JESUS AS A CLOWN

A trip I made to Princeton for a philosophy conference in early September, enabled me to slip away to the World’s Fair for a day-just long enough to look at the exhibits on religion, which interested me most. I was especially eager to see the film Parable, issued by the Protestant Council, a film of considerable controversy.

A Church of Christ editor had castigated the film so strongly, along with a few other adverse comments I had heard, that I was prepared for the worst, even though I suspected that any sincere effort at all on the part of the Protestant Council could not be as bad as all that. Some of us have a way of representing that which we oppose in such terms that one is led to wonder how anyone could be so unreasonable and ridiculous as to believe such things. One is a plain numbskull to be a Roman Catholic or a Baptist in view of the way we often represent the beliefs of these people. Once we hear an intelligent representation of a divergent viewpoint, we still may not agree, but it will at least show us that one does not have to be an idiot to believe such things.

Speaking of the Church of Christ film at the Fair, What Is Christianity, the brother editor made reference to the Parable by way of comparison: “In contrast to the Protestant Council film, ‘Parable’, which presents Jesus as a circus clown whose good deeds are his undoing, (the Church of Christ film) is really something! To all conservative religionists the “Parable’ is repugnant.”

Now that I have seen the film I wonder if our good brother saw the film before he editorialized as he did regarding it, or if he was basing his remarks upon hearsay. If he saw it, I am at a loss to understand how he could brush it aside simply as depicting “Jesus as a circus clown.” On the face of it, it appears irreverent for anyone to portray our Lord as a clown, and it would certainly seem blasphemous for a respectable Protestant organization to do so. Even though they profess the same Lord as ourselves, we are to understand that the Protestants have prepared a film for the whole world to see that blatantly portrays the Christ as nothing but a circus clown who gets himself into trouble by the capers he pulls!

The Church of Christ film, on the other hand, says just what the whole religious world needs to hear, our brother assures us, and it comes nearer presenting the real basis of Christian Unity than any other the editor has seen, and it “Is really an outstanding presentation of New Testament Christianity.”

This is the old theme song I’ve heard all my life: we are the good guys, the others are the bad guys. We have all the answers, the others have none. We have the truth. Come and get it! When we make a film (or whatever we do) it is the very epitome of real Christianity. When the Protestants make a film, especially one that is presented in the same building as our own, it is repugnant — at least it is to “all conservative religionists.”

That several leading news media have hailed the Parable as the most important film of the entire World’s Fair and there are many of them in many different fields — means nothing at all. It would mean something, of course, if they had said that about ours! Well, after all, they are not “conservative religionists” — a term I’d like for the editor to define, and I wonder how he knows that all such ones viewed the film with repugnance.

Yes, the film does parabolically present Jesus as a clown, and it presents the world as a circus. That changes it already, doesn’t it? Paul says something about the apostles being “a spectacle to the world” and “fools for Christ’s sake” (1 Cor. 4), which gets close to the idea of clown. And to this crazy, mixed up, circus-like world that our Lord gave Himself for, his role might well be viewed as a clown.

But it is to miss the point to see Jesus merely as a clown. The point is that he is different, different because his concern is for others rather than for himself. The clown’s view of life is so contrary to the circus spirit that he is both misunderstood and rejected, and even hated and killed for his goodness by those with vested interest.

The clown is busy bearing the burdens of others, always to their dismay, for men just don’t do things for others like that. In attracting people to his simple goodness, the clown becomes a threat to business interests. In one scene he substitutes for a Negro in a cage, permitting a furious white man to dump him into a tank of water, who in turn becomes even more furious that the clown would dare to take the black man’s place. The man follows the clown to his place of execution and hurls the balls he had stuffed into his pockets at him as he hangs amidst laughing mockery.

Magus, the star of the circus, is the real point of the parable, I suppose. He is introduced as a cold, hard, proud man of great talent and intelligence. He conducted the circus’ chief attraction, the marionette show under the big tent. Many children watched as Magus manipulated the puppets high in the air — real people they were, and Magus had them beating on each other for the pleasure of his audience. His face revealed both pride and arrogance at this power over others. You understand, of course, that this is a parable, so the symbolism runs high.

The clown appears as Magus is making mere puppets of men, and he begins to attract the children in the audience to his playful attentions to them. The children give forth happy and wholesome laughter to the clown, turning their attentions from Magus’ marionette show. Magus views the scene with hate and jealousy, and with fear. His proud world is threatened by simple goodness, and he cannot bear it. Finally, the marionettes are lowered; they are momentarily relieved of their misery, but of course the act will have to be repeated again and again. Their bodies are bruised by the harnesses and ropes that have bound them. Magus watches with eyes of hate as the clown puts the harness on himself. He signals for the clown to be hoisted, and for a moment at least Magus even has the power of goodness in his own hands to manipulate as he will.

At this point the clown’s other enemies catch up with him, and they finish him off as he hangs there helpless. There was the neurotic man with the baseballs, mad because the clown fouled up his game of throwing at the Negro. There was a man with a sword, who made his living ramming swords through a box with a girl inside; the girl preferred the life of the clown and followed after him when she found him willing to take her place in the box. Now the swordman pierces the clown for upsetting his life. There was a fellow who was all entangled in his sideshow tickets; he had no way to express his wrath at the clown except to throw strings of tickets at him. The clown had disturbed his sideshow simply by being different from other people. That poor ticket man, frustrated and enmeshed in a mess of tickets, trying to kill that which had tried to help him, fairly depicted in my mind so much of what I see in this crazy world.

Magus now has a dead clown as a marionette. He reeks of pride and hate as he pulls his strings this way, then that way. The clown moves at the whim of Magus. Evil is victorious for the moment. The clown is carried away by his simple followers, who have witnessed the tragic scene, including the Negro and the woman whom he had emancipated.

Now something happens to Magus. The clown’s goodness he cannot forget. All his lustful power begins to lose its meaning. He hates himself for his evil. He changes. Maybe it is a new birth. The film ends with Magus sitting at his mirror, thinking about the clown. He studies himself in the mirror, and then reaches for the white cream so as to fashion himself into the likeness of the clown.

The film opened with a clown riding a mule and following a circus as it moved along its meandering way, clanging and banging as circuses always do. The film closes with a clown riding a mule and following a circus along its meandering way, clanging and banging.

It was one of the most touching dramas that I have ever seen. It was a provoking parable, and all without one word being uttered — only the clown’s cry of death. I was deeply moved by it all.

But if a respectable journal of the Church of Christ labels it as “repugnant” to every “conservative religionist”, I thought I’d share the story with others, to test their reaction. I told it in detail, without interpretation, to Curtis Lydic, who helps edit this paper, and he thought it most creative and imaginative, the very approach to use at such a place as the World’s Fair.

I told it the same way to my special class in high school philosophy, 28 highly intelligent seniors. They explored the symbolism and came up with ideas I had not thought of. Theirs was a serious and respectful analysis.

Then I told it to one of my philosophy classes at Texas Woman’s University. When I came to the end, describing how Magus reaches for the cream that will make him like the clown, some of the girls began to weep. — The Editor