Beijing Opera: The Monkey King

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In the most recent entry to this blog, guest poster Jeff Raz left us off in Japan, so while we're all there let's just hop one country to our left and pay a visit to China and the Beijing Opera. (Or as we called it back in the good old days, Red China and the Peking Opera.)

If you're not familiar with the monkey king, be prepared to be blown away. The monkey king is a trickster character from Chinese folklore, what Joanne Woodward, host for this presentation, describes as a combination of Robin Hood, Zorro, Superman, and Charlie Chaplin.

The origins of the monkey king are obscure but the figure gained widespread recognition in the character of Sun Wukong in the epic Chinese novel, Journey to the West (1590s). The figure reappears in countless fables in China and other Asian countries, and even in a 2001 television mini-series and in this BBC commercial for their 2008 Beijing Olympics coverage, entitled Journey to the East, presumably because here, instead of voyaging to India, the monkey king is traveling back to Beijing to get to the Olympics.

While the Beijing Opera version of the monkey king is not what any Westerner would think of as opera, it is a highly stylized form, lacking scenery and with combat scenes that are closer to dance than to stunt work. The level of acrobatic skill, however, is incredibly high and the action full of physical comedy.

This entire piece, including the Joanne Woodward introduction, comes to about 32 minutes, and when you capture that much video on the Mac it segments it into 2-gig files. Rather than patch it back together, I've kept it segmented for easier downloading. The first video is just the introduction (4 minutes); the actual piece starts in the second clip, and the action accelerates as the piece goes on. Enjoy!

Complete Book: The Delight Makers

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The Delight Makers by Adolf F. Bandelier (1890)
A novel about Pueblo Indian koshare clowns

Last month I launched this Complete Book series with the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. The idea is that books more than about a century old are not covered by copyright law and are therefore in the "public domain." Project Gutenberg was the first major effort to make these available in digital format, but there are now many such undertakings, the best known being Google Books, the least known being my Epson scanner.

Since I am also publishing my old Clowns book on this blog a chapter at a time (I know, I know, I've only done chapters 1 and 5 so far), I thought it would make sense to match up the chapters from my book with any relevant public domain books. In other words, since I recently published chapter one and some supplemental material on it, I am now about to bless you with several free books that have to do with chapter one content: tricksters, fools, and jesters. And no, I don't expect everyone to run out and read all these massive tomes — I've only read about half, and this ain't one of 'em — but I thought it would be nice to have them all in one place. Did I mention they're free?

So... onto The Delight Makers, which comes to you courtesy of the bright folks and scanners at Google.

Adolf Bandelier (1840 —1914) was a pioneering explorer and archaeologist who spent eight years among the Pueblo tribes of the Southwest, and there is even a Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico named after him. The Delight Makers is a novel based on these experiences, centered around the koshare clowns and including 17 photographs.

"Unique in nineteenth-century American literature for its blend of historical romance and scientific observation, The Delight Makers provides in fictional form an invaluable reconstruction of prehistoric Indian culture of the Southwest... It tells the story of the ancestors of the modern Pueblos, the Queres, who are dominated by a powerful secret society called the Koshare or Delight Makers. Rivalry between clans and a conspiracy to accuse a woman of sorcery touch off war with a neighboring tribe, the Tehuas, and lead to the destruction of the Queres settlement." (Prehistoric Fiction Bibliography)

If this subject matter is of particular interest to you, check out the novels of Tony Hillerman, especially Sacred Clowns, as well as some non-fiction books on this topic discussed in this post.


Bandelier — The Delight Makers

Masks from the National Museum of Denmark

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Copenhagen's NationalMuseet is sponsoring several excellent exhibitions relevant to the climate change summit, including Indians of the Rain Forest; Climate: Denmark from Glaciers to Global Warming; and especially Many Strong Voices, featuring projects and speakers from Arctic and Small Island Developing States who are already struggling with the results of global warning.

During my two visits there, I also found time to tour the superb ethnographic collection and was fascinated by the vast array of masks from indigenous cultures. This is one of those museums where they jam fifty examples of an artifact into one glass display case with minimal explanation. You don't always know exactly what you're looking at, but you do get to experience a rich variety of human expression. It was therefore easy for me to think of many of the masks as being clownesque, even if this was not necessarily their official function.

I only had my Flip video camera with me, and I was shooting through glass and unavoidable glare, but it wasn't a total disaster, as you can see from the shot above and those at the end of the post. First, though, some masks scanned from the museum's publication, Ethnographic Collection: Peoples of the Earth, complete with actual explanations.


Theatre mask. Painted wood
19 cm h. (Mus. no. CC. 224).
Java. Ca. 1860.
Javanese mask theatre (wayang topeng), like the shadow play, is led by a dalang who recites the plot and conducts the orchestra and actors. The actors' movements and performance of the roles are deliberately impersonal, as they seek to imitate the appearance of shadow puppets. The facial features of the heroes and villains reveal their spiritual qualities. This mask represents a coarse, ungainly demon character — a total contrast to the refined princely mask type. Mask theatre is
limited on Java today, but much more widespread on Bali.




