Why can some comedians easily switch between comedy and serious, even tragic, drama? I'm thinking of Adam Sandler in Punchdrunk Love, Will Ferrell in Stranger than Fiction, and Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society and Good Will Hunting. These three comedians, when acting in the comic genre, don't exhibit the slightest hint of tragic emotion; instead, they often play in farce and slapstick, like Sandler's Happy Gilmore and Ferrell's Anchorman movies. Yet it's not surprising or new to find the tragic and comic masks right next to each other, embodied in one artist like a double-faced Janus character. The Sad Clown archetype is both/and, both funny and tragic. Bobcat Goldthwait satirized this archetype to the hilt in the film Shakes the Clown, and Billy Bob Thornton brought similar dark humor to Bad Santa—both of these sad clowns were drunks. The exposure of weakness is somehow funny—vulnerability is relatable.
Do comedians often bring this sad clown energy into their personal lives and/or is there a trend of depression in comedians? Many struggle with addiction, and many have died from excessive drug use or eating or suicide. To name the most famous: John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley, and most recently, Robin Williams. David Wong, an editor at Cracked.com, wrote an insider's perspective piece on the connection between comedians and self-destructive behaviors, positing that the comedian's need to work through insecurities causes him or her to create a clown persona to mask the pain and re-present it as comedy, thus gaining approval and love from the audience. In the art-artist-audience relationship, the comedian-artist is intimately enmeshed with the art, according to Wong. Terry Gross interviewed Robin Williams on the NPR radio show Fresh Air in 2006:
TG: A lot of comics have a very depressive side.
RW: ...in the process of looking for comedy, you have to be deeply honest and in doing that, you find out, there's the other side [said in a deep, sinister voice]. You'll be looking under the rock occasionally for the laughter. They have a depressed side, but is it always the sad clown thing? No.
Certainly not, and to reduce all comedians to one archetype is to cheapen and limit their art. I agree with Robin Williams' implication that comedy is more complex and multi-faceted, but I also think that it's important to examine the close relationship between comedy and tragedy because the two are right next to each other in the human soul. The healing is right next to the wound; the opposites complement each other.
"Grimaldi," a story by Carmen Orlandis-Habsburgo found in Dan Yashinsky's Next Teller: A Book of Canadian Storytelling, provides fitting closure to this entry. The protagonist is a clown named Grimaldi, based on the famous British clown Joseph Grimaldi who died of alcoholism in 1837. Grimaldi, disguised in elegant street clothes and with eyes like "two dark pools of deep despair," visits a doctor for his acute depression and ennui. The doctor prescribes a visit to the circus in town, suggesting that the patient (who is Grimaldi himself) see the great clown Grimaldi because "laughter breaks the melancholic spell." Grimaldi reveals his identity to the doctor, who then suggests that Grimaldi take his own life in the circus ring, in the most violent way possible. Grimaldi, understanding the doctor's hint, pays him handsomely and leaves with a twinkle in his eye.
"That night, under the tent, the clown tried to kill himself. First he tried to cut his throat with a giant butcher knife; and he cut and he sliced, but somehow the knife refused to sink into his flesh. Then he tried to blow his brains out, and when he pulled the trigger the gun went up in smoke. Even before the smoke had cleared, he built a giant scaffold and hanged himself by the neck--and while he was kicking the air, the hanging rope broke and the clown hit the ground. More determined than ever to die, he climbed the high trapeze and, for all to see, jumped fearlessly into the void--to be saved by his suspenders. The crowd roared with laughter! And they say that night was the only time Grimaldi could not keep a straight face. Before the end of his hundred futile deaths, he joined the crowd in laughter; and he laughed and he laughed till tears rolled down his cheeks and he forgot all his sorrows." He was saved by his own creative genius. He joined the audience's reaction, connected with them as the artist and also as an audience member--a member of the human race living a shared experience in front of them all.
