Something Freakish This Way Comes

By James Martin

Carnival Diablo Amazes the masses.


Chances are you ain't seen nuthin' like Carnival Diablo. Located in the upstairs of an abandoned liquor store (826-5St SW), Diablo is a shadowy world o' wonders. The building's meager excuses for windows have been blacked out, the floor is as smooth as a Mad Max highway, and the whole place smells like the mustiest of attics. But, like the best of attics, Diablo is jampacked with treasures, in this case, artifacts from the long-gone days of the carnival sideshow.

Truth be know, I was quite wary about having a tete-a-tete with Diablo proprietor Scott McClelland. I mean, here's a guy who collects shrunken heads and shoves nails up his nose. Although it was a sunny afternoon when Ian Doig and I (the whole "strength in numbers" school of thought, however, falls apart when you fear being turned into mice) met with McClelland, the Carnival was, as always, dar 'n' spooky. The consummate showman, McClelland grandly gestured toward the Carnival's entrance, his voice booming: "And this is the gateway to your dreams!" I doubted it (the previous evening I had dreamt that Supergirl was a potty-mouthed talk show host) and made a mental note of the nearest exit in case things got creepy and Doig and I had to Sneaky Pete out of there.

Sitting down with us at Diablo's public reading table (covered with books such as Themes of the Marquis de Sade, Modern Primitives, and Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others) McClelland wasy anything but creepy. Dropping his bombastic stage persona (constructed, he later explained, so as to be "untouchable"), McClelland was soft-spoken, witty, and extremely personable. Despite whatever "shady" connotations may be associated with the sideshows of the past, McClelland has obviously thought a lot about Carnival Diablo's purpose, which he sees as being two-fold: to renew the "art of conversation" and to spread the word that "The abnormal is okay." McClelland employs two means to these ends: exhibits and live performances.

The carnival's exhibits include such fascinating items as a jarred baby sea monster, a wax replica of siamese twins, and a mummy, and McClelland seems to have an entertaining story about every object, big or small. Point to the ventriloquist dummy (tied to a trunkful of lead shot because of a suspicious, possibly homicidal, history) and hear the tale about how the trunk recently floated six inches into the air, witnessed by nearly fifty pairs of astonished eyes, before crashing to the floor. Inquire about the preserved "Feejee Mermaid" (my personal fave), and McClelland will detail how, in the 1800's, P.T. Barnum made six million dollars exhibiting it as "the lost link between man and fish" (an attempt to cash in on the Origin of the Species hype), and then, after interest in the mermaid had waned, made another six million by declaring the mermaid a fake and inviting the public to come see the beast that had folled the world.

What gets McClelland really excited, however, is talking about his late grandfather, Prof. Nicholas Lew'chuk, from whom he inherited many of Diablo's exhibits. Proprietor of the 1920's largest travelling vaudeville troupe, Lew'chuk slowly transformed his show into a carnival/sideshow circus, employing his many children as performers and workers. (As a youngster, McClelland's mom had the dubious honour of changing monkey diapers.) Years later, Lew'chuk, a master magician, pegged his grandson as "a bit of a ham" and invited him to follow in his footsteps, an offer that no eleven year old could resist. Now a seasoned magician in his own right, McClelland has decided to share his grandfather's legacy with the world, and in doing so hopes to spread his belief that "weird' is acceptable.
"We have a need for the dark side," he explains, appropriately fingering a rather, uh, explicit book about body-piercing. "We may not want to delve into it personally, but we want to look at it, we want to read about it, we want to indulge in it for the moment. And then to leave with the knowledge: 'Hey I lived through that!"

Perhaps "dark side" isn't quite the right term for Diablo. Sure, there's a certain degree of "that's gross, that's cool" in viewing, say, a two-headed calf, and that's fine; but beyond that McClelland hopes to make the point that two heads are no less beautiful that one head because all three were a product of nature. "In today's beer commercial world," he says, "people are shown to be perfect, or if they're not perfect, they're having a great time. And life isn't always like that."
This idea of appreciating the unudual carries over into Diablo's other component, the nightly live performance(s). Whether it's McClelland himself dangling weights from his tongue, or a special guest performer suspended in the air by hooks through his flesh, the live show is far from being run of the mill. For McClelland it's important that such performers aren't perceived as mutants; they just have a "different spirtual bend" then reg'lar folks.

Whether the audiences belive the shows and exhibits is almost irrelevant; as long as they enjoy themselves, McClelland is happy. That's part two of the Diablo manifesto: to get people talking. About anything. Except the weather.
As far as McClelland is concerned, the Carnival itself, exhibits and all, is only a fraction of the"Show." It's simply a stage that needs to be filled. The real show begins when people begin looking at the exhibits, thinking abou the exhibits, and talking to each other about what they're seeing. McClelland wants the audience to indulge themselves in the exhibits and performances. They don't have to belive everything, or anything for that matter. A conversation about what would inspire someone to construct a bogus mermaid out of a monkey torso and some fish bits is just as "valid" as actually believing in mermaids and being thrilled to finally see one "albeit shrivelled".

Should the conversation move beyond the objects at hand, so much the better. McClelland recalled a coven of witches (put down the bucket, Dorothy; these are good witches) who periodically visit Diablo: "I think it's neat that these people (the witches) have found a space where they can talk about certain things (among themselves) that they wouldn't otherwise talk about publically. And the other people are open-eared: 'Wow! So what else do you guys do?' It gives the public something else to think about; (the witches) have come here not to talk to the public, but because they talk to each other, people listen in to what they're saying."

To make Diablo more conducive to such interactions, it's been set up "like a nieteenth century carnival; everything's roped off, instead of behind glass. I feel that gives the audience a more welcoming feeling, of actually peering into and indulging in the pieces. If you put trust in the public they're going to give that back to you." Well, ideally at least. Unfortunately, one of the shrunken heads was recently pilfered, an act that saddens McClelland not only because of the head's incalculable value, but also because the theft violated the Carnival's trust. Consequently, security has been beefed up, although McClelland is quick to add that Diablo is far from being a "police state." (You with the sticky fingers take note, Diablo will not press charges if the head is voluntarily returned intact. On yeah, there's also a curse on all three heads.)

Carnival Diablo is every-expanding, and McClelland hopes to build it into "a large center of unusualness" that will house not only a larger version of the current Carnival (constantly on the prowl for new objects, he has his eye on a no-longer-active American carnival that's ripe for the buying), but a souvenir and book shop (more Marquis de Sade action), a repertory cinema (moving in that direction, Diablo has just started showing films like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and a tattoo and body-piercing studio.
Of course, this is Diablo territory, so the piercing would forgo the traditional earlobe instead favouring noses and other "modern-primitive" locales. Similary, the tattoos wold be in the traditional styles of the Celtics, Mayans and Aztecs, currently unavailable in Calgary.
As a sidenote, McClelland says that he himself would never get a tatoo because he's "afraid." A quick quiz revealed his taste in body-piercing to be equally conservative (ear:YES; armpit, knee, retina, uvula, brown and lung: NO).

But don't wait for Diablo to take over the world before you take in its wonders. At a mere five dollars a head, and open five nights a week (Wednesday through Sunday), now is the time to take the Diablo plunge. Oh, and while you're there, watch the ventriloquist dummy. I think I saw him making moves on my wallet.