Facepaint vs. fascism

By Skip Mendler

If you stopped by the Holiday Open House at Highlights for Children’s offices last weekend, you might have noticed a tall, portly, balding gentleman in whiteface and tie-dyed shirt, juggling hula hoops. That would have been me, wearing my “performing artist” hat; I’ve been a professional or semi-professional mime/clown/storyteller since my graduation from Harvard in 1978. (As I like to say, I’m not the only Harvard-educated clown to get involved with politics, but I am one of the few that admits it.) You can find out more about that side of my work at www.serioussilliness.com, but let me say that I bring this up not for the sake of self-promotion, but rather because I want to explain the meaning and political significance of that phrase “Serious Silliness.”

When I perform, I try not only to entertain and evoke joy and laughter, but also to create as many opportunities for audience participation as possible. When I teach mime or clowning, I am primarily trying to excite the creative facilities of each participant for seeing new possibilities—how many different things, for example, can a hula hoop become? A pizza, a steering wheel, the door of a safe, an angel’s halo?

To me, the capacity for joy, laughter and creativity are critical elements not just of a healthy and well-functioning individual, but also of a healthy and well-functioning society. They are also effective antidotes to oppression and preventatives to the development of fascism. Fascism, which finds joy primarily in the shedding of the blood of its enemies and laughter in inflicting suffering on the powerless, feeds on an atmosphere of fear, anger and mistrust. It cannot, I believe, take root among people with open hearts, open minds, joyful lives and creative spirits. So anything that encourages these qualities, as silly as it may seem on the surface, in fact has serious social and political effects. Hence, “Serious Silliness.”

Theologian Harvey Cox wrote a book back in 1969 called “The Feast of Fools,” in which he highlighted the need for both festivity and fantasy in the progressive development of a society. Without these, Cox reasons, we cannot experience or even imagine any alternatives to the everyday, any different ways of living beyond that which is imposed upon us.

Margaret Thatcher once famously said, in reference to the global economic models she supported, “There is no alternative”—which is, of course, much the same viewpoint that the Bush administration attempted to enforce regarding its policies here and abroad and that fundamentalists of any stripe attempt to enforce as well.

But Cox, along with a vast throng of people in this country and around the world, would say, “Oh yes, there is—there’d better be.” If we are to have any hope of coping with the myriad social, economic, political, environmental, cultural and even spiritual problems that confront us, we are going to need every bit of creativity that we can elicit from ourselves, each other and the children that are to follow us. Where existing systems, ideas and ideologies fail, we need to be able to come up with new forms, new methods, new goals and new values.

So festivity, fantasy, joy, creativity, humor, laughter, imagination—all these are, in fact, revolutionary in nature, and this season that, among other things, celebrates the birth of a truly revolutionary leader, is a fine time to indulge in them. Justice William O. Douglas said, “As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air—however slight—lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” In this holiday season, know that the lights you light by your giving and sharing stave off more than one kind of darkness. Happy Holidays to you all, whatever holidays they may be.