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Underground > Comic Books >

The Harlequinade

01:28 / 30.11.02

Haven't read the Grant articles, etc., but I've learned shitloads about The Invisibles from reading everyone's input, you guys all rock.

My question is (and please don't descend on me like hyenas here) who exactly are the Harlequinade? Is the Harlequin a fiction-suit for Gideon, as evidenced by 3.1 when he speaks to Edith beginning on the stairs? Someone postulated that Freddie and Edith made up Pierrot and Columbine, respectively. I guess I could see that, but is there any evidence to back this up?

When Edith says she's worked out who the Harlequinade are, were we meant to figure this out? Or is this another rhetorical puzzle?

I'm sure Buhrunce knows this...

13:12 / 30.11.02

The Harlequinade is everyone. The penultimate issue was originally supposed to show this explicitly, but Ridgway fucked up the art. It's the panel where we see the Harlequinade stretch back like the human worm things. In the script, those other figures are meant to be every character we'd encountered. In "literal" terms the Harlequinade is probably the physical manifestation of humanity's subconscious self...

00:50 / 01.12.02

Right. This was the panel that Cameron said if Jiminez did the art he would have done it properly. I get it now.

XXII:X:II = XXX

01:55 / 01.12.02

Yes, the Harlequinade is every character, but the most direct analogue I've noticed is deSade, KM & Boy watching deSade's passion play in the first compilation. This is why when Jack & Fanny go to the Harlequinade's house in SF they say something to the effect of "Welcome back, our sister. How we have missed you." They watch the events of The Invisibles in much the same detached manner as would anyone understanding that what they were watching was only entertainment, and why phrases from that play appear in the context of the story. Or perhaps the analogue is Morrison, his artist and possibly the editor or DC Comics as an entity, providing for this story to be told. All very mysterious, I'm sure.

at the scarwash

02:10 / 01.12.02

Does anyone know what exactly GM was drawing on in the Harlequinade? If it was the Commedia, I think it was a crap take on it.

22:53 / 01.12.02

It's hard to avoid an association with the Commedia dell Arte since the Harlequin, Columbine, etc. are central characters and the Commedia seems to be the modern demarcation point for them even though they all pre-date it. So, yes, Grant is incorporating bits of the Commedia but the most direct link maybe that he is referencing the Jerry Cornelius stories by Micheal Moorcock. Just read the Cornelius Quartet last year and, like Grant's Gideon Stargrave, you can see the similiarities between their usage. I actually know very little about the Commedia itself, but it seems Morrison is picking up a riff from Moorcock and spinning in along on his own.

What did you think was inadequate in Morrison's portrayal of the Harlequinade vis-a-vis the Commedia?

01:57 / 02.12.02

I think an aspect of 'The Invisibles' is writing fiction about writing fiction; so, here the drama-faces (Pierrot and Columbine) re-emphasise with the binary iteration concept (magic mirror/anti-mirror); creating Harlequin - the sum of the combination, the story.

The Natural Way

08:55 / 02.12.02

Well, yeah, certainly, in that 3 numerologicaly has always been the next point of unity after 1. So they represent the unity, but "unity" within the realm of manifestation (3 points forming the first "surface" and the 2d cross-section of the strongest, most enduring structure).

The Harlequinade also contains elements of the divine fool, who strolls of the cliff and, according to popular occultism, into incarnation ...and once the book of life cycles around...the process repeats itself...again...and again...and again.... God trapped in matter.

Hints of playful "machine-elfness" are also in there.....

at the scarwash

00:42 / 03.12.02

Well, I'm no expert on the Commedia, but I would say that Pierrot is much closer to the divine fool than Arlecchino, who seems to derive more from the beastman/Dionysian archetype. He is a cunning, greedy, foolish lackey, always trying to skim off the top of the master's market money, a braggart, a coward, and a lecherous creep. Some of these fit vaguely with Grant's Harlequin, but he is definitely not a grinning satanic pervert sitting on a toilet. I'm not saying that I have a huge problem with misunderstood appropriation; indeed I think that getting wires crossed in the execution of ideas often produces strange and interesting fruit. I do feel, however that the Commedia is far richer material, deserving of more than being turned into just another fucking Jerry Cornelius. And who came up with the costumes? I know, bitch bitch bitch.

21:44 / 03.12.02

Was just reading fascinating, admittedly lite book called THEM: adventures with extremists by British journalist Jon Ronson when I realized another facet to the Harlequinade that hadn't been overtly mentioned in this discussion. In Ronson's book, he describes a theory or fact, depending on your point of view, that the world is ruled by a cabal called the Bilderberg Group, whose goal is the grand NEW WORLD ORDER, i.e. ultimate control. They pick the world leaders. They spark the famines. They set the trends. They hold the keys to the kingdom.

Not unlike the Harlequinade in THE INVISIBILES.

Secret Cabals fill an interesting social in that they are the foreign other - THEM - who intrude on the ordinary way of life. They are the mysterious forces working against us, keeping our safety and happiness in jeapordy. While so-called extremists - and let's be honest, it's only paranoia if they AREN'T out to get you - keep them at a distance, preferably the shooting kind, they don't often acknowledge them as part of the same system. The real extreme version of this scenario is David Icke's theory of the Lizard men rulers. Morrison takes those fears of the other, i.e. the hidden rulers of the Archons, and accepts the popular notion that they are alien forces, and then twists the concept on its head by saying that they are not other. The situation is not US or THEM. It is we. The Harlequinade accepts the old concepts, and in a step worthy of Ken Wilber, assimilates them and then leaps beyond them to the next conceptual level: no division, all is one.

The One World Order already exists, but alongside the One World Disorder.

Maybe this was obvious but I thought it might add something to the discussion.

22:27 / 03.12.02

quick excerpt from an interview with Jon Ronson

>>Interviewer:
Do you think there's a connection between what the New World Order conspiracists think and what the anti-globiser's think? If you read someone like Noam Chomsky or John Pilger - who's new book is called 'the New Rulers of the World' - they go on about how the world is organised to benefit an elite few, starting wars and suppressing any dissent.

Ronson:
Absolutely. But when I was writing the book I really didn't realise that, and it was only when I started doing readings when the book first came out, and the audience would be full of anti-globalists who were there to support the book and putting me next to Naomi Klein or Noreena Hertz. …and I was thinking about this just the other day…the conclusion I came to was that books like "No Logo" talk about the implications of globalisation on people's society and people's money and, without even realising it, my book talks about the implication on people's heads and people's imagination. So maybe there is that connection. But when I realised that the conspiracy theories on the right were very similar to conspiracy theories on the left, they just called it by different names, that was a big revelation to me. I had no idea that that was the case. And it sort of comes over in the book, but I comes over without me even realising it at the time when I was writing it.<<

Your conspiracy is my conspiracy and it's being ruled by fictional characters who are the sum of our identities. Wild stuff.

22:48 / 03.12.02

I think the harlequinade are essentially the same as John A Dreams after he gets the time suit in that they are above the story, and exist solely to bring about the birth of the new world, or the end of the series. When they give the hand of glory to Edith, they accelerate the chain of events that is going to lead to the end of the series, and giving it to Mob's group does the same. In that way, they carry a part of each character with them because they are out of time, and so far above mortal constraints.

The Natural Way

09:33 / 04.12.02

'when we look for mystery, we become mystery'.

12:03 / 23.10.13

They are the SIGINT agencies that play with time travel.

I don't know which is which though.

12:05 / 23.10.13

Remember, the AMA are Five.