Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Epic Pencil: Phantasmagoria Part 3
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Epic Pencil: Phantasmagoria Part 3
What is it about the circus and carnivals that so fascinates us? Is it the color and light all rolled up into an evening of theatricality? Perhaps it’s the clowns, the performers on horseback, or the daredevils shot from cannons. And then there is the gasp-inducing image of bodies clad in silver arcing high overhead. As the song says:
He’d fly through the air with the greatest of ease,
That daring young man on the flying trapeze.
Those lyrics were written in 1867 to extol the exploits of Jules Léotard, a phenomenally successful trapeze artist and, you guessed it, the namesake of the one-piece dancer’s clothing.
For many of us, I expect that our first experience with the circus was going to see the Ringling Brothers, Barnum, and Bailey Circus when we were kids. But Ringling stopped performing under the Big Top in 1957, and I doubt that nostalgia for circuses is tied up in seeing them in a huge indoor arena. Instead, I think it’s the idea of the carnival coming to town in the night, setting up the big top, the midway and being there when we wake, like magic.
It’s an image that’s been perpetuated in movies, like 1941’s Dumbo, 1952’s The Greatest Show on Earth, and more recently in the carnival scenes in 2017’s Paddington 2.
If you’ve been to a carnival, the memory is stirred up by the scent of popcorn, cotton candy, toffee apples, and more.
It’s reinforced every time you hear the song Enter the Gladiators, also known as Thunder and Blazes, written in 1899 and forever associated with the grand entry of the clowns and other performers into the big top.
With only a few exceptions, that image of the traveling carnival, the amazing, temporary world of the big top and midway, is a relic of the past. But it’s a compelling one that captures us with spectacle and nostalgia. We know it’s an act, but we’re still fascinated and captured by the illusion, not just of what’s going on in front of us but also the illusion of how it must have been in the past. Like Professor Julius T. Sinkbottom’s Magnificent Traveling Menagerie and Performing Phantasmagoria, they appear and disappear, taking their mystery with them.
So let’s put pencil to paper and continue with Phantasmagoria, part three.
View all episodes
By Chris Watson
5
33 ratings
What is it about the circus and carnivals that so fascinates us? Is it the color and light all rolled up into an evening of theatricality? Perhaps it’s the clowns, the performers on horseback, or the daredevils shot from cannons. And then there is the gasp-inducing image of bodies clad in silver arcing high overhead. As the song says:
He’d fly through the air with the greatest of ease,
That daring young man on the flying trapeze.
Those lyrics were written in 1867 to extol the exploits of Jules Léotard, a phenomenally successful trapeze artist and, you guessed it, the namesake of the one-piece dancer’s clothing.
For many of us, I expect that our first experience with the circus was going to see the Ringling Brothers, Barnum, and Bailey Circus when we were kids. But Ringling stopped performing under the Big Top in 1957, and I doubt that nostalgia for circuses is tied up in seeing them in a huge indoor arena. Instead, I think it’s the idea of the carnival coming to town in the night, setting up the big top, the midway and being there when we wake, like magic.
It’s an image that’s been perpetuated in movies, like 1941’s Dumbo, 1952’s The Greatest Show on Earth, and more recently in the carnival scenes in 2017’s Paddington 2.
If you’ve been to a carnival, the memory is stirred up by the scent of popcorn, cotton candy, toffee apples, and more.
It’s reinforced every time you hear the song Enter the Gladiators, also known as Thunder and Blazes, written in 1899 and forever associated with the grand entry of the clowns and other performers into the big top.
With only a few exceptions, that image of the traveling carnival, the amazing, temporary world of the big top and midway, is a relic of the past. But it’s a compelling one that captures us with spectacle and nostalgia. We know it’s an act, but we’re still fascinated and captured by the illusion, not just of what’s going on in front of us but also the illusion of how it must have been in the past. Like Professor Julius T. Sinkbottom’s Magnificent Traveling Menagerie and Performing Phantasmagoria, they appear and disappear, taking their mystery with them.
So let’s put pencil to paper and continue with Phantasmagoria, part three.