With the recent events of clowns terrifying certain areas of America, and Halloween coming around pretty fast, I see a lot of hatred towards the makeup-wearing people, but why? Why do we hate clowns? What makes them so scary to most of the population? I looked into my own fear and did some research and most of the fault is the fear of the unknown and pop culture.
Coulrophobia, or having a fear of clowns, is an acknowledged phobia. People get mocked for having a fear of clowns because they're supposed be silly and happy. When was the last time you saw a happy clown? Pennywise from the movie “It” (1990), The Joker from the Batman series, and Twisty from the "American Horror Story" series are a few popular clowns that I can think of. Society doesn't exactly have a positive vision of clowns and hasn't for a while. The Joker came to life in 1940, and has been terrorizing comic books since. Killer Clown (John Wayne Gacy) certainly didn't make people view clowns in a positive light in the the 1970’s. My generation has the creepy clown Twisty from ‘American Horror Story’. Not a lot of smiling, fun face from the major clown names.
A lot of this fear stems from childhood. Children fear a familiar body with an unfamiliar face, which is why many babies cry if dad shaves a beard or mom wears a new pair of glasses. They can't identify them visually which is the same thing with clowns. A clown’s body looks like every other human, but the heavy makeup or mask can cause others to feel uncomfortable since every facial feature is exaggerated in some way.
This feeds into classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is when you form an association between two stimuli which results in a learned response. A human can take a neutral stimuli like the clown and pair it with a negative stimuli, like pain. When the two repeatedly coincide, this can form a phobia, the neutral stimuli is now associated with the negative stimuli. Although, the neutral stimuli can have nothing to do with the negative stimuli and this explains why these fears can be seen as irrational by people who do not have it. Many of us have never had a negative experience with a clown, a good portion of the negative stimuli is seeing less than positive representation of clowns in pop culture.
Another portion of the fear is the fear of the unknown. Faces are something people are used to, we communicate with others and even judge someone based on our first sight of them. Clowns have exaggerated and painted on facial features. We can't identify who these people are and for some of us, that can cause some discomfort. The ‘good’ clowns use makeup as a way to reflect their emotions and make others laugh. ‘Bad’ clowns use makeup or a mask to hide their face instead of bring their features to the front.
Even with the good and entertaining clowns, people can still be scared. Ventriloquist dummies can be unsettling because their faces never move and the same thing applies to the good clowns. A smile can bring comfort but a clown is constantly smiling and your brain thinks something isn't right.
With the constant negative imagery of clowns, it can be hard to convince people that clowns are funny and harmless. It's even harder now with recent clown sightings and people being told not to dress up as clowns this coming Halloween. Maybe clowns will be funny again one day, but I doubt it with how much money the horror genre makes from using them.
