Humour: The Mask

When I clown on the streets I have face paint and I am wearing my clown suit, I am in the image of a clown. I realise that this is the mask people see. There are some people who are afraid of masks and I can only assume they are afraid of what they don’t understand, they can’t see the identity. I have wondered if it is a desire to be in control, the clown appears out of control. The mask is very powerful and instantly people know you are there to be happy, it actually unmasks people all around you. I often tell people I see the true face of humanity, what I see is nothing but beauty, in every person, even a person drunk, or unattractive, no-one is unacceptable when viewed from the eyes of a clown. There have been movies that have depicted clowns in frightening ways, I am not comfortable with this as I may be misunderstood in my innocence. However, I do accept there is the yin and yang in everything and the world is diversity. So I just send love to those afraid and try not to impinge on their space. Instead if they dare to look I may be able to release them to feel their own joy and dare to connect. The mask gives permission to have fun.

Humour Unmasked

In Kahil Gibran’s book The Prophet he writes ‘what is your sorrow but your joy unmasked’.58

The power and irony of those that wear masks is that they are able to unmask society in a myriad of ways.59 The mask or camoflague conceals true intentions and suggests that things on the surface are not what they appear to be.60

Humour is considered the best lie detector, discovering with uncanny flair, contrived ideals and insincerity. Humour unmasks pretence, pompousness and arrogance.61 Humour is a powerful tool which makes people intolerant of phoney and fraudulent ideals. Lorenz states that knowledge and humour are the two great hopes for civilisation.62
The idea of unmasking is described as a strip-tease momentarily freeing the unmasked from custom, habit and discomfort.63 The comic unmasks through laughing at subtle and acute perceptions of the humourous aspects of the Self.64 The hopeless fools reveal hypocritical abuses of power through making themselves the object of ridicule and revealing his own foolishness and cleverly unmasking the force and fraud of powerholders.65

Humour exerts an influence on social behaviour analogous to moral responsibility and makes the world a more honest and better place to live.66 Furthermore, humour creates the bond of personal love and friendship enabling people to live peacefully together to work for the common good.67