Clown and country

My parents used to take me to the circus when I was a kid, which probably explains many things, from my love of elephants to my near-crippling cotton candy addiction. (If it had any nutritional value at all, I’d eat nothing but.) I used to love these experiences. A few of my friends? Not so much. They were afraid of the clowns.

Clowns never bothered me on any profound level. They weren’t necessarily my favorite part of the circus -- that honor was reserved for the big metal ball with the speeding motorcyclists -- but I thought they were generally fine. Sure, some of them could be mildly irritating, especially when they approached me out of nowhere and started making nonsensical hand gestures and clomping around in their surfboard-sized shoes. You sort of felt like giving them a sedative and letting them zonk out in front of a TV documentary about the history of bread. But they didn’t seem very frightening. Not like poisonous snakes, for instance. Or Lady Gaga.

Yet chances are good that you know at least one person who is deeply, skin-crawlingly afraid of clowns. When I first became aware of this phenomenon, I said to myself, “Well, this can’t be too common a thing. It’s probably rare, like gluten allergies or membership in the Pauly Shore fan club.” Then I discovered that I was wrong. And that I talk to myself too much.

It’s so common a fear that it’s been given its own unofficial “phobia” name, coulrophobia. According to the website WiseGeek Health, it’s the third leading phobia in Great Britain, trailing only spiders and needles, and ranking higher than the fear of flying. Which is surprising. Flying involves strapping yourself into a 75-ton metal tube and speeding over the earth at altitudes around 39,000 feet. Equipment malfunction means plummeting toward the ground in a claustrophobic arrangement with justifiably panicked passengers screaming and clasping their hands in prayer. Yet, if the statistics are accurate, most of those passengers would rather be in that plane than see a man with a rubber nose making balloon animals. Go figure.

Everyone who fears clowns has their own personal reasons, and while I haven’t been able to locate any in-depth data on this, it’s a pretty safe assumption that a lot of this fear has to do with how clowns have been represented in popular culture. Books and films are too often dismissed as trivial entertainments; how they portray things actually matters. If movies depicted werewolves as furry, lovable creatures with cute little button noses who like cuddling, they wouldn’t make for very popular Halloween fodder. They’d star in their own Saturday morning cartoon show and have their likenesses reproduced on lunch boxes.

Poor clowns. They don’t stand a chance -- not when they have to go up against two very unflattering pop culture depictions. The first “scary clown” depiction that comes to people’s minds is probably Pennywise, the evil clown from the Stephen King novel “It.” Pennywise is a fang-dripping, bloodthirsty monstrosity that lives in the sewers and terrorizes children, and while he’s obviously pure fantasy, fiction has a way of sticking in one’s head. Especially when that fiction entails a pasty, bloated gasbag of a face speckled with the blood of his victims. Jeff the horror-lover thinks that image is totally rad. Jeff the bleeding-heart feels sorry for the clowns who drive those tiny cars in every parade. Here they are just trying to entertain people, and they have to contend with a character who’s wrecked more lives than John Wayne Gacy. Brutal.

Pennywise, however, isn’t actually a clown. He manifests himself differently to different children, and the main character of “It” sees him as a clown, as I believe a few others do as well. But there’s no ambiguity about the second “scary clown” in pop culture mythology. Though fictional, there’s nothing supernatural about him, which makes him even scarier.

I’m assuming you’ve heard of The Joker.

This menacing dude first appeared in 1940 as an antagonist in the Batman comic books, and since then he’s been portrayed by hordes of different actors in both animated and live-action adaptations. (The most notable is Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight.” Simply put, he’s fantastic in the role.) In most of these depictions, The Joker is presented as an unstable, violent, murderous psychopath, which is set at odds with his colorful appearance: pale face, green hair, red lips. It’s the juxtaposition that’s truly frightening. It’s like if the Easter Bunny was a serial killer. If Batman’s primary foe was a giant pink rabbit who hid explosive eggs around Gotham City, you’d see children ducking for cover when they pass the bunny display at the petting zoo.

(Also, note to self: Develop killer bunny character for comic books, make fortune.)

The Joker and Pennywise have conspired to propagate an image of clowns as evil, twisted creatures. Part of me -- the part that should probably be institutionalized -- loves the whole motif. A flower on a lapel that squirts toxic chemicals? Poisoned playing cards and lethal laughing gas? I’m in. Sign me up. And throw in one of those creepy, maniacal laughs while you’re at it, just to get my hackles a-twitchin’. I live for that kind of stuff.

I just feel sorry for all the coulrophobes out there, not to mention the clowns themselves, who are just trying to be silly and entertain. Perhaps one of these days the cultural winds will shift and their image and reputation will be vindicated; an all-clown rock band will top the music charts, Bozo will discover a cure for cancer, and all will be right once more in Clown Town. It could happen.

In all likelihood I won’t be awake to see it, though. I’ll have gorged on cotton candy and slipped into a semi-lucid sugar coma. I always miss these things.