Hanging with the Juggalos

I wrote an essay last week called, "The Nightmare of my Choice: Insane Clown Posse and Heart of Darkness," in which I compared Marlow's vision of Kurtz to my vision of ICP lyrics.  Although I was proud of my essay and forced numerous people to read it, I now think it makes a specious comparison.  While it is true that Conrad's vision of imperialism, racism and "the darkness in man's heart" (as William Golding said later) could also be a vision of America (like Apocalypse Now), let's face it: Heart of Darkness just isn't very funny.  It's not a comic novel.  Nobody laughs out loud while reading it. On the other hand, Insane Clown Posse is made up of clowns.  They are wicked clowns, but they are clowns nevertheless.

These wicked clowns, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, are completely unlike Kurtz in any way.  They showed me a really good time, whereas I can't imagine anything more boring than hanging out with Kurtz in the "Inner Station," trying to get ivory from a bunch of natives who are crawling around worshiping him with unspeakable rites.  I'd rather scream the lyrics to "F--k the World" while waiting to leap onto the stage and spray Faygo all over myself and everyone else.  

I had a great time with the Juggalos.  Some people don't know who they are.  Some people think they are a "gang."  I can only report what I saw and experienced, which was that Juggalos are like a big, extended family.  I don't see myself as a part of their immediate family, but rather as a kindly and non-judgmental aunt who dropped in on their festivities.  They welcomed me with open arms.  I am happy to begin my Visions of America with an account of my visit to their concert.

Insane Clown Posse is from Detroit, which I visited for the first time last month.  I took a lot of photos, but 

there was no way to capture the immensity of the devastation.  I think ICP does a better job than any photo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46Qj0J2DSg0

I never listened to any rap music before, except for a couple of songs that my kids or my students played for me. I am not into that scene at all.  I like country music and opera.  My daughter claims she tried to play a couple of ICP songs for me when she was in 7th or 8th grade and I made her stop.  I don't know how it happened, but I heard they were coming to Seattle and I started reading about ICP and the Juggalos.  I watched some of their videos, both old and new.  I learned about the Joker Cards, the Dark Carnival, and their spiritual message.  I listened to the song "Miracles" and read a lot of other lyrics.  I started listening to the album "Bizaar" (not to be confused with "Bizzar," which came out at the same time) because it was the only one I could find.  Who can say why I liked it?  I sure don't know.  I found it really catchy.  I started downloading and listening to other ICP albums, and liked them, too.  

I honestly can't explain why I kept listening.  They made me laugh a lot.  They shocked me with a lot of what they said, but I could not believe anyone would take the lyrics seriously, these guys in face paint singing about swinging an axe and chopping off people's heads. When people asked me how I could even listen to them, I felt rebellious. The more I read about how much people hated Juggalos, the more I wanted to see them for myself.

So I bought a VIP ticket for myself and regular tickets for my daughter and her housemate.  I felt sort of guilty, because most Juggalos don't have very much money, and could barely afford the 30 bucks it cost for a regular ticket.  For 100 dollars, I got a copy of their new album, a giant flag, and a VIP pass which allowed me to meet the Wicked Clowns and go on stage to spray Faygo onto everyone.

Faygo is a really cheap soda that is made in Detroit.  I don't know what else to tell you about it.  It tastes like cheap soda.  I only drank the diet but the orange and grape smelled just like you would expect.  Why do they spray it onto people?  I don't know, but I'm sure glad they do.  

Here I am with the guys.  I was super excited to meet them, and I was not disappointed.  I was in line with people who had waited their whole lives for this experience, whose lives had been changed (for the better) by the spiritual concepts in the Dark Carnival, who were laughing or crying or screaming with excitement.  I told the guys I was doing this as part of my 50th birthday celebration, and congratulated them on their success and also on becoming parents.  Violent J's son, Violent JJ, was there, too, and I got to say hi to him.

When I had finished saying hi to them, and having them sign the back of my "Psycho B--ch" shirt, I had to go back outside and wait in line again. One drunk guy started trying to pick a fight with someone, but before he could throw a punch, other Juggalos gathered around and started chanting, "Family!  Family!" and the fight stopped before it started.  The people next to me in line told me they had seen this happen at the Juggalo Gathering, and that fights between Juggalos were rare.

