“If it were funny, clowns wouldn’t be doing it”
I’m paraphrasing Terry Pratchett from one of the Watch books (don’t remember which).
And a little while ago, I saw a re-run of C.S.I. and there was that thing again. CLowns are creepy and kids don’t like them. Then there are this, this and this. The first time I think the evil clown was channeled was in Stephen King’s It with the truly creepy clown Pennywise. This was in '85, but King must have picked up on some undercurrent.
Where did it start?
They just are. shiver I have always hated clowns. They creep me out like nothing else except maybe spiders.
I can’t imagine that this feeling is all too common. Otherwise, clowns wouldn’t be as popular as they seem to be, right? Most kids I know seem to love them.
John Wayne Gayce?
Yeah, thanks for the nightmare fodder, Eve. :eek:
Most kids I know find them boring. But in pop culture, they’re scary, creepy and evil.
Most kids I know find them scary or boring; I don’t know many who find them genuinely entertaining; clowns doing magic tricks and making balloon animals at children’s parties are among the most threatening.
Mrs. Kunilou has been creeped out by clowns ever since she was little, so I assume that as long as there have been clowns, there have been kids creeped out by them. At least from the Baby Boomer era. I can remember 50’s TV shows that had the bad guys dressing up as clowns, and I’ll bet that part of the myth goes back a lot further.
My theory, almost entirely unpolluted by facts or evidence is “Some time in the neolithic.” I’m pretty sure that we conceive of as a clown today is a direct descendent of something like this.
Much like fairy tales, clowns were never meant to amuse children. They were meant to terrify them into obedience. Modern ideas about childrearing have mostly neutered the old fairy tales into something more acceptable to contemporary propriety, but clowning has been more resistant. Let’s face it, no matter how much you lie to your kid about how clowns are safe and funny and whimsical, they’re still smart enough to recognize that there is something deeply disturbed about a grown person dressing up like this.
Of course, for every Boomer who saw a TV show with a clown-villain, there were a million who saw Bozo the Clown. And Ronald McDonald.
I tried this same thread a year or so ago; didn’t get much further, either.
It’s the makeup, particularly the stuff that makes them look like their mouths go from ear to ear. ::shudder::
When did clown first appear, then?
The court jester? Commedia del’arte? Some time after that, the grease painted guy with the bucket of white wash and a pie turned up. Vaudeville?
Was Victor Borge a clown? Marx Bros? Harpo certainly had some clownish feaures.
And mimes? Does anyone like them?
Man, Whoopi Goldberg has really let herself go!
I know what Miller was getting at, but I think The First Slayer was never meant to be funny.
Auntie Pam - “All the better to eat you with, my dear!”
StG
Sometimes a creepy clown can also be hilarious.
Case in point. Though Ronnie loved his “Happy Meals,” the resulting periods of depression eventually became too much to bear…
I’ve never had a clown phobia but I remember when I first realized that not all clowns were like Bozo or Clarabell.
It was the Joker on Batman… an evil clown if there ever was one.
I remember reading something about children in medieval times who were kidnapped, tortured and disfigured by the kidnappers, and then sold to kings to be court jesters. Children’s mouths were often slashed ear to ear into giant, creepy smiles, leading to the image of the modern clown with the big red smile-mouth. Can anyone give a cite with more information? All I know is that’s a horrible story, and clowns ARE scary.
I remember reading something about children in medieval times who were kidnapped, tortured and disfigured by the kidnappers, and then sold to kings to be court jesters. Children’s mouths were often slashed ear to ear into giant, creepy smiles, leading to the image of the modern pale-faced clown with the big red smile-mouth. Can anyone give a cite with more information corroborating this horrible story that has haunted me for years?
By the way, clowns ARE scary.
As a young child I cried hysterically at the sight of actual human beings dressed as clowns (a fact my mother still has never ceased taunting with). I don’t know why I did it, but I remember doing it. Very strange. Ronald McDonald never creeped me out…it had to be a real person. Something about the face…
Marionettes with human features had the same effect. I remember a puppet from Mexico my uncle had sent me, I wouldn’t sleep in the same room with it.
I don’t do it anymore though, good thing. Wish I still had the puppet, it was pretty cool.