FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

58 Transition and Transformation
metaphor for early sensational cinema. In his groundbreaking study on the circus
film, Matthias Christen discusses at length the media historical locus of
early circus films, particularly emphasizing the “circus-cinematographs” from
the first decades of the twentieth century. With their close association between
the circus and cinema, they indeed seem to suggest an intersection or even integration
between the two. 42
This early sensational cinema is also modern not only in the sense that it provides
a particular form of performative energy, but because these early circus
performances on screen have indeed provided the main aspect, according to
Stoddart, of the modernity of the circus itself: “figures which draw attention to
the limitations of the very forms of inscription and narration through which we
continually attempt to describe ourselves as such”. 43 Also, and more importantly
in this context, He Who Gets Slapped, not least through its numerous
followers, may serve as bridge for this vital metaphor, paving the way into classical
and post-classical cinema.
It has already been suggested, in connection with the circus films of this period,
that the circus theme – in addition to its attractional or sensational character,
which seemed to be the main motivation for the films from the 1910s in the
genre – has dramatic potential as a powerful metaphor for life itself. Matthias
Christen opens his introduction with a quote from Paul Bouissac: “It [the circus]
is a kind of mirror in which culture is reflected, condensed and at the same time
transcended; perhaps the circus seems to stand outside the culture only because
it is at its very center”. 44 Christen here offers a thorough study of the circus
genre in cinema as such, particularly focusing on the themes of exotism, conformism
and transgression, where he also deals explicitly with He Who Gets
Slapped. 45 This analysis takes into account the double identity of “He”, and
thus also the transgressive character of the clown, which interestingly varies the
melodramatic theme of doubling. The comic part of clownery is here doubled
by the empathy for his main, “true” character, which also demonstrates to what
extent the stereotype is actually widened in this film by the extension of the
original psychodrama into a more universal metaphor, as theatrum mundi.
This double role of the clown in He Who Gets Slapped, both in the traditional
function as unfortunate lover and as model figure for a more general outsidership
in history and society, has its forerunners in nineteenth-century literature
by the romantics, as both Jean Starobinski and Louisa E. Jones have aptly
demonstrated; if, according to Jones, “neither pierrots nor clowns were sad” in
the 1820s, the clown as the alter ego of the artist in the screen versions some
hundred years later nevertheless remains a tragic figure. 46 The theme of cruelty
in the circus has also been a theme in art; in an article that Sjöström wrote about
his Hollywood years, he explicitly mentions an 1878 Nils Forsberg painting entitled
Akrobatfamilj inför cirkusdirektören (Acrobat Family before the Circus Director)