Asset Details
Do you wish to reserve the book?
The Politics of Laughter: The Afterlives of Clowns Joseph Grimaldi and Jean-Gaspard Deburau in 1920s Cinema
Hey, we have placed the reservation for you!
By the way, why not check out events that you can attend while you pick your title.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place the reservation. Kindly try again later.
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
The Politics of Laughter: The Afterlives of Clowns Joseph Grimaldi and Jean-Gaspard Deburau in 1920s Cinema
Do you wish to request the book?
The Politics of Laughter: The Afterlives of Clowns Joseph Grimaldi and Jean-Gaspard Deburau in 1920s Cinema
Please be aware that the book you have requested cannot be checked out. If you would like to checkout this book, you can reserve another copy
We have requested the book for you!
Your request is successful and it will be processed during the Library working hours. Please check the status of your request in My Requests.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place your request. Kindly try again later.
Journal Article
The Politics of Laughter: The Afterlives of Clowns Joseph Grimaldi and Jean-Gaspard Deburau in 1920s Cinema
2025
Overview
The world of laughter is often deemed frivolous. Clowns have taught us otherwise. This paper investigates the convoluted politics of laughter in relation to clowning, arguing that clowns (and the laughter they elicit) blur humour and horror and, in doing so, offer a corrective to officialdom. I analyse laughter as a social phenomenon (following Bergson, Benjamin, and Bakhtin) and as a mediating form, bound up in power structures and political concerns that are both local and transhistorical. To contextualise the (d)evolution of the clown, I first discuss ambiguity, misfitness, and failure, and then consider the English Clown Joseph Grimaldi and the French Pierrot Jean-Gaspard Deburau. These performers, I suggest, represent the two main strands of clowns in popular culture: the melancholy outcast and the murderous deviant. I explore each strand via 1920s silent films, including Sjöström’s He Who Gets Slapped (1924), Chaplin’s The Circus (1928), Leni’s The Man Who Laughs (1928), and Brenon’s Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928). These are works of social indictment that debunk monolithic depictions of clowns and laughter, critiquing conformity, social asymmetries, vices, and industrial growth. Clowning is more than playing an artistic, sociocultural role: it hinges on radical resistance and carries a political valence.