Mask. Wood, rattan, hornbill feathers.
38 cm x 53 cm. (Mus. no. C.6121)
Dayak, Mahakam River, Kalimantan
(Indonesian Borneo). Ca. 1920.
This hudoq mask represents one of the animal spirits central to the ceremonial celebration of the sowing of rice. These spirits were to ensure that the rice spirits were comfortable in the rice paddy and would provide a good harvest. The masks were worn by male dancers dressed in costumes of banana leaves that hid their bodies. During the dance other masked dancers attempted with exaggerated clumsiness to copy the movements of the hudoq dancers and the
dance turned into a comic performance. Rice ceremonies and mask dances are still performed today but on a much smaller scale since the conversion of many Dayak to Christianity or Islam.





Mask. Wood, skin and bone.
2S-5 cm h, 13.7 cm b.
(Mus. no. L19.17S).
Ammassalik, East Greenland. 1933.
Masks were used during some drum dances and originally came from the religious ceremonies held during the winter. The masks represented different spirits. Masks that are more than 100 years old are discarded or buried with the dead. The mask with a skin strap shown here is carved with grooves representing tattoos and a wide mouth representing a stick inserted to puff out the cheeks. The teeth are pieces of bone, and the eyebrows are made of dark, depilated sealskin.




Mask. Woven painted rattan.
49 em h. (Mus. no. 1.3771).
Sepik. Papua New Guinea. Ca. 1920.
Woven masks covered with coloured clay were traditionally seen as manifestations of demonic spirits. Such masks were worn during the initiation of boys into adulthood and the secret spirit world of the clan that was only accessible to initiated men. During the initiation rites the masks were worn by older men hidden under a cloak of frayed plant fibers to make them look like formidable spirits. Their real identity was not revealed until they removed their masks as part of the ceremony.


Ritual dance costume 330 em h.
(Mus. no. Da.s82a-o).
Tamil Nadu, India. 1894.
Once a year the village goddess is celebrated at a feast for the entire village. When her figure is taken in procession through the streets it is often accompanied by male dancers who possessed by the goddess and wearing masks and women's dress stamp their feet to the rousing
rhythms of drums. Others pierce their cheeks and tongues with long spears or walk on hot coals, after which the village tries to appease the formidable, aggressive goddess by sacrificing chickens and goats.











Mask. Wood, metal.
31 cm h, 21 cm d.
(Mus. no. C.1478).
Karo Batak, Sumatra. Ca. 1900.
Among the Batak of Sumatra masks like this one were worn during the dances and ceremonies at the funerals of influential individuals. The dancers were enveloped in black cloth and held a pair of wooden hands. After performing their dance outside the home of the deceased they escorted the coffin to the burial site. They placed a mask on the grave, presumably in order to keep evil spirits at bay and guide the deceased to the kingdom of the dead. Several years later the deceased was honored with reburial in a sarcophagus or stone urn. Reburial is still common among the Toba Batak today, although now the tomb monuments are made of cement and decorated with both local and Christian symbols.





Shadow puppet (Rawana).
Painted leather, buffalo horn.
64 cm h. (Mus. no. C.4511 ).
Surakarta, Central Java. Ca. 1930.
The noblest characters can be identified by their slender form and narrow eyes and noses — the outer symbols of moral and spiritual strength. The coarser figures, like the demon prince Rawana, have round eyes, bulbous noses and often sharp canines. The good characters stand to the right of the puppeteer and the bad characters to the left. The world of shadow play, however, is not only black and white: The villains on the left may also perform heroic deeds for their family and country, whilst the heroes on the right are occasionally driven by lust, the desire
for revenge, and other equally base feelings.


Okay, eau-quais, enough with quality pics and reasonable explanations! Here are those stills extracted from the Flip camera footage. Let your imagination provide the interpretation.

Chapter 1 — Supplementary Material

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Hmm... Fools, Natural and Artificial... what a topic!

This was my opening chapter, though actually written towards the end. In it I tried to bring together manifestations of the clown spirit in a wide range of contexts, though with an emphasis on cultures variously labeled as primitive, indigenous, non-literate or non-technological. The argument is that if the Clown Spirit emerges spontaneously amongst these isolated peoples, separated as they are by time and geography, then this spirit must speak to something deep in human nature. Its appearance in more than a few creation myths perhaps offers the strongest proof.

It's great stuff, though the problem is that to do it justice you need to be a seasoned anthropologist, which I'm not, despite several visits to the American Museum of Natural History before the age of twelve. It's one thing to put together a reasonable narrative about the evolution of the tramp clown figure, and quite another to chart a vaguely defined clown impulse through all of recorded time, especially since it forces you to have to define exactly what it is you mean by "clown" in the first place. So I feel like I'm on shaky ground here, academically speaking, but nevertheless on the right track. Help and suggestions are certainly in order!

Since I started the book by writing about the dances of the Hopi people, and go on to also discuss the Navajo, the Zuni, the Yaqui, the Crow, the Cheyenne, and even Sri Lankan demon plays, I have of course been curious and hopeful that, living in the YouTube generation where everything is supposedly online, some choice ethnographic film might surface showing clown figures in performance, more or less in their native authenticity, uncorrupted by the white man pointing a camera at them. I'm just beginning a serious search, but in the meantime, here's some stuff...