I didn't care about the opening acts, so I hung out in the bar (I don't drink and I might have been the only sober person there, although I did see an interview with Shaggy in which he said he had quit drinking a few years ago) and talked to the Juggalos.  I asked them questions about their lives, where they came from, their jobs, their kids, why they thought people hated Juggalos so much, whether they had ever been to the Gathering of the Juggalos (an annual event in the Midwest) and if so, what it was like.  I didn't see anyone who was violent or evil or a gang member.  They just seemed like normal people to me, maybe a little more down to earth.  People were getting drunk and high, but that's what most concerts are like.  

I really enjoyed the concert.  I felt the "collective effervescence," as my kids like to call it.  Spraying Faygo around was incredibly fun.  I never once felt unsafe, or threatened, or anything else.  It made me want to visit the Juggalo Gathering.  

I could write a big long analysis about the wicked clowns and the Greek Fates (especially Atropos) as they relate to "The Mighty Death Pop."  I could compare Roman Circuses with Juggalo Championship Wrestling.  I could spend a lot of time talking about catharsis and comparing the Faygo Armageddon to some kind of collective baptism.  I could discuss the Bacchae and compare Juggalettes to Maenads.  (Ooh, now that's a tempting one!)  But what would be the point?  You can either identify with the emotion behind the lyrics, "Girl, you know I love you, but now you gotta die" or you can't.  I asked a couple of friends if they had ever felt like that after being cheated on or dumped or hurt by someone, and they insisted that they had not.  I am not afraid to admit that I have.  I've never even punched anyone (except Sally Loeser when she stole my teddy bear at a fifth grade slumber party), but a lot of the super violent and creepy lyrics speak to me.  

I like living in the USA.  I like the diversity, and all the cool experiences I can have.  What is a Juggalo?  As ICP says, "F--k if I know."  They swear a lot.  They talk about creepy violence and also beautiful rainbows and daisies and miracles.  Some of them wear face paint.  Most of them don't have a lot of money. A lot of them were bullied at school, like I was. They were really nice to me.  At the end of the night, I was soaked with Faygo.  My voice was hoarse from screaming all the lyrics and yelling, "Whoop Whoop!"  I am down with the clown, and I hope the Carnival comes back to my town.  

The Nightmare of my Choice : Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Insane Clown Posse

Violent J of Insane Clown Posse claims that people become Juggalos (followers of the Detroit rap duo) even before they listen to ICP music.  This is definitely true of me.  I can pinpoint the moment I became a Juggalette.  I was in 8^th grade, and the members of Insane Clown Posse were most likely still in diapers.  Eric Schwab, a popular and good looking 7^th grade boy, saw me carrying my books down the hall.  He came up to me, knocked them out of my hands and simply said, “Pick ‘em up, bitch.”  Other students and teachers walked past, seeming not to notice.  When I think about the teachers who stand by and let bullying happen, often favoring the popular bullies, I want to let ICP do the talking -- “We’ll rip your head off and swing it by the hair/until we get blood everywhere.” (“Get Ya Wicked On”)  I identify with Juggalos because they are social outcasts who call themselves a “Family.”  They defend each other when the powers that be are silent or impotent.

Moreover, according to experiencefestival.com, “For the Juggalo community, the overall message of staying true to oneself and refusing to change for anyone is the true meaning and purpose of living.”  Considering that I wear a wedding ring I gave myself, inscribed with the message, “To Thine Own Self Be True,” I think this is a pretty good definition of my philosophy. 

However, as an almost fifty year old high school teacher, I have been criticized for defending Insane Clown Posse, whose lyrics describe unspeakable acts of violence, sex, drug use and other criminal behavior.  The FBI has listed Juggalos as a “gang” and certain individuals claiming to be Juggalos have committed real crimes, ranging from misdemeanor drug possession to stabbing people to death.  Yes, they are entertainers, and yes, they provide a cathartic and effervescent experience, but, in the words of the station manager from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, their “methods are unsound.”

