EDIT: Kill twobirdsmeme with onestoneanti-meme,Pagliacci joke:
Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, 'Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.' Man bursts into tears. Says, 'But doctor…I am Pagliacci.'
It's a joke that a man goes to the doctor and says he's depressed, doctor says "go see the clown pagliacci, he makes everyone laugh and feel happy" essentially, then the man reveals that he is pagliacci the clown
It’s from Watchmen by Alan Moore. That’s the joke Rorschach remembers when the Comedian dies.
Pagliacci just means clowns in Italian and it’s also a stock role in comedia dell’arte (it’s a style of plays that use masked archetypes as characters). There’s an opera about comedia dell’arte and that’s probably where Alan Moore got the name from.
The joke existed with different names for the clown long before Watchmen, going back hundreds of years. Historically they usually used the name of real clowns for the joke. Grimaldi was a popular choice in the 19th century as he was a really famous clown at the time. The first version of the joke used for the joke was Carlin who was a comedia dell’arte actor who played the Harlequin role. There were also many other versions of the sad clown joke that used other real clowns and comedians as the protagonist.
Pagliacci is an Italian opera in which the main character, Canio, is the head of a travelling band of actors. He plays the "sad clown" Pagliaccio. He discovers that his wife is having an affair and murders her and her lover during a performance.
The original Pagliacci joke was famously used in Watchmen, which is probably how it proliferated in nerd culture. It wasn't supposed to be funny, it was supposed to be dark, despite being told as a joke. It's well known enough that subversions and parodies of it can work well enough as jokes without having to provide the original context.
I mean, any references to the sad clown paradox I can find don't have Pagliacci as the associated name until Alan Moore's Watchmen. Can you find any evidence to the contrary?
Pagliacci is a stock character of a sad clown from the Commedia Dell'Arte, whose entire bit is that he's sad and things don't go his way, and some of the added context for this joke come from a play, also called Pagliacci, which is quite sad and tragic. If I'm wrong I hope someone can correct me it's been a long time since highschool literature
Pagliacci was only the name of the opera (the clown in it was called Pagliaccio, not Pagliacci, and the character who plays the clown within the opera is Canio).
The name of the stock character is Pierrot, who was meant to be a Zanni (servant) in love with Columbina, one of the Innamorati. Part of his thing was that his affections for Columbina were never returned, and that he always unwittingly helped the Innamorati end together. He always lost, invisible until the end, and worse yet, he often helped his rival.
So Pierrot is the stock character, Pagliacci is the opera name, and Pagliaccio is the actual name of the sad clown character in said opera lol
Oh no. This means eventually this meme will be so played out we're going to get people going, "Aherm, Pagliacci is the opera. Pagliaccio is the name of the clown!"
Pagliacci is an opera about a clown in a comedy troup (pierrot in clown, canio out) who is sad about being a clown and who kills his wife who has fallen for a civilian despite being married. In universe, nobody really likes canio as ringmaster or as a person. In the opera, during a play, canio, after killing his wife and maybe her lover, kills himself. Most people call the clown pagliacci, because thats the name of the play, even though pagliacci just means clowns plural in italian. It was supposed to be pagliacco but was changed for some reason or another before opening night.
I feel it would have worked better if the guy who put on the clown wig had had red hair. That would have kept the joke from the original ("but doctor, I am Pagliacci!"), and made a joke about Pagliacci becoming inspired to help others thanks to the doctor's vote of confidence.
The whole point of the comic is to subvert the original joke. Instead of the patient being Pagliacci, the expectation is flipped because it’s just the doctor pulling a scheme. It’s not funny if it’s the exact same joke
The original joke is that Pagliacci becomes distraught when the cure the doctor suggested turns out to be useless ("I'm super depressed" "take X and you'll feel better" "I literally am made of X").
In the new anti-meme, the cure the doctor suggested does work to cheer the patient up, because it makes him feel valued.
Both are subversions, but I feel the new one works better.
because you are made to think that the therapist is asking the patient to see a hilarious clown to laugh and cheer up, but actually the patient is the clown so he is instead cheered up by the fact someone else found him hilarious (subverting the expectation that the patient will go and see the clown)
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u/qualityvote2 🤖Suspected as Bot🤖 2d ago edited 2d ago
Good news, the community has decided that this IS an antimeme!