Creation Myths
Clown figures do figure prominently in many creation myths, though it's usually more the clown as trickster than it is the clown as bumbler. The standard text on this when I was writing my book seemed to be Paul Radin's The Trickster (1956), but since then at least three other books of note have come along, all of which I'm trying to find time for.

First up is Barbara Sproul's 1979 collection, Primal Myths, an anthology of well over one hundred creation myths from throughout the world. Yes, Genesis is included. Only some of the texts touch on trickster figures, but the scope is impressive, and Sproul's intelligent and very readable 30-page introduction to the subject is a great way for the layman to understand how these stories function within a society.



Apparently along similar lines is Kimberley Christen's and Sam Gill's Clowns and Tricksters, though I haven't gotten my hands on it yet. Subtitled "An Encyclopedia of Tradition and Culture," it would seem to be a valuable resource in this area. According to the review in Library Journal, the authors have "created a reference to tricksters and clowns, figures found in cultures and myths worldwide but whose characteristics differ according to the culture in which they originate. The work lists 185 cultures by geographical area, followed by a main section consisting of 194 alphabetically arranged entries related to tricksters and clowns; the entries, which are heavily cross-referenced, cite the name of the character with its culture or country of origin followed by stories or other information. The entries conclude with bibliographic citations, and there is a comprehensive bibliography as well. The scope of this work is vast, covering clowns and tricksters from the ancient world to the present and including some references to cultures that no longer exist as well as material from current popular culture. As the introduction states: 'This volume is meant as a general introduction to both the characters and the people who see the world through their eyes.' It succeeds admirably."

For an even broader perspective on the trickster spirit, there's Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World (1998), which I am currently reading. Hyde is also the author of The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, and has been praised to the skies by David Foster Wallace as "one of our true superstars of non-fiction." Hyde's real subject is "trickster consciousness,'' which he traces across a broad spectrum, from dozens of folklore myths through the work of such modern artists as Marcel Duchamp, Allen Ginsberg, and Maxine Hong Kingston.


The Feast of Fools
The title of the chapter, "Fools, Natural & Artificial," hearkens back to the middle ages and points to the distinction (or confusion) between those performers who acted the role of the fool for fun and profit, and those who were kept on by the rich and powerful, who found their very real physical and mental deformities amusing.


While this practice seems to have somewhat died out, I would take this opportunity to draw your attention to a NYC-based theatre company I'm fond of that has done a lot of exploration based on the Feast of Fools and the Fool's Mass. They are Dzieci Theatre, whose roots are in the teachings of Jerzy Grotowski, but whose explorations have included not only the fool's mass, but burlesque and circus as well. I want to cover more of their work at a later date, but meanwhile here's a pdf of a full-length article about their work from Ecumenica:

dzieciecumenica

If you're in the New York area, be sure to check out one of the December 2009 performances of their Fool's Mass, which are listed here.





Jesters
The medieval jester who, like Lear's fool, could speak truth to power has no doubt been romanticized. I suspect it was not all that common, and that many a "jester" had to shut up or at least tone down their criticism to keep their head attached to their neck. Even in our day and age, freedom of speech is not all it's made out to be, given the control of the media usually exercised by the rich and powerful inisde or outside the government. That being said, here are two modern examples of comics taking on the powers that be...

Will Rogers
The political humor of Will Rogers (1879–1935) seems pretty tame today, yet in his heyday as a star of film and the vaudeville stage, he was unique in his folksy ability to say some pretty nasty things about politicians without having everyone hate him; kind of a lovable Bill Maher. Here's a clip of Lance Brown as Will Rogers:




Stephen Colbert
For me, the most significant moment in modern comedy was Stephen Colbert tearing apart George W. Bush to his face at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. The character he plays on The Colbert Show is very much a jester, as he pretends to espouse a set of views while ripping them to shreds through exaggeration and the recital of inconvenient facts. When I saw the show being taped live, Colbert chatted with the audience beforehand and wanted to make sure they really understood that he was playing a character. (Hey, you never know who's going to wander in off of West 54th Street.) At the correspondents' dinner he destroys Bush by praising him, kind of like Mark Antony praising Caesar, only a lot funnier. It's in three parts...

Chapter 1— Fools, Natural & Artificial

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Chapter 1 from my book, Clowns: A Panoramic History
It's been my intention to get my entire Clowns book up on the blog, but since this is only the second chapter in six months, it looks like I'm going to have to accelerate the pace. [Click here for chapter five.]

There are two problems. One is that scanning a book (yes, it was written in the pre-digital Dark Ages), then correcting all the scanning errors (OCR is still not perfect), scanning the photos, redoing the layout, etc. is a tedious and time-consuming job. Not much fun either. The other obstacle is my silly desire to take a few small steps towards improving the book, both by correcting any errors and by adding supplementary material.



Okay, enough excuses. Here's a pdf of chapter one, to be followed by a post of supplementary material. And to be followed by chapter two in a lot less than six months!

Clowns—Chapter 1