Do you know what coulrophobia is? It is the fear of clowns, the irrational and deep terror of those characters with their faces painted white and smiles as permanent as, at times, forced. And, although it seems that clowns were born to make us laugh, in popular culture they have almost always been symbols of the perverse, like Pennywise from That (Item), Stephen King’s iconic novel.
But in real life too. If you remember, around 2016 there was a very strange trend in the United States that soon went viral throughout the world: people dressed as clowns took to the streets ready to scare their neighbors, armed with axes and colorful costumes. Surely everyone remembers that in Ecatepec, two of them, after trying to scare people, ended up lynched. And also, who would think of going out and scaring someone in the State of Mexico with the Joker’s face?
Is it the master of terror’s fault?
After this grotesque trend was unleashed, there were many who accused Stephen King of having invented the concept of the killer clown, the clown that gives everything but laughter. The author of Carrie either pet cemetery, who has no fault other than making us enjoy making us suffer, denied any involvement with fashion and assured that clowns have been scary since the dawn of time. On Twitter she wrote that “it’s time to calm the anti-clown hysteria a little. Most of them are good people and they just want to cheer up the children, make us laugh.”
Another thing is that they achieve their objective, because, as King says, these beings were part of the collective horror imagination long before he created Pennywise, in 1986, and Tim Curry gave him a face in the famous miniseries of the 90. There are scary clowns from the Joker, created in 1940, to Shakespeare’s, who already used not-too-funny jesters in The Lear King. The figure of the medieval jester was not one of pure joy: they were there to point out what was uncomfortable, what was not pleasant. Clowns were used for children’s entertainment until the 19th century.
In fact, since then it was no longer necessary to go to literature or cinema to look for killer clowns: the French mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau killed a child with his cane in 1836. Later, the serial killer clown became a reality: from 1972 In ’78, in Illinois, United States, John Wayne Gacy, better known as Pogo the Clown, murdered 33 young girls, many of whom he buried in his garden. His image remained in the collective imagination of fear forever.
Why are they so scary?
Dr. Sandra Vargas, psychoanalyst member of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association (AMP), assures that clowns are scary for a very simple reason: they are sinister, and “the sinister is, in psychoanalysis, the unknown, what is familiar to us at the same time.” time”. The makeup or the mask with which they hide their faces allows us to recognize them as something human, of course, but we do not know what is hidden behind it. Makes sense. We are afraid of what is close, what is unpredictable… Which at the same time is very recognizable to us.
As the saying goes, “I like it, but it scares me,” which implies that we are afraid of what on other occasions made us laugh, enjoy and have a good time. And, as Stephen King said in his aforementioned tweet, not all clowns are bad, nor do they look in the least like his murderous Pennywise.
Most people just want to make people laugh and enjoy themselves. Such is the case of the famous and talented Mexican clown Gabriela Muñoz, better known as Chula the Clown, who feels that clowns only want to tell “epic stories where they can lose everything, but they can also win the whole world through their stupidity, his vulnerability or his heart.”
He’s absolutely right… until a guy with white makeup on his face comes at us with his claws and sharp teeth.
A version of this article was first published in Cine PREMIERE #276 in September 2017.
Luis Gamboa Film and TV scriptwriter, I write series, soap operas, articles, weddings and communions. I started this by becoming a member of the Freddy Krueger fan club, and although I have already lost my credentials, I am still excited to see what is happening on the other side of the screen. www.roomservice.mx