Do clowns give you the creeps?

image source:www.inquistr.com 

“Kill you all!" The clown was laughing and screaming. "Try to stop me and I'll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can't stop me!” I'm every nightmare you've ever had. I am your worst dream come true! I am everything you ever were afraid of!

― From the novel “It” by Stephen King

America and Europe are getting panicky over alleged ‘creepy clown’ sightings. But why are clowns scaring people instead of making them laugh? Read on…

Shakespeare was perhaps one of the earliest persons to use the word ‘clown’, to describe dim witted and dumb characters his plays. The advent of the form of the present circus clown – with painted face, red ball nose and loose clothes – is supposed to have started in around the 19^th century in Europe. 

The general images of clowns in movies were those of people who lived two lives – one where they made fools of themselves and others, as jesters and their own private lives, which were anything but funny. The private lives of many such people – remember Charlie Chaplin and many such comedians in India too – were melancholia driven. 

This was until 1978, when a certain John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994), was caught by police in Illinois, USA, for being involved in various rapes and serial killings (numbering 33, according to the police). Now, Gacy worked as a clown (named ‘Pogo’) and was one of the funny people who the kids could relate to. He also used to draw and paint picture of clowns. The police were shocked to know as to why he worked as a clown - "You know… clowns can get away with murder.”  He was finally killed by lethal injection in 1994. He became infamous as the ‘Killer Clown.’

Now, this became a subject for our Hollywood friends – who are always on the lookout for novel crimes – to adapt to movies. Many of us would have seen Steven Spielberg’s ‘Poltergeist’ – remember the scene of the doll under the bed? Stephen King’s novel ‘It’, which was also adapted into a movie in 1990, had a clown killer. A recent one I can remember watching was the horror ‘Amusement’ (2009). I have not watched ‘All Hallows' Eve’, which is a 2013 horror movie featuring a killer clown.

Movies-inspire-life-inspires-movies – the quintessential “chicken and egg”story? One does not know which leads to what; but a criminal is obviously inspired by something other than just indigenous instinct. 

An matter of intrigue -  why did the clown as a killer gain acceptance among the public? A clown is a person who hides his appearance. He wears such make up whereby you cannot see his true face. In addition, the psyche of him hiding his identity and feelings becomes believable. So the clown as the scaring prankster turned psychopathic killer is a subject that a book reader / movie watcher is able to relate to. The clown can be a serial killer – it is almost as if the clowns in movies cannot have normal lives; there has to be a duality somewhere, even barbaric. The killer clown gives you the creeps – guaranteed! Maybe there is a lot of sarcasm and sadism in his laugh.

This has led to real life tragedies - one cannot forget the mass shooting in 2012 in a movie theatre in Colorado where, the killer did so, dressed as the character ‘Joker’ at the premiere of the Batman movie ‘The Dark Knight’. The tragic irony was that the clown was the killer in the movie too!

Presently, such ‘creepy clown’ sightings are growing across the USA and even Europe; alarming even the police who have now started issuing advisories to the pranksters to keep off. Do you know who are affected as a result of all these? The persons who really work as clowns for a living – they would be hoping that the hysteria stops at some point, for sanity’s sake!