![]() ![]() Of course, the clown’s behaviour is meant to be funny, but if you haven’t yet developed that sense of the world then you simply view them as odd, scary.” Even once we are old enough to understand what clowns are, their very point is to upset expectations. It makes them question what they are just beginning to feel is normal. ![]() “When a small child is first learning about the world, to have exaggerated features is incredibly disquieting. “Clowns deliberately exaggerate the human face and cover the human face with paint so as to make the face less human,” says Wilson. ![]() Devils – both the lusty thickheads and the sharp, clever deceivers – are always clowns.” “They were never really good.” Radford cites Joseph Campbell’s classic analysis of myth, The Hero With a Thousand Faces: “Universal too is the casting of the antagonist, the representative of evil, in the role of the clown. “It’s misleading to ask when clowns turned bad,” warns the writer Benjamin Radford in his history, Bad Clowns. ![]() And it’s understandable because, even if they are not serial killers, clowns are already creepy. The fear of clowns is known as coulrophobia. As he was arrested, Gacy is reported to have said: “You know, clowns can get away with murder.” He was also well known in his community as Pogo the Clown, performing at children’s parties and fundraising events. And the idea of a killer clown is all too real if you know the history of John Wayne Gacy.” An American serial killer and rapist, Gacy was convicted of the murders of 33 boys and young men in Cook Country, Illinois between 19. “I was showing the students some images of killer clowns. “We’ve got a brand new module that I teach in the final year about serial murder,” he says. David Wilson, professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, was lecturing on just this subject earlier in the summer, before the current wave of clown-related incidents. But the killer-clown meme is grounded in a far more sordid reality. Anti-corporate activists will probably point to Ronald McDonald. Comics fans will think of Batman’s antagonist, the Joker. Connoisseurs of pulp fiction will cite King’s Pennywise. Photograph: Allstar/Lorimar TelevisionĬlowns have never been straightforwardly funny. Tim Curry as Pennywise in the 1990 TV film Stephen King’s It. People call it the great clown panic, or clown uprising, or clown invasion, or clown craze, of 2016. Last weekend, the NSPCC said that Childline counsellors had received hundreds of calls from children worried about clowns. There are, we are told, “creepy clowns” or even “killer clowns” everywhere. Two weeks ago, a clown stabbed a teenager in Varberg, Sweden. Police later said it was the victim who had the mask. In Pennsylvania, a teenager was reported to have been murdered by someone in a clown mask. But subsequent clowns began to terrorise children and sometimes attack people, while commentators spoke of panic and hysteria. In fact, the earliest reported incident, a creepy clown standing in the street holding black balloons in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was a marketing ploy for a short film entitled Gags produced by a local, Adam Krause. There was speculation that it was all a PR stunt for the upcoming release of a movie version of Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel It, which features a famously eerie clown called Pennywise. The current craze started, as crazes often do, in the US, where, since the beginning of August, people dressed as clowns had been popping up creepily all over the country. As Met commander Julian Bennett pointed out: “Antisocial behaviour can leave people feeling scared, anxious and intimidated, and I would urge those who are causing fear and alarm to carefully consider the impact their actions have on others.” These stories were surreal news fodder, but not, when you thought about them, actually funny. But being chased down the street at night by a clown, or anyone else, is frightening enough for adults and children alike. Some observers spoke knowingly of a classic “social panic”, since only a very few of the clown incidents involved actual physical assaults. The Metropolitan police advised schoolchildren to call 999 if they saw a “killer clown”. Concerned parents made Facebook pages about clowns, thus inadvertently helping to spread the meme. Soon, more clowns began to pop up: in Wales, Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool. The first named victim was 17-year-old student Megan Bell, who has a “lifelong fear of clowns” and was chased down the street by one at night. On 5 October, the tabloids announced that a “terrifying clown craze” had hit these shores. A teenage clown was arrested in possession of a “bladed article”. Over the next few days, half a dozen such clown incidents were recorded. Police in Newcastle received reports of someone dressed as a “creepy clown” leaping out of bushes to scare children. I t began in the UK on Friday 30 September. ![]()
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