Interesting thread.
I definitely don’t think it is a new phenomenon to enjoy watching the behavior of a clown. That’s pretty much how I see those examples… they’re modern day clowns. Like Jesters royalty had.
I think people enjoy watching them various reasons… some cathartic I guess. In their actions you can see a hint of your own pains and motivations, which you usually try to conceal…especially in places like an office, where people feel a big restriction in acceptable behaviors and always feel the restriction of holding something back that you want to release, and feel desires to do things but worry whether or not they’d be inappropriate, and try to hold them back. For example, Michael Scott in the Office will do outrageously awkward or inappropriate things at work because he cares so much about, and thus focuses so much on being liked, or upholding some ideal, that he doesn’t consider how his actions for those goals could be taken any other way. People relate to those needs (if being considered good, doing good, and getting good), and the all-encompassing drive to get and obtain them, so even though they would never themselves behave in such extreme and thoughtless ways, they can very much relate to the drive of those actions–they can see the “rational” progression in how the very human concern could, with enough (“positive thinking”) desperation, lead to such actions; if it weren’t for habituated social concerns, fear of consequences, and the mild discomfort of restraint and fighting impatience to think things through, certain sides/voices/drives of ourselves (the “Id” one may say) would cause us to do those kinds of things.
So when watching it, one actually gets to physically experience doing the acts (not themselves of course, but the situation in a lucid physical environment–richer than a daydream),
to actually empathize with the fool’s “primitive” drives so that their brain is, to a certain extent, ((due to, amongst other things, mirror neurons that behave the same way when observing actions as when doing those actions)
feeling their own “needy and emotional child within” in the thoughtless, impulsive acts that progress one after the other due to an utter lack of (to simplify it to one word, though vague) “maturity”
–acts that one would never consider actually doing, but one has imagined doing (maybe even repeatedly fantasized about doing), and felt the drive to do… having sensed the pleasant taste of an act so rich the idea of actually eating it suggests the social equivalent of a cardiac arrest.
We experience a lot of discomfort from forcing still our body’s movements. You know how in movies and tv shows they’ll show someone who doesn’t know how to drive, so they press on the pedal then immediately on the breaks, and the car jams back and forth in a way that doesn’t only look like (and is understand as) a basic misuse of a car, but (seeing it) FEELS so contrary to the car’s (expected function/) being that it actually is (at least for me) extremely irritating to watch? That’s sort of how it is for a person who repeatedly stops how they were going to act due to fear, or keeps a foot on the break while the other foot taps the accelerator.
As you watch the person become more intoxicated about the thinking and behavior you end up bottling up minor worries and frustrations in order to avoid doing yourself, you get to release some of that weight by “experiencing” them with the calm stability that you’re not directing your future into misfortune. At the same time, you “cut off” your association to your similar wants and concerns by affirming the righteousness of restraining yourself to not let them overtake you. This was a very natural facet of civilization; as social roles became more complex, and so social norms of behavior increased (directly with the exercise of one’s restraint as the restrictions of appropriate behavior increased), dramatic and comedic performances flourished as a kind of cultural therapy–releasing the pains of social living while reaffirming the cultural beliefs that kept them functioning.