"Mommy, why did the fascists have to kill the circus too?"

"They didn't have to sweetie. They love death."


At Ringling Brothers Circus, Preparing for the Final Bows - The Old Gray Whore ...

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

April 7, 2017

“Damn everything but the circus!”

-- E. E. Cummings

It began in 1871 as P. T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome, back when Prussia was still a kingdom and Jesse James was robbing banks. It survived the Depression, two world wars and the new media of its time, including radio, film and television.

But on May 21, the world’s most historic circus, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey, will shut down after failing to sufficiently dazzle the children of the smartphone age and to overcome the fierce opposition of the animal rights movement, which does not want to see animals in the circus.

Backstage and from the bleachers during a four-day run in Washington, the frenzied spectacle of today is still rooted in its 19th-century traditions, with a dash of the modern mixed in. Clowns flop. Trapezists fly. Wild animals jump. Contortionists bend. Horses gallop. Tightrope walkers wobble.

But ticket sales, which had been declining for a decade, plummeted last year, when the elephants left the ring for the last time. Feld Entertainment, which owns Ringling, spent years battling animal rights groups and accusations of elephant abuse. The circus never lost in court; it won a total of $25 million in two settlements from two major animal rights groups and beat back allegations that it had mistreated elephants with chains and bullhooks. But a surreptitious 2009 video showing heavy-handed tactics against the elephants and a powerful online campaign helped dampen enthusiasm for the circus, even as Ringling moved to revamp its practices.

“We won in court — and obviously in the court of public opinion we didn’t prevail,” said Kenneth Feld, the 69-year-old chairman and chief executive of Feld Entertainment, which bought the circus in 1967 and owns a variety of successful traveling shows, including Monster Jam and Disney on Ice. In an unforgiving marketplace, he said, it just became too hard for the circus to hold on to its most crucial fans: wide-eyed kids and their nostalgic parents.

“There has been more change in the last decade than in the preceding 70 years,” Mr. Feld said recently. “The circus had to be all things to all people. Now we live in a world of specialization.”

Running a circus, even one that has downsized over time, didn’t get any cheaper. The operation — there are two traveling troupes — is gargantuan: Two mile-long circus trains to move people and equipment; more than 500 performers and crew members to pay and house; 100 animals to care for and feed; 800 costumes; and a universe of props, sound and lights.

In a world of distractions, the circus, whittled from five rings to three to, finally, one, found it impossible to compete with cellphones, video games and endless on-demand entertainment. Now, in its last days, the men and women who have dedicated years to an enterprise that felt eternal are looking back with pride, grief and a sense of disbelief that “the greatest show on earth” is going dark for good...

May God have mercy on all our black, bloody, souls...we can't even have fun any longer.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.