What's so scary about clowns?

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Please explain.

― ano, Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:25 (twenty-one years ago)

http://images.google.com/images?q=evil+clown&ie=UTF-8&hl=en

― Dan Perry '08 (Dan Perry), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Sinister face make up
Bald with wild orange side hair
Moving from town to town, they've got something to hide
False Red Hot Chilli Peppers-esque wackiness
The Joker, Stephen King's It

They aren't as scary as dolls. I think clowns are just kinda boring.

― jel -- (jel), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:29 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm with clowns being more boring than scary. Children have to fnd clowns scary though. I'd worry about a child who wasn't frightened of bad comedians in demonic make up.

― herbert hebert (herbert hebert), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:36 (twenty-one years ago)

their giant glowing erections

― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Is the 'clowns are scary' some kind of emo mass hysteria? I never used to hear people say it that much, then everyone says it. I blame Rugrats.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:39 (twenty-one years ago)

P. Diddy's scared of clowns. The big girl.

― Wooden (Wooden), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:41 (twenty-one years ago)

So am I, a bit.

― Wooden (Wooden), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:41 (twenty-one years ago)

And I was scared of them before it was cool.

― Wooden (Wooden), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:42 (twenty-one years ago)

When Bobcat Goldthwait (sp?) was promoting his alcoholic cllown comedy "Shakes The Clown" on a talk show once, he was confronted by real clowns upset with the hardline anti-clown views put forth in his 1st directorial effort. This exchange was particularly memorable.

Real Clown: After seeing your movie kids are going to be afraid of clowns.
Bobcat: Kids are already scared of clowns. The only reason you guys go to hospitals is because it's the only place the kids can't run away from you.

― herbert hebert (herbert hebert), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Is the 'clowns are scary' some kind of emo mass hysteria? I never used to hear people say it that much, then everyone says it. I blame Rugrats.
-- Kevin Gilchrist (KevinGil14...), September 16th, 2004.

EMO mass hysteria? WTF?

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:01 (twenty-one years ago)

My husband's scared of clowns. He is neither emo nor cool.

― ailsa (ailsa), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:08 (twenty-one years ago)

What's A Bigger Cliche: "I Hate Mimes!" Or "I'm Scared Of Clowns!"

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:08 (twenty-one years ago)

It's interesting, but this 'fear' has become something of a buzz cliche, along with 'cutting' being a national problem and mimes being an object of absolute hatred for so many people. It's all totally dumb. Be afraid of your government and the rapist next door, not somebody in big red shoes who makes balloon animals.

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:16 (twenty-one years ago)

"Be afraid of your government and the rapist next door"

Classic.

― Wooden (Wooden), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Although all that white makeup makes it easy to see just how yellow a guy's teeth are. Not scary so much as nasty.

― dave225 (Dave225), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

We should make all politicians and rapists dress as clowns. Just to be on the safe side.

― Wooden (Wooden), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it's be more fun to dress clowns up as politicians and rapists, actually

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:36 (twenty-one years ago)

OO! OOO! OO!! PATENT PENDING YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

Where's my network television rolodex?

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I haven't seen a clown in years, I don't think they're much of a threat.

― Elisabeth (Elisabeth), Thursday, 16 September 2004 22:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Don't be fooled. They're biding their time.

― Wooden (Wooden), Thursday, 16 September 2004 23:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I did see a poster for some sort of circus the other day..

― Elisabeth (Elisabeth), Thursday, 16 September 2004 23:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I fucking love mimes.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 16 September 2004 23:41 (twenty-one years ago)

I am totally, totally, excited by this, even though it's like four months away.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 16 September 2004 23:42 (twenty-one years ago)

I like Mr Mime

― Elisabeth (Elisabeth), Friday, 17 September 2004 01:30 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.prairieghosts.com/gacy2.jpg

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 17 September 2004 01:34 (twenty-one years ago)

two years pass...

To answer the question: [link you might get hit in the crossfire]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6382919.stm[link].

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:50 (eighteen years ago)

Learning this new code will take a bit of getting used to.

Anyway

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:50 (eighteen years ago)

their giant glowing erections

kyle (akmonday) on Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:38 (2 years ago)

I still think this is hilarious.

― Curt1s Stephens, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:54 (eighteen years ago)

"To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad."

good ole jack handey

― andrew m., Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:58 (eighteen years ago)

Dateline: 2/21 BBC

Colombia clowns killed on stage

Two circus clowns have been shot dead during a performance in the eastern Colombian city of Cucuta, police say.
The attacker jumped into the arena and fired before fleeing, police chief Jose Humberto Henao told Efe news agency.

Local reports say the audience of about 20 people, mostly children, thought the shooting was part of the show before realising both men had been killed.

Last year, a prominent circus clown, known as Pepe, was also shot dead by a unknown assailant in Cucuta.

The motive for the latest killing remains unclear, police said. Local media reports suggest two attackers may have been involved.

― Super Cub, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 22:22 (eighteen years ago)

Why are they glowing? Radioactive boners?

