Celebrate the Weirdo
Scholar Paul Radin observed that most successful “primitive” societies readily tolerated eccentricity. In what ways do we “moderns” celebrate or censor oddball behavior? Do wild strains of thought strengthen culture, or threaten it?
(This was the topic of a discussion panel at a recent Soonercon. I'm proud to have suggested it!)
Historical examples:
· Diogenes (Greece, cs 400 BC)—He goofed off in Plato’s lectures, including taking a dump on Plato’s chair. Alexander the Great came upon Diogenes tanning in the nude. Alexander asked if he could do anything for Diogenes, who replied, “You could get out of my light for a start.”
· Jesters’ impunity in England— The crown (cap and bells) and scepter (marotte) mirrored the royal crown and scepter wielded by a monarch.
· Fuller's History of the Worthies of England (1662) gives an account of the recruiting of Tarlton, jester to Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603): “Here he was in the field, keeping his Father's Swine, when a Servant of Robert Earl of Leicester . . . was so highly pleased with his happy unhappy answers, that he brought him to Court, where he became the most famous Jester to Queen Elizabeth.”
· Lakota-Sioux of the Great Plains of North America: The heyoka is a kind of sacred clown—a contrarian, jester, and satirist, who speaks, moves and reacts in an opposite fashion to the people around them
· Ancient Romans had a balatro, a professional jester or buffoon. Balatrones were paid for their jests, and the tables of the wealthy were generally open to them for the sake of the amusement they afforded
· Shakespeare has plenty of clowns and jesters
Modern examples include standup comics, the class clown of high school, the village idiot (maybe)
“While in their costume,
clowns have special permission from their society to parody or criticize
defective aspects of their own culture.”
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