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(Please don’t) Send in the clowns

If I dress up for Halloween this year (I am pretty lazy, so the operative word here is “if”), I know there’s one disguise I won’t dress up as: a clown. Let me back up a bit.

 

If I dress up for Halloween this year (I am pretty lazy, so the operative word here is “if”), I know there’s one disguise I won’t dress up as: a clown.

Let me back up a bit. This year, it looks like people are getting a little too excited for Halloween. A trend of people dressing up as clowns and behaving in a menacing fashion has taken hold. Where this began is uncertain, but the earliest reports of this strange, uncomfortable phenomenon emerged from South Carolina, where people began to report a clown trying to “lure children into the woods.”

This didn’t really even register as a blip on my radar, so to speak, until a profusion of sightings began to take hold of the news, and in other countries outside of the U.S. It’s something of a fad, I guess.

A lot of the time—like the two times it was reported in Regina already— the clowns in question have carried props when performing their pranks. Often these props aren’t balloon animals or toy horns. These props are knives or chains.

If all that hasn’t already brought terrifying visions of Stephen King’s It to mind, it gets worse. Many of these clowns aren’t just lurking around. There has been a litany of reported incidents across the United States, in which clowns have chased people, accosted drivers by approaching and banging on vehicles and generally doing everything in their power to scare the living hell out of people. 

Many of the victims of these clown-encounters have responded with violence, attacking and throwing rocks at the clowns. Often these clown sightings coincide with threats—directly spoken threats to people who come across these clowns themselves, or threats of violence directed at schools.

This phenomenon has gotten so out of hand, in fact, that McDonald’s has decided to cut back on appearances of its scarlet-wigged mascot, Ronald McDonald, in what I presume is an effort to distance themselves from the growing unease relating to the strange clown sightings. 

Stephen King, himself has defended genuine clowns on Twitter, insisting “Most of ‘em are good, cheer up the kiddies, make people laugh,” trying to create a distinction between the kind of performers you’d hire for a kid’s birthday party, and the misguided, predominantly young and presumably very bored, people dressing up as creepy clowns and terrorizing people.

My question, reading about the growing surfeit of reports of clowns terrorizing the towns and cities of the world is why? Why bother? Is it just scaring people for the sake of scaring people? And I guess that’s really all there is to it. Your classic case of people messing with other people.

I mean, I get why they chose clowns. Clowns are pretty creepy. We even have a word for the phobic fear of clowns: coulrophobia. Sure, under normal circumstances, they’re are all about fun and eliciting laughs, but names like Pierrot and Grimaldi, who both lived dark, tortured personal lives, harken back to the dark history of clowning. The serial killer John Wayne Gacy had a clown alter-ego. There are some dark, horrific aspects to the world of clowning.

I think there’s a reason there are so many memorable minstrels that have starred as villains in fiction, like Stephen King’s Pennywise, Final Fantasy VI’s maniacal Kefka, Violator from Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, and of course, Batman’s arch nemesis, the Joker. There’s just something “off” about a clown’s demeanour and appearance. It’s something cultural critics and psychologists have claimed resembles cultural depictions of supernatural and demonic creatures, with their pale faces and exaggerated, painted mouths and the peculiar, whacky way they behave.

Although in and of itself, skulking around like an utter creep dressed up as a clown on public property isn’t a criminal offence, it’s a good thing to note that said skulking can very quickly escalate to something that will lead to criminal charges. When asked, police have been clear that charges of mischief or possession of a weapon aren’t out of the question. The moment a person starts chasing someone else or threatening them, that’s practically begging for a court date. 

If you’re looking for a Halloween costume idea, maybe steer clear of the inevitable bandwagon crowd that’ll dress up as The Suicide Squad’s versions of the Joker and Harley Quinn. Some suggestions: Frakenstein’s monster, a white sheet over the head as a ghost, a scarecrow, a potential carbon tax, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.