Circus, Science and Technology by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030432980
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Circus as Spectacle | Electricity as Spectacle

The popularity and prevalence of circus performance achieved a critical mass during the period 1870–1920 in the United States, the UK and Australia.3 As I have argued elsewhere, the largest circuses of this period were a product of western industrialising societies (see Arrighi 2012). Whether in the United States, Britain or Australia, the arrival of major circuses in a city or town, via railway, road or sea, was a public spectacle, as was the establishment of the circus site, with the raising of the Big Top and pitching of the tent town for circus employees, the horse stud, performing ring animals and menagerie animals. Performances at these circuses aimed to be spectacular, surprising, awe inspiring—demonstrating the outer limits of human physical achievement, dexterity and synergy with non-human animals. Spectacle is one of the quintessential coefficients of the modern circus. Hippisley Coxe provides an insightful explanation of the circus as ‘the spectacle of actuality’ (1980, 25). Proposing the theatre has a parallel in painting, he designates circus as analogous to sculpture: ‘You can walk around it. It can be seen from all sides. There can be no illusion, for there are eyes all round to prove that there is no deception. The performers actually do exactly what they appear to do. […] The circus, then, is the spectacle of actuality’ (ibid.). Musing on the meaning of ‘spectacle’, Hippisley Coxe turns to Pierre Bost’s explanation of the term within the context of the circus:A man alone with his thoughts is not a spectacle… A spectacle demands that Man, brought face to face with either events or other men, should react to them… An unhappy man is not a spectacle until he weeps or shouts. Therefore there must be something physical about a spectacle; boxing is a spectacle, chess is not. (ibid., citing Bost 1931, n.p.)

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