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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>.