Sharpe's Opinion

Jim Carrey: The Existential Clown

James Parker in The Atlantic subjects Jim Carrey to slightly more scrutiny than he probably deserves…¹

Then there’s earnest Carrey, low-voltage Carrey, Carrey the Oscar chaser, dutifully dialing it down for The Majestic and muting himself in The Truman Show. This Carrey excites a peculiar anxiety: you sit there with your scalp prickling, waiting for him to go off. Which he never does. But Carrey can only play it straight when the rest of the world is crooked—laughing at him, deceiving him, or (as in The Majestic) falsely accusing him. More than all the leaping about, it’s this strange, unnerving subversion or emptying-out of regular- guyness that makes Carrey the representative jester of our time. That manly grip on normality so prized by your Tom Hankses and your Harrison Fords is for Carrey a wild and desperate bluff. The cheesy jut of his upper teeth, the giant shrugs and nods and lunges of bonhomie, the gargoyle affability—his body is one enormous ‘tell.’ (‘Good morning!’ yodels Truman Burbank, briefcase in hand. ‘And in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!’) Carrey’s parodic handsomeness only cranks up the dissonance—the sense that we are witnessing a grotesque accommodation between the individual and the crowd, between the imperatives of an authentic existence and the need to rub along in the day-to-day illusion.

Via Give Me Something to Read

1. If you haven’t seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind you must – and be aware that this article contains spoilers for that particular film. [↩]