Fred Pollard
“A splendid time is guaranteed for all.”
That boisterous entity born of vaudeville and freak shows known as the modern-day circus had already seen its heyday when the Beatles made that promise back in 1967. And while it has been a slow death, last Saturday’s announcement that the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus would be taking its tents down for good is surely the largest nail in the Big Top coffin.
Let me take you back to a time in my young childhood (way, WAY back in the 1970s, when tweeting was something a canary did, not a president-elect). I was attending my first circus, courtesy of tickets won at Central Elementary School in Roxana (for good grades, I will shamelessly add) and was amazed by the obnoxious combination of colors, noise and sights that a 7-year-old in the Midwest doesn’t normally see.
It is nearly 40 years later, and I can still close my eyes and see the three rings, smell the sawdust, hear the roar of the animals. Yes, that was my first experience seeing a clown car, not to mention the monkeys! (That was probably when I decided that I like monkeys more than people.)
While the idea of a circus dates back to the Roman times, the Greatest Show on Earth was the creation of a few independent innovators in the mid-1800s who eventually merged to create one monster of a show. P.T. Barnum’s Great Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Hippodrome, Cooper and Bailey Circus and five Ringling brothers had combined their forces by 1919, and the smiles and laughter they created would help get the country through the Great Depression and two world wars.
Sadly, a changing world that only gains momentum as it spins left the circus behind, and by this summer, the Ringling Brothers’ now diluted Peter Pan formula, with the ability to transport us back in time like an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” will have faded into history.
As someone who would often rather watch “Game of Thrones” in my pajamas than get out of the house, and as someone who is fiercely passionate about animal rights, I know this is a necessary and unavoidable evolution. And I know there are other circuses still around, doing their best to keep the dream alive. But I can’t help but think of all of the generations who will never know the experience of a clown throwing a bucket of confetti on your parents’ heads, or seeing the safety nets in the second ring and realizing the trapeze act is real, not CGI or holograms.
A virtual reality circus on your iPhone is just not the same.