Clownophobia, and the Decline of American Culture

Before I go off on my rant–wouldn’t it be nice if there was a Pop Culture search engine, that could scan all sitcom scripts, stand-up comic routines, talk show guest utterances and newspaper columns? That’d be cool.

'cuz if there was, and you did a search on the subject of “clowns”, you’d find that any reference to clowns is immediately followed by a statement of how much the speaker loathes and/or fears them.

When did this start? Personally, I’m neutral on clowns–I don’t think they’re particularly funny, but I certainly don’t hate them. But to do so has practically become a cliche.

Part one of my theory is that it’s disconnected with reality. If a big chunk of people really did hate and fear clowns, Ringling Bros and McDonald’s would be in a world of hurt, and their marketing people would be all over this problem. Which I don’t think is the case.

Part two: it’s another symptom of creeping cynicism. We can’t stand to let a simple, innocent childish entertainment go unmocked, so we need to get all ironic and cynical about it.

It’s not clownophobia, it’s coulrophobia. It isn’t cliche to be afraid of clowns, people have valid (as far as phobias go) reasons for hating and fearing them. Most of us who have a fear of clowns were scarred as very small children. The most common things that have incited clown fear (that I’ve heard of) are:

  1. the suffer having the crap scared out of him/her by a birthday party clown/circus clown
  2. the suffer was subjected to horror movie that featured an evil clown before they were old enough to totally understand the difference between fantasy and reality (Polterguist, in my case)
  3. people who developed their fear of clowns after the age of 6 or so usually attribute it to the clown Pennywise in Stephen King’s It

Personally, I’ve been afraid of clowns as long as I can remember. My parents took me to see Polterguist when I was four or so, and I still can’t watch the movie. Sadly, I was given a stuffed clown at birth named Jack (re: Jack In The Box hamburgers. Looks exactly like it) whom I stopped being friends with after that movie. I used to tie Jack up and put him in my closet at night when I was small. For a few years during my teens I could stand to look at it and it was freed from prison, but an incident about 5 years ago made me need to banish him to the cellar.

Clowns are scary freaks. The fact that they’re always smiling, combined with my inherent distrust of anyone who’s too happy, makes me worry that the individual is deeply disturbed if they feel they must always project a joyful image. My kid brother said the one thing that would drive him to suicide would be finding out that there are flying spiders; for me the breaking point would be to find out my (hypothetical) boyfriend/husband was secretly a clown.

Also, what’s wrong with cynicism? Oh, and does my poor spelling make my butt look big?

Sorry to hear about your disorder, elfkin. (and flying spiders…now that is a disturbing image I’ll keep for a while…)

But there are probably many people who are afraid of butterflies. Wouldn’t you think it odd if the only time you ever hear butterflies mentioned in the mass culture was in the context “I hate butterflies. They creep me out.”?

Because it’s fashionable to hate clowns and mimes.

My only objection to clowns is that, with classes in “clownology,” there are a lot of mediocre clowns entertaining and birthday parties, etc. Most people have never seen a really talented clown (or mime, for that matter).

I know where my fear of clowns comes from. One of those stupid Jack-In-The-Box things that jumped out and made me wet my diaper in terror. Did the fact that I cried every time make the grown-up relatives stop turning the handle? Noooooo.

Proof that humans are not rational. I should be just fine with clowns, but be afraid of my aunts and uncles.

i’ve always hated clowns too. I’m not afraid of them, and no traumatic experience made me fearful of them: I just hate them.

When I was 8 I went to a lame circus. I wasnt having any fun, and everyone else seemed to be getting a kick out of the clowns. It was insulting to think that I should be entertained by someone merely by putting on stupid makeup and performing a stupid clown schtick! And to make it doubly worse the audience didnt really care.

Of course I took myself far more seriously at the time. But I still dont like clowns.