I do relate ICP to Kurtz in a lot of ways.  As Marianna Torgovnik, in “Primitivism and the African Woman in Heart of Darkness,” writes:

“Conrad provides additional testimony to the attraction violence exerts for many men in our culture, perhaps as an outlet for the many alternative values conventionally barred to them: free emotional expression, openness to the “feminine” views of mothers of wives, identification with other men on a basis other than competition.  Under such conditions, ritualized enactments of violence and death become flirtations with boundary dissolution; they both test and affirm men’s need to maintain separation, difference, and control as attributes of masculinity.  They become simulacra of, but also charms against the loss of self, inscribed in the fullest erotic experience.  Kurtz’s rituals of human sacrifice and cannibalism may thus have been motivated by the same Western mixture of thanatophilia and thanatophobia found in other men of his time.”

I suppose when I listen to “Fearless” (“I’ll shoot a game of pool with the grim reaper and let him beat me; I’ll meet Jeffrey Dahlmer at some kind of bar, let him take me home and eat me”)  or  “The Juggla” (“If you're a little kid I'm a take ya/And if you're neck I'm a break ya/If you're an old lady I'm a mug ya/ Cuz bitch, you can't fuck with the juggla”) I do feel, like Marlow, “as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to thought and odious to the soul had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.”  And of course, I am carefully selecting the least offensive lyrics to quote here; most of them are simply nothing I would want to repeat in any public medium of communication. 

But for me, ICP are more than monstrous. They are also funny.  The song, “I Stuck Her with My Wang” is simply unprintable, describing X-rated acts in every imaginable place including the home improvement aisle of Meier’s.  I enjoy their attack on the materialism of Christmas (although they insult one of my favorite holiday characters) in “Santa Claus is a Fat B---, another year and I ain’t got s—t”.  I like the audacity and absurdity of “The Neden Game” song (“To get your attention in a crowded place/I’d walk right up and stick my --- in your face”) and the braggadocio of “Whut” (“Had syphilis three times/committed mad felony crimes”).

They are also spiritual.  Everyone talks about (and makes fun of) their song “Miracles,” but I love it.  I love the message about “taking nothing for granted,” as we see all the wonders of creation around us every day.  I also appreciate the question, “Where’s God when the s—t goes down?” Rapping about suffering in the world, they ask, “If he was up there chillin', lettin' this happen/ Doin' nuttin', He'd be in need of a slappin'/But we're all clueless to how it works/There are no experts and that's what hurts.” Okay, so it’s maybe not as eloquent as the Book of Job, but it makes the same point, and speaks to the same spiritual longing.

When someone crosses my boundaries or threatens my loved ones, I am able (by the grace of God) to exercise restraint most of the time and not react with hate and anger.  During such times, to access and release my feelings, I have listened to (and sung along with) one of my favorite ICP songs, “Rainbows and Stuff,” over and over, at top volume:

“I like ice cream, cherry pie and lemonade with summer breeze

I like rainbows, leafy trails and puppy dogs with bumble bees

I like cotton candy, gum and bumper cars and carnivals

Golden skies and hazel eyes and sand in between my toes BUT

something tells me that I hate you

something tells me I must kill you…” 

This act of catharsis/sublimation ultimately enables me to act more sanely and rationally, with genuine love and tolerance of others, even those who seek to harm me.

ICP lyrics have, in the words of Conrad, “to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.” The line, “I turn the moon off and dance in the darkness” (“Jump Around”) is one of the finest images I can imagine. Of Violent J or Shaggy I might say, with Marlow, “He had kicked himself loose of the earth.  Confound the man!  He had kicked the very earth to pieces.”

Yes, I do remember Insane Clown Posse’s “abject threats, the colossal scale of [their] vile desires…”  (“I ate a dead body; I ain’t proud of it; I told you all about it and you applauded” –“Down with the Clown”) but when I read about “Steak, Blow Job and Shut the F--k up Day” in a supposedly funny email about Valentine’s Day, where “now it’s the guy’s turn for a holiday” or when old men start shooting themselves in front of schoolchildren to protest gay marriage, or a principal tells a bullied girl to “be less outspoken” to avoid her classmates’ death threats,  I turn to Insane Clown Posse, as Marlow turns to Kurtz, “for relief, positively for relief.” I, too, will remain loyal to the Nightmare of my choice.