GROTESQUES

Every living-breathing anachronism has the job of superimposing the past onto the present. Every present moment gets its significance and meaning from comparisons with what it no longer is. Such is the task of this entry.

Something is missing from the theater of men, something that brings the theater aspect back. Since the world is a stage, what it needs are its Gothic adornments, the accoutrement of classic theatre, to remind itself that it is theatre. Its function and purpose is all about perspective – and remembrance.

We can begin with its own version of the Janis Gate – the masks of comedy and tragedy. The masks should be carved in lapidary marble and placed front & center above every marquee. The patron should be entering an anti-chamber to his own role as a player. The play itself is the constant shifting of tragedy that eventually (with time) transforms into comedies of error. Walking down the darkened isle inside is a portal of remembrance leading us to isles and seat assignments – aka. of who/where we are under the vault of heaven.

That’s just for starters. Before, during, and after the performance “of our lives” we’re surrounded with the grotesques (chimeras, gargoyles) of the human comedy. These are the masks we wear on and off stage, though we’re never “off” stage.

The gargoyle is fitting more than ever. The word shares a Latin root which means to “gargle” and a French derivation meaning “throat” or “gullet.” Hence to swallow, but also to spew (or “throw up”). The Gothic gargoyle “tosses” the used water which cleanses the body of Christ (or Mary) into the streets. The function is ablutionary – washing/purging for purification. It’s similar to the chamberlain ridding the queen of her foul water.

On the surface (architecturally), the grotesque was used as a whimsical and humorous addition to fill in empty spaces. In that spirit it was easy (and permissible) to conjoin human and animal features to entertain fables and superstitions – something very unusual at a time when the church took superstition seriously (still burning witches and looking for signs of Satan). It suggests that maybe not all was as humorously treated as assumed – a split-mindedness that survives today. We’re “over” the superstitions about black cats and witches; and yet we’re not. We still look for witchmarks in the subtleties of deportment, language, and ideas. Stereotypes still await their opportunity.

Split-mindedness was no joke. On one level the church and society was playfully seeking out the abnormal to make fun of and caricaturize. On the other hand, this was the Age of Faith, and grotesques were there to ward of evil, including all things subversive. It was an odd and seldom agreed upon interpretation of the sacred and profane working together to soothe the ambivalent attitudes around evil and Satan. The dumbed-down version of that today might be the rabbit’s foot and the amethyst crystal – playful and (for some) serious.

The term grotesque also comes from the Italian grottesca meaning “of the cave.” It alludes to grottos, basements, caves, corridors, and/or rooms that have become overgrown, buried, and forgotten. The labyrinths and skull-lined catacombs of the medieval church are the same passageways that reside under the boardwalks of waking consciousness. They hold us up while staying buried in the muck of everything we repress.

A big part of that muck is how seriously we take ourselves. We (humans) are important and righteous, and everything nonhuman is “less than.” The gargoyle is the grotesqueness of that moral pronouncement. It laughs at us for such pride and arrogance. This is its unexpected function.

Another unexpected function: They happen to adorn the most “official” public buildings, albeit is smaller (tamer) versions in the US – those very buildings where leaders convene to do their very worst to people (in the name of “leadership”). They’re the headquarters for human suffering. The dark shadows they create, behind every act of “goodwill,” is brought forth inside the marbled halls of civil service. The grotesque reminds us all how relative the phrase “dark age” really is. Civilization (civility, civil authority) is measured by clever methods of sublimating our worst instincts.

More deeply than anything the chimera/gargoyle/grotesque is about a conversation with ourselves. They’re caricatures in the eternal effort to escape the entanglements we design for ourselves. Compact and intense, with sharp features and eyes that never cease to stare, they laugh at us, haunt us, mock us, remind us, while “throwing up” at the same time. They touch the very core of our deceptions, frauds, impostures, and artifice. The more we fool ourselves, the more grotesque the face which sometimes laughs, sometimes cries.

Hence they offer us an ultimatum: Either invite them down and in for a cuppa tea, or keep the world going as it is — laden with, propelled by, superstition, subterfuge, and hypocrisy. Again, the stronger the superstition (and fear), the more distorted they get. It’s Dorian Gray looking into the mirror.

Alas, in the last 700 years the grotesque has neither diminished in scope or in appearance. We think it has, and we laugh at them as reminders of illiteracy and ignorance long ago. But they force us to witness the same dysfunctions today. Superstition has not diminished, and nothing has changed. The overtures and calls for change remain just as they’ve been for seven centuries. But listening is still our problem, and our cartoonish friends keep reminding us to reset the boundaries of understanding and the edifice of images and ideas. There’s nothing the caricature would love more than a) to finally come down and retire, or b) be the ludicrous comic opera we (wrongfully) think they already are.

Our leaders and many of their devotees are walking, breathing gargoyles. The only difference is that they don’t perch on gutters, valleys, soffits, and downspouts. That indicates the degree to which we’ve denied our darkest secrets to ourselves. The more denial sets in, the more our demons hang in high places. And what we have today are people wearing the masks of what they loathe most. They define the “persona” as what it is. They also define the “complex” – the voluntary projection of parts of ourselves we don’t like but believe to be true (as in the “inferiority complex”).

The grotesque is often confused with the gargoyle, but the latter is the one with the water spout in its mouth. Meanwhile, the grotesque without a spout is also called the chimera. In the Middle Ages the term for both gargoyle and grotesque was derived from the Italian word for “baboon.”

That said, the chimera is the most revealing of the grotesques. It is known in three different ways: The first is that of a Greek monster with a lion’s head, goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. The second refers to a deception, fantasy, or delusion. And the third is a medical reference meaning an organism that has cells from more than one body (or genotype). In provincial and colloquial terms, it is a “freak” of nature.

Think of the body politic metaphorically. It thinks of itself as a fixed entity, unchanging and solid, from preferred sources and roots. Or, it thinks of itself as a process, a state of mind, a mental invention. In the first case the head is a stranger to its tail. It consumes it without knowing it (like the ouroboros), – In the second case, it identifies with the balance between ends (masculine and feminine) which is in a constant transposition. One is never oneself entirely. All things are conditional and ephemeral. The “freak” today is both the collision and confluence of masculine and feminine, hermaphroditic (“trans-) consciousness, role-reversals, and gender-neutral careers. This is also a constant theme in the arts. The chimera shifts in color and form like the chameleon. – In the end, what we see looking down at us depends on us.

An interesting final thought becomes a whimsical hypothetical: If evolution is all about doffing our personas and no longer needing to defend them, then what happens to the grotesque? In other words, what will it look like in the years hereafter? My guess is it will be the many faces of “us,” but more human, androgynous, friendly, smiling. A thousand years from now we’ll all look up at our medieval forms and recognize what we once were, just as we do now with the tortured faces at Salisbury Cathedral, Florence Cathedral, Notre-Dame de Paris.

Whatever the time or place, the grotesque “has our number.” He’s the alter ego on our shoulders mirroring everything we think, believe, and do. They’re the “preachers in stone” said one 13^th century Pope. Whether they simply amuse and entertain, or rain on us with our foul waters, is our decision.

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