As of May 2017, the famous Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey Circus will be history.
P.T. Barnum's quote, "there's a sucker born every minute," will remain.
An American tradition for nearly 150 years, the circus couldn't survive in the short-attention span world of the Internet, chasing Pokeman crap through the street, staying at home and downloading pirated movies, or Googling porn.
THE BEAUTY PARLOR'S FULL OF SAILORS.
How quaint, the notion of seeing a beautiful lady in tights on a trapeze. Now, it's a transgender woman having an orgy; a free download via the torrents. Make that a "chick with a dick." Make that Gay Bukkake. Whatever. Just make sure it's here, it's queer, it's freaky, and it's lesbian/gay/transgender cool.
"Family values," and a circus? Not in 2017. Better to go to Rotten dot com or Google Donald Trump's sons and see pictures of them holding up a dead elephant's tale or grinning as they stand over a tiger's carcass. See some pictures of a dentist who proudly shot a lion via a very controlled and easy kill.
There are people on Facebook who will happily post the most gruesome animal abuse photos, and laugh and laugh and laugh. How about that vet who proudly showed a picture of the cat she killed, with an arrow through it's head? Once upon a time Steve Martin made the world laugh with a fake arrow in his head. Now it's a real arrow in a cat's head.
Look, times change, and "theres nothing wrong with that." The beauty parlor full of sailors, I mean. Or the Internet so loaded up with violence and circus-like freakishness that the London Daily Mail can routinely run horrific photos of maimed victims of religious fanatics, and nobody cringes.
Hey, the movies are so full of violence, people just laugh. Gorefest horror movies are now rated for the inventive ways women get raped and killed. And we've got MMA now, and even in football, a shrug over the regular concussions. Hell, remember that cool moment in basketball when a player landed "funny" and part of a bone stuck out of his leg? Let's see THAT on YouTube over and over. You expect people to be content watching somebody walk a high wire?
The rest of Dylan's line from "Desolation Row" IS obsolete. The circus used to be in town. Now, officially, NO:
The Feld family (owners of the circus) will tell you that the BIG problem with the circus was the elephants. Animal rights groups protested, and rightly so. But most people going to the circus wanted to see elephants, and a touring circus was the place. Not everyone could visit a zoo, but when the circus came to town...
The expense of BRINGING a circus to town? Obviously, that's difficult, and when families can get downloads FREEEEE, or spend their time looking at FREEEEE stuff on YouTube, or they pay a nominal sum to Netflix, who has the money for the circus? You've got to pay the ticket prices, pay to get there, and pay for refreshments. You also have the pain in the ass problem of being seated with OTHER families, who are most likely more monkey-like than the animals on display.
While Cirque du Soleil has marketed itself to Yuppies and to affluent families seeking "artistic" acrobatic work, the circus clung to the tradition of the trapeze act and the high wire. Boooorrrring.
Oh. One of the most disgusting words in the English language: CLOWNS.
Everybody hates clowns. They are assholes. They aren't funny.
I know a clown. He's retired on a pension. He'll donate his time to annoy kids in schools. He'll go into the park and "practice" on people with his stale jokes and his stupid props. He is an asshole. He is not funny. He spends his vacations in the Philippines paying for whores.
In a way, it's sad that "the circus" has become antiquated. It one time, it may indeed have been "The Greatest Show On Earth." But that was years and years ago, before the Internet.
There was a time when families were reasonably well behaved. People had attention spans and weren't bored by amazing, garish and unusual sights taking place in three different rings. Today's multi-tackers would tell you three different rings is definitely not enough, especially if one has a lion act, another a trapeze, and another a high wire act; you can get your computer or video screen to show you many more cable channels than that, with a running crawl for the stock market quotes.
I remember when I went to the circus, a LIFETIME ago. Aside from the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd, and the lions and trapeze artists and the rest of it, you could also wander around and see specialty acts positioned next to the souvenir concessions. The "freak" acts were not too freaky. I remember a giant, wearing a cowboy outfit. He may have been billed as "The World's Tallest Man." Something like that. He seemed especially huge to an 8 year-old or however old I was. He sat in a chair and seemed like a parade float more than a human. He had very pink skin and big eyes, that may have been deliberately unfocused to blur all the grinning faces of the brats. He sat hands resting on the arms of his huge chair, each finger like a plump frankfurter.
Well, quite a few towns have a Ripley's Believe it Or Not, and a Madame Tussaud's and other tourist traps. These take place in compact buildings and can get freakier and freakier as the public gets freakier and freakier. You'll find a a replica of a two-headed goat. You can play laser tag or wander through some frightful and gory display.
Wanna see elephants? There's a zoo in most major cities, partially or completely funded by the city itself, by donations, and by the now standard huge admission fee. Families gather around to throw peanuts at the elephants, yell, scream, make the animals nervous, and yell and scream some more. If you're lucky, you might see some unsupervised brat wander into the gorilla enclosure and then see the gorilla get shot. Or, some nut job screaming about Allah will try and feed himself to a tiger.
Take heart. Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey will be gone, but there will STILL be a circus.
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