We Are All Fashion Clowns

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker (dir. Todd Phillips)

Warner Bros. Pictures, 2019

I don't know if it's a post-Joker phenomenon, but the fashion world is still loving a full-on clown look at the moment, with zany outfits, exaggerated makeup, and ludicrous footwear; exactly the sort of thing I was wearing 35 years ago in my Jimmy Jazz period (and I'm still of the view that you can't beat clashing prints and colours, kipper ties, baggy trousers, and clumpy shoes).        

Clownishness would, on the (painted) face of it, seem to be the very opposite of elegant and sophisticated cool; a kind of anti-style that transgresses all notions of restraint and good taste. As Batsheva Hay rightly says, it's the epitome of what most people in their muted blues and browns regard as loud and would normally reject in terms of appearance. 

And yet, it has a queer kind of sexiness and, of course, a slightly sinister edge; the evil clown being a well-established figure within the popular imagination, combining horror elements with the more traditional comic traits. Mark Dery, who theorised this figure with reference to Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque, regards the psycho-killer clown as a veritable postmodern icon. 

Which returns us to Joaquin Phoenix and his astonishing performance as Arthur Fleck (Joker) dressed in his burgandy red two-piece suit, gold waistcoat, and green collared shirt ...

It's a very carefully thought-through look created by two-time Academy Award winning costume designer Mark Bridges (in close collaboration with director Todd Phillips); one that is suggestive both of the period in which the movie is set (late-70s/early-80s) and true to the character and his means. Thus, Arthur looks good, but not catwalk fabulous; as if he found his clothes in a thrift store, rather than an expensive designer outlet.     

Again, I can certainly relate to that and maintain that a punk DIY ethos provides the crucial (shabby-subversive) element if you are going to assemble your own clown-inspired outfit ...

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Punk Clown 

by Gaelle Sherwood (c. 1984)

See: Mark Dery, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, (Grove Press, 1999), chapter 2: 'Cotton Candy Autopsy: Deconstructing Psycho-Killer Clowns'.

Play: Joker - final trailer - uploaded to Youtube by Warner Bros. Pictures (28 Aug 2019): click here. 

Note: some readers might be interested in an earlier post to this one called Send in the Clowns: click here.

On Reading between the Lines

Smart Women Read between the Lines: A Reader's Journal

by Julie Hellwich and Haley Johnson, (Chronicle Books, 2007)

A friend writes to say how much she enjoyed a recent post, but then adds that in order to understand it fully she was obliged to read between the lines - a skill which, apparently, smart women everywhere are highly accomplished in, but a notion which I find problematic.

For whilst I might be persuaded that the silence and purity of the blank page is the very space of literature and would certainly concede that all good writing has a symbolic aspect in which meaning is often wilfully disguised via the use of rhetorical techniques such as irony and insinuation, I’m nevertheless wary of those crypto-theologians who insist that the truth of each and every text is always concealed beneath the words themselves (esoterically addressed to that discerning reader who has managed to divine authorial intent).

And, ultimately, I worry that, in reading between the lines and searching for an invisible logic, Miss Sherwood is simply taking what Henry James identified as the easier option. In other words, sometimes the careful analysis of what is actually written on the page is harder than the hermeneutic interpretation of the void between words, or the imaginative exploration of subliminal depths.