Let’s try that again:
The term for this practice is Comprachico; men who kidnapped children, and deformed them by stunting growth, deforming them with masks, and with crude surgery. The deformed children were then sold to the courts of kings for their amusement. The practice is named in and is the basis of Victor Hugo’s “The Man Who Laughs”, Dumas insparation for “The Man in The Iron Mask” and is somtimes mentioned in context with part of the story of “Pinocchio” (a boy who is taken and turned into a donkey).
Well, I had a doll similar to the one in Poltergeist. After seeing the movie, I made my dad burn it in the backyard.
When I was a wee child - just a couple of years old - my parents took me to the circus. I believe it was Ringling Bros., but that’s not important. We were sitting towards the very front rows, and the clowns came out in their cars, and wanted to PUT ME IN THE CAR WITH THEM. I screamed bloody murder, and so my parents didn’t let me go. Yay for them.
Clowns are just inherently creepy to me. Grown men that enjoy to hang around kids (insert Michael Jackson reference here), wearing paint over their faces, and the mouths are drawn on so that you can’t REALLY tell what kind of expression they have. The mouths always look like someone’s screaming.
That still doesn’t necessarily make him creepy. It just makes him a shameless huckster who’ll do anything for a buck (e.g., drop pants for food).
My youngest brother was always afraid of BtC.
Out of respect, I dare not speak his name.
:eek: :eek: :eek:
:eek: :eek: :eek:
:eek: :eek: :eek:
Why, oh why, did I google that?
Well, it depends on the actor’s interp, of course. I think he does, but not in an “Evil Clown” way as much as in an unsettling truth-teller way – Shakespearean fools, after all, are generally the wisest characters in the plays they’re in…
I still think it’s something quite new: coulrophobia
The site claim it to be coined during the 1990’s.
Has anyone heard of Pierrot? As far as I know he is the ur-clown- you know, the Adam or Eve of clowns. He is portrayed almost always with an element of the macabre.
Arnold Schönberg’s fantastic piece, Pierrot Lunaire, features the Pierrot figure in a number of blasphemous/murderous/obscene scenarios, including among many other atrocities, Pierrot drills a hole into a man’s head making a pipe of his entire head and smoking from it; another concerns a fantasy of beheading via the moon as a scimitar. et cetera. Though Schönberg’s piece is thoroughly 20th century (and then some!), the Pierrot figure, psychologically speaking, is already buried deep in our consciousness, as part of our rich Western culture. Schönberg knows this and plays off of this brilliantly, btw.
My hypothesis- we fear them because it is part of our cultural heritage to fear them, they have always held an element of the macabre/evil, and the very contradiction of happy/evil or sad is fascinating and not at all immaterial to our complicated emotional human existence, keeping the figure alive.
Make sense? It would be interesting to see if clown/joker/jester figures are also seen as covertly nefarious in non-western or non-christian based cultures…
that child disfigurement thing, if true, is really and truly horrific.
my 2¢
-Shingolicious
I wonder about that, though. Was it really necessary to create disablilities and disfigurements at a time when so many occurred naturally?
Ah, but they weren’t funny disabilities. Pox scars you see all the time, but a good mutilated face is a rarity.
I think EvilDeath is onto the answer, albeit not a real funny one. Your imagination and sense of human decency may not allow you to think of the extent to which these Comprachico fellows would go. From what I’ve read (taken with the appropriate grains of salt) there was far more to it than carving a rictus smile or stunting a limb or two. There were reported instances of primitive attempts to graft animal skin onto humans, to limit head growth by encasing a small child’s head in a tiny iron mask, to crush and reshape bone into horrific animal shapes. These man made creatures were blithering idiots driven insane from pain and neglect and who’s lives were short if they even survived. Don’t forget how callous our own civilization has been towards life in the not too distant past. :eek:
Which brings the OP back to my first point.
The silent film, “The Man Who Laughs”, (with Conrad Veidt acting) brought this horrific practice back into the public eye. There were several similar films during the silent era which starred Bela Lugosi (and others) to which the public flocked.
The original sketches of “The Joker” were almost identical to Veidt’s character. Later the Joker character would include a maniacle laugh and green hair with white face and a bright red laughing smile. He usually wore a zoot suit that was exaggerated and even donned a red nose once in awhile. Remember, the Joker was evil…he was a mass murderer who played the fool but joked his way out of being captured, time and time again.
Sure, I understand the Joker wasn’t the originator of the evil jester BUT he damned sure made it common knowledge, especially with the kiddos.
Then there’s the psych experiments…an infant with NO “clown experience” will often show fear at their first confrontation with a clown. The concept that clowns are supposed to be funny is what is learned, not the other way around. Maybe y’all remember the AFV video of the little kid that freaked out when he saw the man dressed up as Eeore…sp? ( from Winnie the Pooh).
Recall how that child went nuts, he was absolutely terrified. Yet he knew who Eeore was.
Clowns do the same thing. I think that instinctual fear is inherent and when confirmed (like the Eeore example) the fear may become phobia. Yet no matter how many times we learn that clowns are supposed to be funny. That innate fear remains. Masks and makeup hide the truth. No matter how many jokes or funny stories or magic tricks they try to win us over with the instinct remains.
For most of us, we can’t trust what we can’t see.
Does anyone have a cite for this practice that is independent of Victor Hugo’s novel? I’ve come across web references that say he invented the term, which leads me to wonder if he didn’t invent the practice also.
I think most agree experts agree the practice existed but that it was Hugo who coined the term.
comprapequeños
Lest I be thought a plagerizer, that Wikipedia article plagerizes the source that I had read years ago in one of those often wrong “2006 Amazing Facts!” books. This is why I prefaced some of my comments with the grain of salt comment.
I thought the Joker’s original look was nicked from the leering face that loomed above Steeplechase Park on Coney Island?
I only know the artist who did the drawings of the Joker said that he got the idea from the film. I don’t know how old the face at the park is. One of the links I cited earlier shows the comparison.
and BTW Cluricaun
you may be right about wiki stealing articles from elsewhere I’ve seen that before. BUT I have also read about the mutilations elsewhere so I don’t have any doubts about the historical aspects of this occurrence. Hell, when I was a little kid I remember the old traveling circus would have “freaks”. Dad said when he was a kid in the depression it was “common knowledge” these things happened.
That was one of the threats actually :eek: to tell your kid that you’d sell them to a circus.
IIRC Hitchcock did a short about this subject and there have been a LOT of movies on it. All of that aside, I know they are well after Hugo’s works. The Chinese document the practice back for centuries. But, I’ll see what I can dig up for you though as far as cites. 
Societies around the world have been practicing mutilation for as long as we’ve been here. Still do as a matter of fact. Think about it.