― Hard like armour, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 22:42 (eighteen years ago)

Well they're supposed to interest children because they're adults who fall outside the norms of adult behavior, which is supposedly wacky / silly / fun -- but to a child who hasn't received a lot of "clowns are nice" prep-work, there's absolutely no way to tell if their weirdness is fun or totally psycho-scary. They could just as easily be monsters.

It's partly the clowns' fault for being totally over-the-top, in ways that might work from far away in a circus tent, or on TV, but are scary as hell up close: even adults, when they look close and see the actual guy in there doing the clowning, tend to get a creepy-psycho vibe out of it. It probably doesn't help that the clown population, at least as of a decade or two ago, was REALLY aging, so there'd be like this tired sweaty middle-aged man in there. I assume these days there's been at least some slight replenishment of young less-creepy folks clowning to pay off the loans from their theater degrees.

But umm as proof of theory, I would submit that children would be far more entertained if a "clown" came out who was just a funny-looking no-makeup guy in a business suit and over-sized shoes, and then did all the same clown stuff like he was just a big dufus.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 23:05 (eighteen years ago)

P.S. OMG the last time I worked in a store there was this guy who'd come in now and then who was like PART CLOWN -- like he was an actual clown sometimes, I assume, but then in everyday life he was just vaguely clowny, like wearing light makeup and medium-baggy pants and shoes that were only a little too big. IT WAS REALLY WEIRD.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 23:08 (eighteen years ago)

Like if a clown married a human, and they reproduced, he would be the result.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 23:09 (eighteen years ago)

My sister was a clown. She had an old 1950's style suitcase, with flowers painted on it, that contained a range of paraphernalia including a rubber chicken. One day she was clowning outside an electronics store when a kid's father lunged at her and venomously hissed "JUST FUCK OFF!". She was only trying to do her job.

― Hard like armour, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 23:35 (eighteen years ago)

That's what they all said during the CLOWNEMBERG TRIALS.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 23:45 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/02/21/colombia.clowns.reut/index.html

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 21 February 2007 23:48 (eighteen years ago)

"Clowns are scary" isn't a new meme, but it got HUGE back in the 90s. Suddenly everyone was saying it. Why? I dunno. Prior to that, no one I know really seemed to give a shit about clowns one way or the other. I blame Poltergeist.

Agree with all the intellectual arguments about why they might be scary (grown adult in nasty makeup, hanging out with kids, acting grotesquely fake-happy all the time, can't tell what's actually going on inside, often used for dissonance-horror in 80s movies), but when I actually see clowns doing clown shit, like in a circus or kids show or something, it doesn't seem scary in any way. It's just clowns doing boring-ass clown shit. The only danger is sleep.

― Pye Poudre, Thursday, 22 February 2007 00:05 (eighteen years ago)

" I blame Poltergeist. "

Blame Ed Gein.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 22 February 2007 00:16 (eighteen years ago)

Good point, but I bet less than half the kids in American have ever even met Ed Gein.

― Pye Poudre, Thursday, 22 February 2007 00:18 (eighteen years ago)

I think clowns have always been sort of creepy, but because the 90s were the coming out decade, people felt safer coming forward with their clown hate. Or something.

They never really used to bother me, but I I just read It again and had creepy clown dreams, and you know, fuck a clown, man.

― luna, Thursday, 22 February 2007 00:40 (eighteen years ago)

Oooh, It! That's gotta figure in there, too. Now that I think about it, Spielberg and King basically poisoned the minds of anyone born after 1970 against clowns.

― Pye Poudre, Thursday, 22 February 2007 00:42 (eighteen years ago)

OK this one German clown is actually scary

― G00blar, Thursday, 22 February 2007 01:07 (eighteen years ago)

Cannibals think they taste funny.

― Hard like armour, Thursday, 22 February 2007 01:19 (eighteen years ago)

I think clowns are supposed to be scary but we've forgotten why!! They're the inheritors of jesters, of tricksters. They cut us down to size with their foolery and refuse to take people & things as srsly as those people and/or things would like to be taken, because it lends them power, and clowns keep the power from centralizing too much. In a more mundane way clowns are also simply freedom from everyday norms, they're outlets for all of us -- if you want to be outed...but lots of the time we don't! I don't, usually; I like my public face and it's a rare day when my equilibrium is such that I don't mind being sooo far out of my comfortable place in relation to others, esp strangers in public. WHICH IS WHERE CLOWNS STRIKE.

― Laurel, Thursday, 22 February 2007 02:05 (eighteen years ago)

john wayne gacy

― latebloomer, Thursday, 22 February 2007 02:51 (eighteen years ago)

A friends who took a clowning class tells me each person can only be one kind of clown: happy, sad, angry or scared. In the class they put her through a series of exercises to determine what kind of clown she was (answer: a sad clown).

