“King and the clown” – Korean movie

In Middle-Age, in FRANCE, the “fou du roi”, the King’s fool, the buffoon was not really a clown. Certainly, he made the King smile. But, he used to speak with irony and he was allowed to mock the King. ERASMUS wrote about buffoon whom role was not only to make laugh the King but above all to reveale the truth and to be a ludicrous mirror.

Sometimes the satire which always helps to discover the truth, could be a risk for the artist, even a danger. Some kings didn’t have sense of humor. Irony hurts cuz under the smile, it reveales a refused, rejected truth. Many people, not necessary Kings, we know don’t appreciate irony. They haven’t sense of humor and their “ego”doesn’t appreciate the truth. Living in a false world they built, they are afraid by the truth. They reject, they sentence the nasty clown for his unacceptable irony.

In this film, King is using the buffoon as a politic instrument to eliminate some enemy among his ministers. Specially those who when he was a child, helped his father to kill his mother, the Queen. King is also and mostly using the buffoon to make a catharsis on his painfull past. ARISTOTLE wrote about catharsis which is one of the function of the Classical theater tragedy. Catharsis is a purging, a purification of the passions, showing them symbolically. In this film, King obliged the buffoon to play, his mother’s murder which had made definitivelly a trauma in his mind. The buffoon’s playing helped King to unmask the murderers among the ministers but also his own family. Watching the play, King sustained a catharsis…

Go to see this good film and you will know what effects did produce this catharsis on King’s mind.

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~ by nournours on January 26, 2008.