Why did the image of the evil clown appear and how did it evolve

In our country, a clown is a cheerful mischievous person in bright makeup and ridiculous clothes. Without a doubt, he is a positive character and is loved by children and adults, although there are exceptions. At the same time, it is well known that in the West the image of a clown is quite ambiguous. On the one hand, he is also a friend of children and a funny guy, and on the other hand, he is a frequent hero of horror films and thrillers. So where did the evil clown come from?

To begin with, it's not entirely clear who and when decided that children like a big red nose, bright makeup, tousled hair and huge shoes. Most likely, this is the speculation of adults who believe that kids like everything bright and unusual. But most often it's not funny at all for children, and a strange painted type can frighten preschoolers at all.

Perhaps if some research had been done at the birth of the clown craft, circus pranksters would not have looked so shocking. But clowns appeared long before such a science as psychology. They have always been a key figure in circus performances. It was possible to do without trainers, fakirs and acrobats, but there must be clowns by all means.

Although there were various kinds of mimes in ancient times, and clowns entertained people in The Middle Ages, the negative image of this hero appeared relatively recently. For centuries, clowns have been funny or sad, but not scary at all. Experts believe that in world culture, the first evil clown appeared in Edgar Poe's story "Jump-skip", published in 1849.

Then, for a quarter of a century, no one remembered the villains in makeup. But in 1874, in the play by Katul Mendes "The Woman from Tabarin", the negative character clown appeared again. In 1892, the Italian playwright Ruggero Leoncavallo firmly cemented the image of villains for these circus performers by presenting the opera Pagliacci. In it, the clowns were ruthless killers.

In the second half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th, the image of a negative clown began to be actively exploited by cartoonists. Most often they portrayed incompetent politicians as evil and stupid circus performers. Since that time, the image of the clown has also become offensive. The mask on the clown's face is a great metaphor to help portray hypocritical politicians. The peak of demand for such cartoons occurred on The First World War, and then went into decline.

In 1939, there was another surge of interest in evil circus comedians. The recently founded DC Comics agency has presented a series of Batman comics. The antagonist of the main character is the Joker clown — the embodiment of all the worst in Western culture.

Everyone liked the new image so much that the Joker evolved over the next 80 years. The result of the development of the image was the Todd Phillips movie "The Joker" with Joaquin Phoenix in the title role. However, in the 2019 film, the Joker was turned from a scoundrel into a fighter for justice.

In the children's media space, the evil clown first appeared in 1969, in the cartoon "Scooby-Doo". It was a negative character, existing separately from the circus. The New York glam rock band Kiss consolidated the image by starting to perform in a strange clown makeup. These guys in leather suits with painted faces finally distorted the original meaning of the word "clown". Later, the guys from Slipknot will appear with their version of the creepy stage costumes that have gone down in music history.

But the scariest clown was shown in the novel "It" by the horror king Stephen King. In the book, published in 1986, the clown was not just an evil person. It was already a global evil that came from outer space and fed on childhood nightmares. It has no form of its own — evil takes on different forms. His main incarnation was Pennywise the clown.

The first film adaptation of the novel was released in 1990. Despite the modest budget, the film was a success and the clown monster became the most recognizable monster of the late 20th century. Even the second film adaptation of 2017, saturated with special effects, turned out to be not so iconic.

The phenomenon of the novel "It" forced psychologists to begin studying the phobia associated with clowns. It is called culrophobia and in The USA is not considered a rarity. In 1999, Mark Deri in his book The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium reflected on the topic of pagliacci and evil. The author has established that evil clowns are the ideal heroes of postmodernism, with its relativity. An equal sign is placed between fear and ecstasy. Interestingly, even children who have not encountered them in a negative image can be afraid of clowns.