Deconstructing Psycho Killer Clowns
February 7th, 2009
“there’s nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.” — Lon Cheney
Self portrait by the serial killer John Wayne Gacy
Mark Dery has posted on Scribed his essay on “clownaphobia and the Evil Clown as cultural icon” from his 1999 book, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink (Grove/Atlantic).
Dery looks at the strange obsession with evil clowns across the frantic landscape of American pop culture covering violence caused by clownaphobia, John Wayne Gacy, The Joker Stephen King’s IT, and Quentin Tarantino among others topics related to depictions of clowns, perceptions of clowns, and actual psychotic clowns themselves.
As someone who still remembers clown-with-hatchet nightmares from childhood (c’mon, who didn’t have these) reading this kept reminding me of The Simpsons episode where Bart lays awake in bed muttering, “can’t sleep, clown will eat me” due to the macabre Crusty the Clown headboard. Why people so easily see the dark side of clowns is one thing. Why so many disturbed people are drawn to clowning is another.