Fear

It's curious how we fear clowns. After all, the official origins of the clown are not steeped in horror. In Greek plays, the clown character represented peasants or other poor people, badly dressed and bumbling. He existed to give a moment of humor to an otherwise serious play. The clown character was used to ease tension, not cause it. This evolved to other stage productions as drama spread throughout Europe. In the Harlequinade, Clown was the bumbling foil to the more sophisticated Harlequin character. Still funny. Still viewed as mostly powerless. What changed?

Perhaps it's just an aspect of our collective apprehension. We often, as a culture, understand what to fear. There are things we just grasp. We fear abandoned factories and no one ever told us they were scary. With clowns, it is how and what they have evolved into that sends shivers through us. At any given circus, a whole gaggle of clowns will emerge from a car too small to hold any of them. We're told they can do this due to contortion and sleight of hand tricks, but part of our brains wonders if there is more to it. We watch rodeo clowns stumble around and keep bulls and wild horses from hurting fallen riders. These clowns brave injury and potential death. Perhaps they have nothing to fear from it?

Instead of presenting themselves as the bumbler or the uneducated peasant, today's clowns seem to have a sinister comprehension of things beyond our common knowledge. It's as if applying the greasepaint evokes something else in the wearer, something darker. Or maybe we just know we all deserve it. For centuries, the poor, the broken, and the freakish have been persecuted by the normal and acceptable. Maybe donning the visage as Clown opened a much-needed door to something menacing and through it marched a vengeance the world deserved.