XI.

It’s a shame that the Shakespearean Fool has been completely swallowed up by the machinery of Walt Disney (Beauty & The Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Lion King...the list goes on ad infinitum). Once upon a time (to stay in the lingo of the fairytale) the Fool presented us with a hole within our discourse; the continued presence of reversal. How could a system of power exist without being constantly reminded of its own nature as a construct? Something from the outside could not satisfy this - that would just reflect that-which-is-not-us. But the Fool! The Fool speaks within our own discourse, but in a language blurred and distorted...reminding us that if everything we own is indeed constructed, then it can at all times be deconstructed. 

Consider Hamlet in conversation with his mother: "Come come, You answer with an idle tongue.", "Go go, You question with a wicked tongue!" He throws the very structure back at us, but disassembled, converted...broken. He can question the system of power, i.e. the royal family, only because he is a part herein. Perhaps this is the real reason why Laertes' rebellion is completely impotent? That which threatens us from the outside is never really a threat, just a dialectic commodity. That which erodes our system of thought by investing it with madness...The Fool! 

The Shakespearean Fool was comic relief filled to the brink with irony; the Disneyean Fool is only comic relief. 

The Court jester was in a unique position, in that he could criticize the king by mimicking the accepted discourse, by openly displaying its pathological consequences in extremis, and by filling every available space in between the words with the phantom of doubt. 

As Sonic Youth said: "Kiss me in the shadow of a doubt". For only there can the gesture achieve limitless meaning.