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Grand Chapiteau
Jenn Steinhardt
Dr. Klein
Visual Rhetoric
24 April 2008
Visual Rhetoric In The Circus
When one thinks of visual rhetoric, things such as advertising or film most likely come to
mind. Was the circus on that list of things that use visual rhetoric? Surprisingly enough, Cirque
du Soleil, a Canadian-based circus, is full of rhetorical goodies. First we’ll take a look into what
Cirque du Soleil is like as an organization and as a circus, and then we’ll dive into a circus act in
Cirque’s Alegria and analyze what aspects of rhetoric are used to tell the story.
Cirque du Soleil started in 1984, in Quebec, Canada. Founded by Guy Laliberté, Cirque
du Soleil began as a small group of circus performers, who performed on the streets, and
developed into a huge organization with almost one thousand artists, eighteen shows, and have
audiences in over 40 different countries (Cirquedusoleil.com).
The first Cirque show that I saw was La Nouba, and since then I have seen seven Cirque
productions all together. Besides the remarkable acrobatics and music, the thing that I love about
Cirque du Soleil is it brings together the joys of going to the circus with a real theatrical
production. There are no pretty poodles or ferocious tigers running about the stage. Every show
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Power Track
Nostalgic old birds
has a theme or a story. Varekai is best known for its story about love and marriage. Alegria,
however, is better known for its theme.
Throughout these performances there is barely any speaking, and if a character does
speak it is in a foreign language or a made up language. Even some of the lyrics in Cirque’s
music is from a mix of different languages or is made up. Just one act can tell you everything
you need to know about a character based on lighting, costumes, what kind of circus act they are
doing, and so on.
According to Cirque’s website, Alegria, meaning “jubilation”
in Spanish, is about power and those who have it, have had it, and have
never had it. All of the characters develop within this concept in mind.
The power track is a great example of the acts showing the theme of
the show. A power track is a long, thin trampoline and in this
particular act there are two tracks that come together to make a cross. Acrobats flip and jump
around on this track fluidly and at the same time they are very aggressive. These characters are
the youth and they are the ones who will soon
have power. Quite comically, the “nostalgic
old birds” try to do acts that the youth are
doing but they aren’t as beautiful and lively as
they once were. When the birds walk they
waddle and their costume and make-up show
how distorted they are (Cirquedusoliel.com).
While the power track shows the interaction of those in power and those who were once
in power, the clowns tell the stories of just everyday people. The clowns are in ragged or simpler
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clothes. Cirque du Soleil explains that the clowns are the observers
and they show us pieces of everyday life. The scene that I will
analyze in further detail is about the clown in the middle of the
picture to the right.
The scene starts with a clown rolling out train tracks.
Lighting is dim with a bluish tint, and the music helps us to feel
somber as well. Our main character for this scene comes from behind the backdrop carrying a
gigantic suitcase. One by one he carries an outfit on a hanger to a roped ladder coming down the
side of the stage. After he hangs up the outfit, he puts a hat on the top of the hanger. Once he has
made the illusion of a person, he starts brushing it off. He sticks his arm in one of the sleeves so
he can clean it better. When he first moves this arm, the creation of a new character arises.
The character terrifies the clown, while the character is brushing the clown off this time.
After awhile the clown finds comfort in the character. They sway back and forth holding one
another. A train honks its horn. The character pushes the clown away and he stumbles back.
Flustered, he tries to run back but he’s confused and distant from his love.
The clown picks up his suitcase and goes behind the backdrop, but when he reappears the
music picks up and he has become the train. Tired from his travels, the clown halts the train and
sits on his suitcase. He pulls out a paper from his pocket, which came from the character earlier
in the scene. Upset, he tears it up and throws it in the air. We expect the paper to fall back down,
but instead more paper falls down. Suddenly the scene goes into a winter. The clown’s look into
the audience is piercing.
The backdrop turns around so that it has gone from blue to white like the snow. A bright
light shines on the clown and wind starts to pick up. The last minute of this scene is the clown
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trying to fight the wind. “Snow” goes into the audience. Meanwhile, the clown tries to fight
against the wind and the backdrop, but he only gets tangled in it (Alegria).
The power of this act comes from strictly visual aspects. I think the first thing worth
mentioning regards gendered environments. A clown walks out from one side of the backdrop
and lays out a railroad and comes back around to the other side of the backdrop. Later our main
clown pretends that he is the train, and then even further into the scene he actually is the train.
The creative directors could have done so much with this train business, but they chose to have
the clown lay out the train and then be the train itself.
The only costume difference seen when the clown becomes the train is he has a
very tall, top hat that has steam come out from it and steam comes from the back of his suitcase
as well. By having the hat, a common part of everyday
dress, become a part of the clowns attire, the creator has
implied that the train and the man have become one. I feel
this is rhetorically important because this makes the
audience feel like he has conquered the loss of his
loved one, or the character that I mentioned he created
earlier in the scene itself. In terms of gendered environments, the man is associated with industry
and conquest. With the railroad part of this act we are seeing that the clown has overcome his
lose.
