Pinky did a little research on the subject. Here is the kind of straightforward writing that gets an "A" in Pinky's gradebook:
The Fool is he who has burned his bridges with everyone, family, friends. His face expresses innocence and ingenuousness, and even if walking the razor’s edge, the edge of a precipice, he has the tranquility and the serenity of the Unconscious. Surmounting all logical fears, the Fool succeeds in doing what others, too prudent, will never do.
Here's the kind of writing that could wipe the smirk off a clown and shove a shiv right into his wounded heart (in fact, Pinky recommend you not even attempt this academic palaver):
The bisociative structure of hâsya, as understood by Abhinava, naturally qualifies it to play eminently this contradictory role of simultaneous (exoteric) devalorization and (esoteric) valorization of the vidûSaka: a fundamental contradiction that has been exploited—and thereby justified—to enhance his hâsya function on the aesthetic level. Abhinava recognizes defects or transgressions in general as [436] a mode of incongruous behavior acting as a comic stimulus. Though such transgression can provoke purely negative reactions in others, the cultural institutionalization (whether in ritual, myth or drama) of the transgressor, which amounts to an implicit valorization, neutralizes these negative reactions in order to transform the transgressor into a comic clown; a process that is solidly attested by the extensive ethnology of the sacred ritual clowns in other societies. Moreover, in contexts (like the refined Sanskrit drama) where real transgressions (except for the more trivial and banal ones) are not only impermissible but irrelevant (to the aesthetic level of the play), the comic aspect of transgression is generalized into incongruous behavior as a whole or translated into equally comic symbols (like the vidûSaka’s contrary speech, deformity, gluttony, kuTilaka, “profanations” of sacred objects like his brahmanical thread, impure associations, etc.) that signify transgression. Once this is admitted, there is nothing to prevent these and other comic symbols invested in the vidûSaka from simultaneously signifying an entire system of ideas, doctrines, practices and lived experiences centered around transgression, both directly and/or indirectly through symbolic assimilation with other (comic or non-comic) figures that belong to the same system (which is facilitated by the polyvalence of symbols). This would immediately explain the irregularity of the norms governing his hâsya function at the aesthetic level, for they would have simultaneously served to ensure the signifying function of these ostensibly comic stimuli. Likewise, the valorization of the vidûSaka is only the deliberate valorization of the symbolic universe mediated by him whereas his explicit devalorization and ridiculous aspect would be a function of that central [437] transgressive dimension which is wholly censurable from the purely exoteric point of view of life-in-society governed by the graded hierarch of the puruSârthas. This total approach to the vidûSaka that considers him primarily as a sign, and only secondarily in terms of his social and aesthetic function by determining how these latter are reintegrated into this signifying function, is alone capable of explaining all the otherwise impossible contradictions in his individual “psychology” (wise fool, indispensable but bungling helper, lewd chastity, deformed and monkey-like favorite of the queen’s maids, etc.), his literary “characterization” (stupid brahmin counselor of the exemplary king, obscene but free access to the harem, nonsensical jokes, Prakrit-speaking, meat-eating and wine-drinking brahmin, etc.) and social status (“boy” baTu, abused by lower characters but honored by the hero, etc.); contradictions that the exoteric gaze tolerates only at the cost of laughter.
