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I know all the controversy – some well earned, but this is a sad day. Now the circus is a memory the new little kids will never fill their senses with or even experience.
(Will childhood clown fears diminish I wonder? No only at the circus music or begging for balloons…but maybe kids are too jaded for those these days )
I think the children of today, are more interested in the computer games, and mobile/cell phones than the wonderful world of their own imagination. They are forever glued to them!
My 3 year old granddaughter knows how to use a mobile, take pictures, and do whatever it is that people do with the cursed things. Yet she cannot read or write!
I have one that I turn on when I’m alone just in case……………….
My guess is most kids today only know about circuses from books and movies. It’s sad though. Another piece of Americana falling by the wayside, and it leaves me feeling very nostalgic (and old). As you point out, without circuses, how will kids ever learn that clowns are supposed to be funny, not scary. I don’t know how the scary clown thing ever got started in the first place.
The Cirque du Soleil offers plenty of wonder, without abusing animals.
It is another piece of the kinder, gentler America we knew that is ending. Sad to lose the circus atmosphere- the excitement of the daredevil acrobatics and silly clown antics – but thrilled those wild animals will no longer have to “perform” for human entertainment, live in cages, travel, be stared at, mistreated, etc. For naive me, clowns were nothing but funny until Stephen King/Dean Koontz books. Pennywise (It, by S. King) scared the brown right outta my hair… and i still cringe when i must look down a drain!
As a kid I was completely unaware of the animal mistreatment, so my memories are just of the spectacle, excitement, etc. And those were the only times I actually went to a circus. Never saw or read anything with scary clowns (I scare too easily to subject myself to that sort of thing), so all my clown memories are good ones — Emmitt Kelly, Clarabell, Ronald McDonald, Red Skelton, etc.
The Cirque du Soleil offers plenty of magic and wonder without the cruelty.
Meh, good riddance. I’ve been a Cirque du Soleil fan for more than 20 years now. All the spectacle. None of the horror.
The Cirque du Soleil is a wonder in its own right. But it’s not the circus of my childhood, the one that inhabits my memories.