“It” Has a Point

I used to laugh at coulrophobics. The fear of Stephen King’s impish, sharp-toothed, demon of an entertainer in the movie “It,” which terrorized the children of Derry by transforming into their worst fears and systematically tearing off their limbs, seemed unfounded. After all, clowns are real, regular people. And clowns are not supposed to be scary.

But a survey conducted earlier this year by Vox Media and Morning Consult revealed that Americans are more afraid of clowns than terrorist attacks, a family member dying, the collapse of the economy, climate change, or dying themselves. Two out of three Americans want police or government intervention to investigate clown scares. The Ringling Brothers Circus, coined the “Greatest Show on Earth,” hosted its last performance this year. But somehow, a light-hearted entertainer, created to cater to children and the glittery aura of the circus, has come to strike more fear into the hearts of Americans than the Taliban.

Clowns can be traced back all the way to 2500 B.C., when Pygmy clowns catered to Egyptian pharaohs. Imperial China, Ancient Rome, and medieval Europe all saw their version of these unpredictable, hyperbolically happy comedians.

But this perpetually happy nature is easily conceived as something much more devious. Clowns must paint on their wide smiles every morning, fixing their grinning countenance whether or not they feel that way. And as humans who are inclined to judge a person’s character and trustworthiness based on their facial expressions and actions, the clown is shifty and untrustworthy, a plastic man. Their laughter is chilling because it seems out of place in a situation that doesn’t require laughter; Stephen King’s clown Pennywise is scary because he is hiding in a storm drain with a shining red balloon instead parading around the fairgrounds.

The fact that clowns are humans, and that they are very real, is another strike against them. Unlike ghosts or aliens, which are blatantly figures of the imagination without any scientific backing or solid evidence, clowns exist and blend in as unremarkable characters. The image of the corrupted clown, steered toward evil because of mistreatment or unresolved anger, can (and arguably does) happen every single day. An enemy that walks among you and has unsupervised access to your children is justifiably frightening.

This fear of clowns has also led to mass hysteria and “copycats” that harnessed fear in order to receive attention. Remember, for instance, John Wayne Gacy Jr., who raped, tortured, and killed at least thirty-three young men in Illinois between 1972 and 1978. He operated under the persona of Pogo the Clown, who had pointed tips for his mouth (instead of the standard, kid-friendly rounded tips), and was called the Killer Clown as he painted jarring self-portraits of himself as Pogo in prison before he was executed through lethal injection. The clown sightings in South Carolina last year, which included a group of teenagers luring children into the woods, are just another example of people taking advantage of this fear.

But know that the fact that many clown “sightings” are orchestrated pranks does not detract from the tangible fear that Americans have of clowns; on the contrary, it only serves to stand as an example of the self-realization of the unnerving nature of these wide-eyed, grinning entertainers.