Circus

[seryn]

I would have liked it if they did more of the really good documentaries.

Circus was added to Netflix streaming and I thoroughly enjoyed rewatching it. I would like to have seen the 2010 season as well (the show was 2009's).

There was a documentary about Cirque du Soleil too and that was also awesome and I would have liked to see more years of that too.

I'm not completely sure these don't count as "reality tv" because there are a lot of these video diary type moments and such, but it's still about being in the circus. It's not artificial and manufactured. These people were in the Big Apple Circus even if there wasn't a video crew following them around. Survivor and Amazing Race and all the clones of those... the people in them would not be there without the show.

What's the difference between a documentary and reality tv? I think it's exactly in whether the people are there because of the filming or if the filming is an added layer. Madonna's video of her concert tour--- not the concert themselves, but the whole back stage and traveling and the ongoing weirdness of caravanning around the world--- that wasn't reality tv with it's implied sleaziness.

Both the Cirque du Soleil and Big Apple Circus documentaries were great advertising vehicles in that they promoted a show I would never have otherwise considered viable for my entertainment into my conscious investigation. I looked into whether I could see the Big Apple Circus (can't it's on the wrong side of the country, always). I wouldn't have even thought of them otherwise.

I might see Cirque du Soleil sometime. The tickets are really expensive and really hard to get for the traveling show. But I really had figured they were a "child-required" show since they've named themselves a circus and the documentary changed my impression of their show a lot.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Circuses reinvented themselves as a spectacle for kids during the twentieth century because kids urge their parents to go again and again; sometimes it works. Cirque du Soleil has reinvented itself, too--it didn't start as multiple troupes--but the two shows I've seen have not been kid-targeted; one, in its humor, wasn't kid-friendly. (Not vulgar, but above the heads of most children's understanding.)

[seryn]

That adult-friendly message was clearly conveyed in the Cirque du Soleil documentary. The show, as we saw in the clips during development, looked like an actual show that happened to have stunts and acrobatics and physical skills in it. There was music and lighting that conveyed a cerebral style that would instantly bore most children (it would have me when I was a child and modern children are even more frenetic). So it seems likely that I would enjoy it once I got past paying for the tickets. Probably if I really want to see it, I should have Simon* buy them so my enjoyment isn't sullied.

[sciarra]

Would you consider going to Vegas for the standing show? Vegas can be fun because it's just so fucking campy.

[seryn]

It's one of the things we'd consider going to Vegas for. Well, that and high class hotel rooms for significantly less than they cost on Maui. We had been planning to go and then the Bellagio changed their anti-child policy back to "everyone else is completely fucked because no on parents their kids while they're traveling and the hotel manager can hardly spank the brattiness out without killing them (the kids or the parents) by now." So we found somewhere else to go that year.