Going on with the idea of gendered environments, in the last part of the act we see the
clown try to escape the snowstorm. In this act the director is playing off of what we’d think of as
typically male environment. We see him sway as the wind starts to pick up and then the spotlight
flashes on him. The clown tries to conquer the storm but he is only swept away. Two the left of
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this paragraph is a picture of him running into the storm. The light
coming from the backstage, shining towards the audience is key to the
mood of this scene because it seems to take on its own entity. This light is
the body of the storm. The wind and the snow are its arms and the backdrop is the storm’s legs
kicking the clown. The backdrop is symbolic of nature defeating man. As you can see, even
though it’s difficult, the clown can push through the rain and snow, but the backdrop is the
physical part that stops the clown from conquering the storm. He is helpless. By using a
gendered environment, such as man versus nature, we get a greater feeling for what’s happening
in this scene.
Throughout the act, the audience can strongly identify with the clown. David Blakesley,
author of Defining Visual Rhetoric’s chapter five, defines identification very well. He says,
“Identification is, from a rhetorical perspective, the act of asserting or imagining identity
between two (or more) dissimilars, on the basis of similitude.” In context of Alegria and this
clown act, the audience and the clown are the dissimilars and the basis of similitude would be the
distance between the present and childhood, the need to be loved, the aspects of being in and out
of love, and everyday battles or hardships of life.
Throughout Alegria we find ourselves relating to certain characters and acts. Some acts
are more dangerous or wild than others. On the other hand, some acts are more
carefree. The trapeze act in the beginning is very easy going and romantic, while the
power track is very aggressive and political. As for the clown acts, they are purely
human.
The first significant part of the clown act that we can identify with is when the
clown opens his giant suitcase, a symbol of adulthood, two little balloons come flying
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out. His face cannot be seen clearly but he looks longingly at the balloons, but doesn’t give the
balloons much thought. Something else is on the clown’s mind, which is often the case once
people hit puberty. We all have a past and time goes by so fast that it seems as though our
childhood was only a dream. Childhood, like the balloons, flees as fast as it came.
The thing that is on the clown’s mind is love.
What I like about this scene is that the type of love is
very ambiguous. Is this motherly love or romantic love?
At first the clown is terrified. Just by looking at his face
we are convinced that this character is real and the
feeling is very real to the clown. I believe we are all
afraid, at least to some degree, to let ourselves fall in love. Visually, the clown is an everyman or
a representative for the average person. With this in mind we can all relate to his emotions.
Coming back to the debate of motherly love versus romantic
love, I think that in a way it can be both. We all need someone to lean
on and even the memory of him or her can save us. I say memory
because the character is made out of only a suit, a hat, and the
clown’s arm. The creator could have used another clown, but instead
he chose to create an illusion of another being. You can see in the
picture on the right that this character is incredibly realistic. There’s
comfort in the clown’s face now and when the train honks its horn, he
must be torn away from his comfort.
When the clown looks back at the character, although it is only a suit, we see what the
clown sees because of the camera angle. The shot is taken from behind the clown and subtly
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Fleur
zooms into the character. The camera only goes so close because keeping the illusion of a
character is still important even though the clown isn’t there to give it movement. There are two
ways to look at this part. One way is to identify with the clown. He is sad and distant from his
love. The character is in darkness, so the clown can’t make out any details. In a way, this
reminds me of the old black and white movies where a couple is at a train station and one person
is on the train waving and blowing kisses and the other is at the station watching his or her love
be taken away. Although this is a very dramatic interpretation of this scene, it signifies how key
it is to interpretation. Anyone can read it differently, but it has such strength in the way it
connects to the audience.
The other way to interpret the scene where the clown is waving to his love, is that you
can identify with the character. In my opinion, the audience is very involved in the production
and they forget that this character is a suit. Quickly we begin to identify with this new character.
Do we feel like we are just memories? Perhaps one can relate to being alone in the dark while
your significant other is off traveling, at work, or at school. When an audience member is seeing
this production live, they don’t get the effect of camera shots and angles. Rhetorically, the film
audience sees the character as the goal of the image. The clown’s arm is a vector directing us
towards the character, but is that the same for a live audience member?
This leads me into the next part of this act. The effect this production had on me was
great, but there was a difference between seeing it live and
seeing it on film. When I saw Alegria live I felt like an
observer, as I did when viewing the film, however, the
difference was I was still connected to the action. The
Fleur, a character who is like a ringmaster or a guide
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Tamir and Little Tamir
throughout the production, walks up and down the aisles and interacts with the audience. Clowns
come down the aisles and play with the audience, as well. Traditionally for Cirque du Soleil, the
musicians walk down the aisle that separate the top part and the bottom, closer-to-the-stage part
of the audience. It’s such a thrill to hear and feel the music come right from the instruments and
the vocalists and have it go straight to your soul.
When I watched the same production on film, I still got chills. I could see the facial
expressions up close and the characters looked at me instead of Joe Shmoe out in the audience.
