Once upon a time, clowns were benevolent figures of laughter and merriment.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, American children followed the animated antics of Bozo the Clown on television each week. The cartoons were introduced by local presenters made up as the carrot-headed Bozo. One was Willard Scott, who would later become a meteorologist for NBC Today. Willard Scott was also the first Ronald McDonald in history, making his debut in a 1963 television ad for the hamburger franchise.
Fast forward ten years, to Cook County, Illinois (oddly enough, the location of one of the first McDonald’s restaurants). A character calling himself Pogo the Clown is a popular attraction at community events. Meanwhile, young people continue to disappear…
Beneath the makeup and clown clothes is a psycho named John Wayne Gacy. Between appearances as Pogo, he strangles 34 victims to death. He doesn’t wear the clown outfit when he kills, but his Pogo alter ego forever changes the image of the clown in the popular consciousness. Almost overnight, clowns became terrifying, with Gacy paving the way for numerous portrayals of bad clowns in literature and film, most notably Stephen King’s It.
King’s novel came out in 1986 and was a bestseller. In 1990, his nightmarish creation, Pennywise the Clown, was brought to the small screen in a miniseries. Also in 1990, a Florida woman, Marlene Warren, opened her front door to a brown-eyed clown carrying flowers and balloons. The clown shot her in the face and drove off in a white Chrysler. The clown’s victim died two days later. The killer, a woman, evaded capture for more than a quarter of a century, but is now serving time for murder.
The ’90s and ’00s saw chilling portrayals of The Joker, the green-haired prankster in the Batman franchise, from the likes of Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger. We also put Krusty, the degenerate clown from The Simpsons.
But it wasn’t until 2016 that caulrophobia, the fear of clowns, reached a real fever pitch. In the latter part of that year, the world was hit by a wave of ‘scary clown’ sightings. In the run up to Halloween, social media sites received numerous posts about sinister-looking clowns reported to be lurking first in the woods and then in a host of urban locations across the US, UK , Australia and other countries. It got so bad that World Clown Association President Randy Christensen took to YouTube to condemn people who dress up as clowns to scare people. “Whoever is doing these crazy things is not a clown,” said Christensen, a Minnesota-based party clown. “This is someone who is taking a good, clean, healthy art form and distorting it.” Christensen added that members of his association experienced job cancellations and felt threatened after coverage of scary clown sightings.
It was all too much for McDonald’s. On October 11, 2016, the burger giant announced that its mascot would be keeping a lower profile as a result of the incidents. A spokesperson said the burger clown was reducing appearances at community events as a result of the “current climate around clown sightings in communities.”
There was a knee-jerk reaction from other corporate entities like Target, which pulled clown masks from its website and stores. Schools as far apart as Ohio, USA, and Otago, New Zealand, have banned clown costumes and masks.
Flash forward to Halloween night, Monday, October 31, 2016. Caulrophobia had gripped America in such a terrifying way that large numbers of trick-or-treating homemakers and parents had firearms at the ready that night.
Fearing reprisals from vigilantes, most clowns kept a low profile on witches’ eve. Not so in Orange County, Florida, where two men needed medical attention after being attacked by a group of 20 people wearing clown masks. But other than that, Halloween night 2016 seems to have been a bit fizzy in the scary clown department, given all the previous hype.
Fast forward now to May 2017. A bald man wearing glasses stands in front of a court in Nova Scotia, Canada. This is Dale Raincourt, aka Klutzy the Clown. He pleads guilty to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl over a period of six weeks. The judge jails him for two years and forbids him from working as a children’s entertainer again. Another nail in the coffin for bona fide clowns trying to make an honest living.
Then, in the fall of 2017, came the big-budget film production of It. Pennywise was back, scarier than ever! The film proceeded to do very brisk business at the box office, with the highest attendance ever for a September-October release.
So where does that leave the benevolent, kid-friendly clown of yesteryear? Well, many of them have hung up their clown costumes and wigs forever. Others have strategically realigned themselves in the marketplace, marketing themselves as “balloon artists” and avoiding any use of the “c” word.
And poor old Ronald McDonald has been put to pasture in most parts of the world. On a recent trip to Thailand, I came across a life-size effigy of him outside a McDonald’s in Bangkok. He had his palms together in a “wei” greeting. Alternatively, he could have been praying, appealing for divine intervention as the clown joins the ranks of vampires, zombies, and other denizens of our worst nightmares.