have seen above, some other circuses foreground the stars of the program, thus emphasizing the magic of the spectacle rather than the work of those who toil behind the scene. Another significant variation concerns the social characteristics which are implied by the choice of the images selected for the website. Circus William, for instance, underlines the family unit since four brothers provide both the leadership and the program. Zirkus Charles Knie points to international artists. Circus Constanze Busch displays a social organization sustained by the common will or complementary needs of unrelated individuals since each one has a different family name, which is provided with the specification of his or her function. The emphasis is on team work under the leadership of a father figure.

The second page of the Circus Constanze Busch is an aerial view of the circus set up in a field in the outskirts of a city. The white trucks and the long white stable tent are lined up to form a perfect square with an opening at the front for the admission gate and the covered access to the big top which stands at the center of the square with its triangular blue and white stripes radiating from the top toward the blue and yellow side which encloses the circus space. Order and hierarchy are the dominant notes but the smiling eyes and relaxed expressions of the team’s faces as well as the vivid colors of the canvas bring a playful flavor of benevolent paternalism to this invitation to come to the circus. These three examples show that the various online manifestations of the circus are a rich source of information concerning a range of aspects which will be scrutinized and discussed in this book.

First, a website is a deliberate semiotic gesture toward the population at large. It combines images, texts, and music designed to introduce the provider of a service and to offer virtual samples of the goods. As a move of self-introduction, it selects and organizes a seductive multimodal discourse which endeavors to establish its truthful representation in an entertainment paradigm that was traditionally associated with unethical promotional strategies. The hit and run mode of operation, which could rely on the short-term effects of deceptive posters, is not any longer an option. In the age of Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks, information instantly runs fast and far. No circus could outrun a spontaneous negative wave. But, in the competitive context of live entertainments, companies still need to deploy rhetorical resources aimed at persuading potential audiences. Indeed, a performance is an act of communication not only at the level of each number in a program but also, prominently, as a service provided by a company, a family, or even often a single individual. It is with this personalized agency that audiences strike an implicit contract when they purchase an admission ticket. The program itself is embedded within this fundamental fiduciary structure. Therefore, it is crucial that the provider establish and maintain its virtual credentials within a wider interactive framework. Contemporary media such as television talk shows, newspaper interviews, and, most importantly, the internet offer means through which circus agencies construct themselves as icons larger than nature: the donators of the wonder that is circus. Many city councils in Europe periodically take over this role. During the past few decades, elected officials have launched circus festivals which are sponsored by the city’s councils. Once a year, for a limited number of days, they hire a tent, organize a program in collaboration with artistic agencies, and give trophies to the best acts selected by a jury. They reproduce on a smaller scale the International Circus Festival which started in 1970 as an initiative of Prince Rainier of Monaco and has been ever since a major annual event now sponsored by his heirs. All these festivals also run their own websites.

Perusing the sites of all these circuses and festivals on the internet reveals a great variety of statuses and styles. Whether a small circus has used an open source template and posted some amateurish pictures or a wealthier company has been able to afford a professional web designer with the latest IT range of possibilities, the information which can thus be collected is greatly relevant to the ethnographer’s inquiry. The selection of highlights or simply representative pictures by the circus companies is an explicit semiotic gesture that is meant to communicate contents and create a virtual experience but it also discloses, as was noted above, the implicit subtext which can be inferred from the websites’ organization and architecture.

Another kind of precious information provided by the internet concerns the spectacles themselves. Program composition is the rhetorical form in which the multimodal discourse of the circus is delivered. As we will see in Chapter 2, individual acts can be abstractly considered as self-contained units but they never appear in isolation. They are always parts of the complex set of a program. Most of them are context-dependent in the sense that their interpretation by the audience is somewhat constrained by their order of appearance and the contrasts or complementarities they implement with respect to each other. Some acts involving parody or intertextual references are even determined in their form and meaning by the act(s) which preceded them in the program. Even, at times, as we will see in later chapters, a retroactive semiotic effect is obtained when an act is performed in the nostalgic mode. The structure of circus programs is indeed an important source of data for the ethnographer of the circus. In the past century, there was no other way than traveling to circuses or examining printed programs when such documents were available for sale or in public or private archives. But, in the internet age, most of the programs of circuses in a given season can be collected and compared.

Circus in the field

The iconography which circus websites display is a rich source of information concerning two crucial aspects of the acts. First, it allows for the precise recording of the styles and colors of the costumes, the props, and the animals’ decorations. Of course, these may change from performance to performance and from program to program in successive years because acrobats usually carry several sets of costumes and may change their musical accompaniments to fit the garbs or the reverse. From this point of view there is no internet shortcut to a troupe’s complete wardrobe and range of styles of performance but websites provide a robust perceptual anchor. Secondly, these images and occasional brief video clips have been chosen by the circus itself as representative of particular acts. It is a reliable guide to what performers and producers consider as the typical visual expressions of their specialties, what they want to foreground in the public representation of their artistic identities without disclosing the full contents of their acts. There are, however, some cases in which fairly long performance samples can be found online. These are posted by independent artists who want to advertise their acts in a very competitive market without using the costly channel of artistic agencies. Or they have been made by amateurs in spite of the reluctance of circuses to let anybody freely film their shows. These snippets of performance are often of low visual quality but they are nevertheless a precious source of ethnographic information and also bear witness to the special interests of members of circus audiences by revealing what is the focus of their individual attention, that is, what is worth being recorded and memorialized. But for all its interest and informative value, the virtual reality of the circus institution and its works cannot compare with the actual experience of going to the circus and being part of an audience.

The first taxi I approached in front of the Heidelberg train station was reluctant to drive me to the Messplatz, in the outskirts of the city, where Zirkus Charles Knie had pitched its tent. He summoned another driver, a friendly middle-aged woman who did not waste any time to tell me that she loved the circus. She does not mind waiting until I have purchased my ticket for the evening performance to drive me back to my hotel. It is raining. The circus is located beyond an industrial zone in a sort of no-man’s land between sport fields, construction sites, and the countryside. I am the only person walking to the wicket under the pouring rain. A friendly word with the cashier who speak...