Why clowns are not crazy (only stupid), analysing Charlie Rivel with Jon Davison

Amber: We have discussed earlier that clowns are stupid but not totally crazy, because their behaviour does produce meaning. Their actions make sense although they're not normal and make us realize that this abnormal way to act is actually very well possible. I don't know if I completely understand that principle still. When I watch this act of Charlie Rivel with his chair, I don't understand how his way of sitting on the chair is logical (and not just crazy). Do you think we could try and analyze that a bit? Why does he have to climb on the chair, why can't he just sit on it?

Jon: His entrance, carrying a chair and a guitar, immediately suggests a premise: he will sit on the chair to play the guitar. Then comes the bowing, which is a separate narrative premised on what we expect from performers, but let’s leave that aside for the moment. As soon as he lifts his foot near the chair I think we understand that he will climb on the chair. Here there may be more than one imagined outcome: perhaps we think he will climb on the chair to sit on the back, to be higher up when he plays? Or perhaps he will stand on it? Or perhaps we understand he wants to climb on it but we don’t yet know why. But in this last case we still understand his first action: he will climb on the chair. Once he has managed to stand on the chair, I think we understand that this was his intention. He has ‘arrived’. Then our attention is diverted by the guitar on the ground. The next action in the series is easy to understand, he will climb back down in order to get the guitar. He even indicates with mime that this is what he will do. The sliding down off the chair is here a very unexpected outcome, but still logical (it works as a way to get down); it is unthinkable as we have probably never seen this before, and it is also excessively physically difficult, which is the opposite to what we are expecting from this old man. Then, with the guitar, Charlie returns to an earlier task: climb on the chair, now with the guitar so we will assume he will play it when up on the chair. Trying to pull himself up onto the chair with his costume seems logical but is obviously not going to work. The help of another person is then logical, too. Then, just when we think the series of actions is reaching its desired and expected end, he sits. This is unthinkable, for many reasons: someone is helping him, but this help becomes redundant, useless; the best way to sit is not to stand on the chair first, so this effort was also useless, etc. but I think this piece of action also looks ‘logical’, as it looks like when someone helps another to get off a chair, not on it. I mean, once he is up on the air, it is normal and expected for a helper to help him to get down. But this would only be expected if he had been for some time up on the chair. It’s ridiculous because he spends no time there. The getting down becomes part of the getting up. It’s completely stupid.

Well, let me know if I’ve convinced you of how it works. I think it’s an example which is quite extreme, it’s on the far edge of being understandable, it’s very primitive.

Amber: I don’t know if I really understand it now, I understand it better, but not totally.

Jon: After I wrote you I realized that the main point is that she helps him get off the chair. To help someone off a chair is possible and meaningful, to get someone on a chair too, but Charlie Rivel puts the two together and that makes it unexpected and unthinkable. You don’t get someone off the chair to get on the chair. The two apart are normal, but together they are not.

Amber: I see, yes that makes sense. Thanks.