The film, however took away from the complexity of the Cirque du Soleil stage. Although I
think the editors tried to capture everything that was going on it’s very difficult to get everything.
One way to think of this is through Berger’s argument about reproduction. When you put the
circus on film you can’t see the singers or Tamir and little
Tamir sitting while a more important act is taking up the
camera’s attention. Tamir and little Tamir are characters
who, like the clowns, are observers. The difference
between them and the clowns is that they were in the
court, so to speak. When seeing a live production you can
see all the little things that take place.
On the other hand, the second way to look at this is through Burke’s philosophy. “Seeing
is also a way of not seeing,” he says in Defining Visual Rhetoric. Since there are many little
things going on during the main acts, we may not notice them. Particularly in the film, our eyes
are drawn to one thing but the entire image is necessary to get a complete meaning. In the same
chapter that talks about Burke, the text mentions that “image itself [is] a carrier of meaning.” A
good example of “seeing as a way of not seeing” the little things is in Corteo. In Corteo there’s a
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Russian Swings
scene where a clown is upside down on a tight rope, while holding a candlestick in each hand.
Underneath him something else was going on. Another example of things going on besides the
main act is in Varekai. In the background of the stage there is a forest of bamboo poles and a few
characters climb up those and sway. Also in the same show, a Russian Swing act takes in the
back of the stage while the two main characters come
together for marriage in the forefront of the stage. In
Cirque productions the Russian Swing usually
signifies union and marriage. Seeing the Russian
Swings is important to the overall understanding of
the Varekai scene but because it’s in the back you may not notice the side act. The act does come
to the forefront of the stage in the end, however. While some of these things make it onto the
film, it is impossible to capture all of it. The great thing about Cirque is its complexity on the
stage. You can derive a great deal of meaning from watching the film of any Cirque production,
but in order to fully and properly understand one should really see the production live.
Meaning is determined by three things explains the Defining Visual Rhetoric text. These
three elements are the spectator, the space of viewing, and the object being viewed. The object
being viewed, in this case the clown, has been well examined already, so let’s take a look at the
other two elements. There’s a difference in meanings we can have from both the film and live
version of Alegria. The spectator’s perspective changes and depends on where he or she is
watching from the audience. When I saw Alegria I was very far to the right of the stage, and
when I saw Wintuk and Varekai I was in the center, closer to the stage. When I saw Quidam I
was a little farther back but I was relatively centered. Since I was so far off to the side in Alegria,
I felt more like an observer, compared to Wintuk. In Wintuk the BMX bikers rode right past me
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down the aisle to the stage. In Varekai I
watched the clown walk past my dad, and I
swear the clown considered picking my dad to
come up on stage. In terms of seeing a
production on film, I’ve been drawn in by
camera work. When I saw this clown scene, I could tell by his posture and the music that he was
upset, but when I saw it on film, the clown’s eyes pierced right through me. The way I’ve
interpreted and identified with the acts and the stage are also a part of the spectator’s contribution
to meaning.
The space of viewing is important too. If I’m viewing the clown from Alegria on stage,
I’m finding meaning in context of the circus and in the way the creator probably wants me to
view him. When I see the clown outside the context of the Grand Chapiteau, the circus tent, I
derive an entirely different meaning. When I see the picture
to the right, I see the clown as an actor or a human being. I
personally identify with him as someone who as successfully
chased his dream. With this interpretation, however, we are
brought back to Berger and his concept of mystification.
Because I know little of this picture, other than I know the
clown is in Cirque du Soleil’s Alegria, my interpretation of this image will be tainted and
mystified. Nevertheless, whether I’m watching Alegria live or on film, or if I’m seeing a
character in a certain place will all determine the meaning the view has of the image.
If we are to define rhetoric as “using effective language,” and visual rhetoric as “using
effective language in a visual sphere,” then Cirque du Soleil has certainly taken the reigns and
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has mastered visual rhetoric. In Alegria’s main clown act rhetoric is seen throughout with
elements such as gendered environments, identification, visual grammar, elements of meaning,
and so on. Cirque du Soleil has not only redefined what many think of as a traditional circus, but
Cirque has also redefined what one would think utilizes visual rhetoric.
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Works Cited
Alegria. Dir. Nick Morris. Prod. Peter Wag. DVD. Cirque du Soleil, 2001.
Bernath, Patrick. 2006. Cirque du Soleil, Inc., Miami. 11 April 2008
<www.simonandbaker.com>.
Cirque du Soleil Contratapa. 11 April 2008 <www.photobucket.com>.
Cirque du Soleil. n.d. Cirque du Soleil. 11 April 2008 <www.cirquedusoleil.com>.
Dennis, Adrian. 4 January 2007. Getty Images, London. 11 April 2008 <www.daylife.com>.
Hill, Charles A. and Helmers, Marguerite, eds. Defining Visual Rhetoric. New Jersey: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2004.
Yuri. 11 April 2008 <www.photobucket.com>.