Have you ever been to a childrens party that had clowns? to a really small child a clown is scary as hell, most sit there and cry through the entire show. Parents dont seem to understand that muffy the clown is as scary as Freddy krueger or jason or the boogie man to a little kid that doesn’t understand whats going on, and they force the little ones to stay trough the whole ordeal thinking it will be a pleasant memory in years to come. It happened to me and to alot of other people, and as a result we now hate the evil colorfull devils. When you are a little two year old kid and a huge man with giant shoes and a painted face comes at you with a balloon animal it tends to stay with you for a long time :stuck_out_tongue:

It does seem that many people hate clowns, with greater frequency than people hate other things, perhaps eels, for example. But rather than chalk it up to a trendy, pop culture hatred of clowns, I think it might have a deeper source.

Back in my days as an art history student, I remember studying surrealism. One common theme in surrealist art, especially photography, is the depiction of dolls or puppets. The images are often uncomfortable and uncanny, particularly when the dolls are shown in very human-like poses. This coincided with the new (at the time) study of psychoanalysis, which was suggesting that there exists for many people a fear or discomfort with dolls – things that look human, but aren’t. Some of the feelings associated with dolls and puppets are a general suspicion of something that pretends to be human but isn’t, and something that can be seen doing “living” things – walking, sitting, sleeping, or however else you position a doll – but is essentially a dead thing. It is a body without a spirit, yet by manipulating the doll, we can make it mimic human postures and emotions, sometimes with eerie accuracy. Seeing a doll that is mangled or broken evokes a different feeling than a broken tea cup, as it takes the creepy doll thing to a different level. Our first reaction might be to think of it as hurt or injured rather than broken, but how can something that isn’t alive be hurt? The photography of Hans Belmer is a great example of this, and there are scans of his photos at this site: http://eagle.dwc.edu/wellman/Bellmer.htm

So bringing this back to the clown thing, I think many people see clowns as an extension of puppets and dolls. With their costumes and masks (or make-up that functions as a mask), a clown is more like a puppet than a person. A doll can be scary because it is a thing that is masquerading as a person, and a clown is a person masquerading as a thing masquerading as a person. Yikes!

So even though it has earned a spot in pop culture, people have been fascinated or repulsed by clowns for a long time. I would put clowns in the same category as puppets, death masks, zombies, idols, and other things that are human-like without being exactly human. Some people are drawn to this quality, and others are freaked out by it. Some people don’t have much of a reaction at all. It’s not a recent phenomonon, though.

Maybe it’s a pop culture thing. But really, I’m drawing a blank. Is it really cool to hate clowns? Shakes the Clown was pro-clown, even if it wasn’t all that funny, and everybody likes Krusty.

I always thought clowns were supposed to be scary as well as funny. Don’t kids like to be terrified sometimes? Clowns are grotesque distortions of human beings and in addition to that being comical, it also scares the bejeezus out of you sometimes.

I think their traditional setting has been lost and clowns don’t work out so well in today’s world. The funny side is played up, but clowns are inherently scary. If you were a kid and you saw one at a carnival, you watched, then you could run away, and it was fun. But if they come to your birthday party, you’re doomed. You can’t run away. Society hasn’t figured out how to deal with clowns in suburbia, so everybody loathes them.

-fh

Check your newspapers this morning and you should find an AP report about the manager for Insane Clown Posse choking a fan who held up an Eminem T-shirt in front of the Posse and tossed M&Ms at them.

I make no connection here between clowns and the people who fear them.

This is just for everyone’s consideration.

To me, clowns aren’t funny. In fact, they’re kinda scary. I’ve wondered where this started, and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my dad.
–Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

I’ve often wondered about fad diseases, fears, etc.

Lactose Intolerancy was fad when I was in Jr. High. I can’t explain it. It was if overnight all of my classmates (especially the girls) were all alergic to dairy products.

So was the fear of Clowns, actually. One person mentioned a slight distaste for clowns, and suddenly everyone had a clown horror story.

So I sort of agree with the OP. Or maybe its just a jr. high thing.

LP

Marge: Well, everybody’s got a fear of something.
Homer: Not everybody.
Marge: Sock puppets!
Homer: Where?! Where?! Aah! Aah!

