We all know and loathe Krusty from The Simpsons. There’s Obnoxio the Clown, who pops up occasionally in Marvel Comics. The Bob Goldthwait comedy, Shakes the Clown. Insane Clown Posse. Pennywise the Dancing Clown from Stephen King’s It. And best/worst of all, remember Frenchy the Evil Clown from National Lampoon? What is it that fascinates us so much about Clowns Behaving Badly?
Let’s not forget Homie D. Clown.
Don’t forget Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Or that creature from my neck of the woods, John Wayne Gacy.
What about that clown from PeeWee’s Big Adventure, when PeeWee chains his bike to the clown to go into a store or something and then he comes out and the bike is gone and the previously happy clown has an evil face?
Actually, Krusty is the only clown I don’t want to see have his head cut off. Who couldn’t love a clown who sells out that much?
“Krusty Brand Pregnecy Test. Warning: Could cause pregnecy”.
And there’s Harlecchino, or Harlequin, the fiendishly clever clown-rogue from the Italian commedia del’arte – who inspired his own whole school of French theatrical comedy, the Harlequinade.
And the possessed clown-doll from Poltergeist . . .
And doesn’t the grin on the face of Punchinello (who found his way onto the English puppet stage in “Punch and Judy”) look just a little too malicious?
Clowns are supposed to be . . . well, clowns. Happy clowns or sad clowns, but always foolish and funny and ridiculous. Yet it’s a cultural cliche that some children are scared of clowns – like Pasquale in the Rose is Rose strip – and that everybody finds them faintly unsettling, on some level. Why? Why this fear of clowns?
I play poker on yahoo and there is a jerk on there with the screen name stinko_the_clown that freezes tables. There’s a bug in the yahoo poker game that allows a player to hit a “thinking” button forever, thereby freezing the game. We all love to boot stinko before he gets a chance to ruin the game.
There were even some malevolent clowns among the Blue Meanies in Yellow Submarine (the cartoon movie)
Clowns are obviously extreme caracatures of humanity, and not necessarily caracatures of our better side either. If you really want to stay awake nights feeling disturbed, try googling for “clown porn”.
The Joker
Harley Quinn
That Sad Clown painting from the pc game The Sims that lures an actual sad clown to your house that won’t leave.
What was the clown in ‘Spawn’ called?
Eradicator?
Sorry. Violator was the clows name. Eradicator was the Superman wannabe.
Umm… John Wayne Gacy?
thwartme
I hypothesize: Evil clowns are common in literature and theatre for basically the same reason that evil mothers are. It’s a reversal of normalcy, and thus of interest to writers.
Note that when it comes to evil mothers, folk tales usually make them “evil step-mothers” since the concept of “evil mother” is considered very difficult for a child to accept. Bruno Bettleheim’s book The Uses of Enchantment has lots of interesting things to say on this one.