― Bnad, Thursday, 22 February 2007 14:59 (eighteen years ago)

Ridi, Pagliaccio

― Michael White, Thursday, 22 February 2007 15:09 (eighteen years ago)

I remember when my brother was born and immediately we knew. Looking at him in his little hospital crib - feet swollen to the size of duck flippers, the bulbous protusion on his face where his nose should have been... but apart from that he looked like a normal new born baby as the facial adornments would only start to show through at 2 or 3 years old. When he was hungry, he would cry in this kind of freaky sad squabbing noise and then my mother, as the antenatal classes had shown her to do in such rare cases, would feed him diluted custard from his bottle.

It wasn't easy growing up in our family, and as a clown my bro had it especially hard. My father especially wasn't happy with the events and tried to mentally beat the clown out of him. But after years of never letting him near bananas, beach balls or umbrellas and sticking him on a gruelling agenda of hard maths, he simply had to accept and give in.

My parents sent him to a regular school at first but rather than being excited and elated by a clown being in their classrooms, my brother was often beaten, kicked and severly wedgied by the other kids. The day my brother gave my Mum to wash every handkerchief he had in his pocket - all 27 of them - covered in snot and blood was the day she applied to have him sent to a special school for clowns in Ascot.

He is now a whole lot better and despite his ups and downs has managed to become a succesful Purchase Ledger based in Ludlow, which is more than can be said for some. I happened to have an alcoholic harlequin living on my block who became so depressed he ended up staring limpedly at a dead flower for 8 days in a row before neighbours discovered him dead in his apartment.

My brother was lucky - he overcame his differences and despite frightening the odd phobic temp worker is doing well and even got promoted the other week. Others don't have it so lucky. So next time you see a clown, give him a thought - they deserve all the respect they can get.

― the next grozart, Monday, 26 February 2007 14:55 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/uploads/anna_clown_fox_001.jpg

― Ms Misery, Monday, 26 February 2007 15:00 (eighteen years ago)

They chase each other and fall down and have flowers in their lapels that squirt water and they throw buckets of glitter on each other, they are not scary FFS

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 26 February 2007 15:02 (eighteen years ago)

three years pass...

nothing scary about clowns at all.

http://stonedclown.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/scary_clown_32.jpg

― Daniel, Esq., Friday, 30 April 2010 19:22 (fifteen years ago)

I still stan for clowns as tricksters and upsetters of the status quo.

― wasting time and money trying to change the weather (Laurel), Friday, 30 April 2010 19:30 (fifteen years ago)

Even if they get close enough to grab you they're sure to slip and fall at the last second, which somehow makes their pants fall down and reveal their polka dot boxer shorts.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 30 April 2010 22:18 (fifteen years ago)

My parents tell me that I was afraid of clowns as a child but as an adult they don't seriously bother me. It's all about the smiles painted over neutral expressions and the stains that won't come off the blousy clown jumpsuit once your McDonaldLand birthday party appearances creep up into the double digits. Of course people who play at being freaked by clowns at 20 will be into bacon vodka at 25.

― A B C, Friday, 30 April 2010 22:54 (fifteen years ago)

coulrophobia is such an awesome word.

― tehresa, Friday, 30 April 2010 22:56 (fifteen years ago)

Just race forward to 1:25

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zdq6G7heCc

Lolipops, everywhere...

― nori dusted (Sanpaku), Friday, 30 April 2010 23:52 (fifteen years ago)

http://usmvmcnc.org/index_files/ec8140.jpg

― Daniel, Esq., Saturday, 1 May 2010 02:02 (fifteen years ago)

eleven months pass...

Is being afraid of ceramic harlequin masks a subset of being afraid of clowns?

― offee is for losers only, do you not c? (Abbbottt), Saturday, 30 April 2011 20:51 (fourteen years ago)

I don't even find them actually scary. Esp. if worn by a person bcz then I can just pretend it is that Laura Branigan video. But if they are just decor on someone's wall, I feel a little ill at ease being in that room.

― offee is for losers only, do you not c? (Abbbottt), Saturday, 30 April 2011 20:53 (fourteen years ago)

no those things are creepy as fuck.

― jj n° fad (Stevie D(eux)), Saturday, 30 April 2011 21:05 (fourteen years ago)

Every house I have been to witht hose masks has had other unsavory elements, like the person was a hoarder or chain smoker or had a 'pet' monkey or something.

― offee is for losers only, do you not c? (Abbbottt), Saturday, 30 April 2011 21:06 (fourteen years ago)

The clown paramedics chopping up pee-wee's bike in big adventure really freaked me out as a kid. Even just hearing xylophone trills like those used in the soundtrack would make me a little nervous.

― blank, Saturday, 30 April 2011 21:09 (fourteen years ago)

Masks in general are fucked up.

― blank, Saturday, 30 April 2011 21:10 (fourteen years ago)

one year passes...

GAH.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A554Zp8CcAAZGt9.jpg

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 23 October 2012 16:47 (thirteen years ago)

nnooooooo

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 23 October 2012 16:53 (thirteen years ago)

where did u find that Ned?

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 23 October 2012 16:53 (thirteen years ago)

https://twitter.com/wunderkamercast/status/260778210579607552

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 23 October 2012 16:54 (thirteen years ago)

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