I think that another factor, at least regarding why the pop culture joke about fear of clowns seems to pop up so often, is precisely that clowns are “simple, innocent childish entertainment.” The joke is that the adult (usually a character who’s acting superior or macho) fears that which is meant to entertain children. He/she talks big, but can’t even deal with something that millions of children not only don’t fear, but get joy from.

Although I do agree that hating clowns seems to be “fashinable” at the moment (has it ever not been fashionable to hate mimes?), I think there’s more to it. Many kids do have a fear of people in costumes. Since clowns are one of the most common varieties of costumed people, it stands to reason that more people can remember being frightened by a clown than being frightened by a guy in a giant hot dog suit (and therefore fearing coupons for One Free Soda With The Purchase Of Any Sausage Plus Fries).

I took flodjunior to see a children’s play once when he was 5. Though he knew the story well, he was terrified when a fox began to chase a mouse. Explaining that they were people in costumes made it worse - in fact, that’s what scared him. As he said later, foxes have to eat, and nature made them so that they like to eat mice. But people aren’t supposed to eat people. Even if they’re dressed up like animals.

…and animations like this don’t help their image either…

Also, wasn’t Gayce (the serial killer) really obsessed with clowns? In fact, I think he was a clown that was hired to do children’s birthday parties. Maybe that’s all entered into our collective subconsciousness.

I personally find clowns a little creepy, although I’m not scared of them. I don’t like magicians, either.

Sorry to hijack this, but it reminded me of something that Robin Williams once said. “Mickey Mouse, to a four-year old, is a six foot fucking rat.”

[We now return you to your regularly scheduled response]

I myself hate clowns. And it’s because of Poltergeist, which I saw when I was very young. The movie didn’t really scare me. But I had a stuffed clown that was nearly identical to the one in the movie, and I used to sleep with it. The thought that it might try to kill me in my sleep didn’t help my mental state any. I currently have a good friend of mine who has taken clown classes, and actually graduated from a clown university. But she can never comprehend why I refuse to see her with her makeup on.

I’ve hated clowns since I was three. I went to Circus World and one snuck up behind me on the merry-go-round. Sadistic, painted bastard. My first real job out of college ended up being…a bad choice for a clown hater…

assistant in the McDonaldland costume shop. It was like working for the CIA. We weren’t supposed to talk about all those Ronald Wigs because then kids might suspect that there was more than one Ronald.

Clowns, in my experience, are like rabid weasels, mean when they’re cornered. I got yelled at a lot by clowns on that job. All those happy faces, but a mean streak underneath. And their feet are sore because of the crappy shoes, so it doesn’t improve their dispositions any.

For the record, I never had any problem with Grimace or Birdy. No emotional baggage there.

I think for me it all boils down to the make-up and not knowing what kind of person is underneath. And I do believe it there is a fashionable cynicism in clown-hating. It just doesn’t pertain to me. My kids are another matter. I’ve conditioned them to be clown-haters. Nature vs. nurture and all that.

And I thought my friends and I were the only ones to notice this, jsc1953…well, at least the bit about it being a cliche. I don’t know if I buy the theory that folx feel the need to tear down childish or innocent things…but I have felt that a certain percentage of folx are actually fearful of clowns (usually as the result of some childhood trauma), but that an equal, if not greater, number of folx do just say things like “clowns creep me out” because it’s [sub]of all things[/sub] a hip phobia.

And, loislane138: Lactose intolerance was cool??? I am truly baffled by this.

That’s me. I saw Poltergeist when I was 17 or 18 (when it came out) and it absolutely terrified me. I still can’t watch it. It was on Cinemax (or Showtime or HBO) last night; I caught a moment as I was surfing through the channels.
When my oldest daughter was about 2, someone gave her a big clown doll, much like the one in that movie. It was about 3 feet tall, with a cloth face.
She loved it, but the damn thing scared me. I can’t explain it, but it (and clowns in general) just freak me out.
It got “lost” when we moved.
Good riddance.
:frowning: