Series Review: American Experience: The Circus
This 2018 PBS series provides a thorough report
This four-hour 2018 mini-series, funded by various private charities through PBS and partly subsidized by the National Endowment for the Humanities, aired and can be viewed in two parts via PBS. I recently watched the TV program, which is engrossing, while conducting research for fiction writing.
The Circus focuses on America and how this unique form of arts and entertainment captures pioneering commercialism and individualism. Quoting children’s book author E.B. White, a voice asserts that “the circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know. Its magic is universal and complex. Out of its wild disorder comes order. From its rank smell rises the good aroma of courage and daring. Out of its preliminary shabbiness comes the final splendor.”
This program unfurls a modernly marvelous story, which I strongly recommend. From early innovators to the wonders of Jumbo the elephant, the lion tamers and various acrobats, freaks and performers, including the brilliant clown Emmett Kelly, The Circus, proving that this traveling show embodies “the improbable and the impossible, the exotic and the spectacular,” is an inviting and informative study in capitalism, industrialism and the arts.
As a modern circus ringmaster says during one of the best series interviews:
What makes America great is our daring. The whole experiment of America is daring. The circus was the artistic testament to that spirit—that spirit of innovation—that spirit of wild impossibilities.”
Trapeze, gymnastics and oddity performers abound. So do other aspects of the circus, such as its color and industrial design by Norman Bel Geddes and the music (i.e., P.G. Lowery), and, centrally, stories of the men who made the circus—the Ringling Brothers, P.T. Barnum and the exceptional tale of a single, self-made man who chose to become the legendary James Bailey of Barnum and Bailey fame. From the initial one-ring show at the end of the 18th century to a final performance in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1956, when the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey big top was retracted for the last time, The Circus (beautifully scored by Gary Lionelli) dazzles. Visit the program website here.
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