Whenever I organized a children’s party, my daughter Chessy always reminded me, “Mama, no clowns please.”
To my daughter, clowns foreshadowed brutal events and she held my hand tight with eyes closed shut whenever they appeared. “I was terrified over what they might do and imagined the diabolical person hiding behind the exaggerated makeup and the painted smile,” said Chessy.
My daughter’s fear of clowns is called “coulrophobia.” I therefore never hired clowns or gave her dolls with porcelain faces and glass eyes. “There is nothing laughable about a clown in the moonlight,” said Hollywood actor Lon Chaney, Sr. who was typecast either as the fearsome monster or the mad scientist.
Media’s portrayal of bank robbers and serial killers wearing elastic masks added to this phobia. What movie was that where the protagonist entered a tunnel of love in an amusement park and lurking in the dark was a masked clown ready to pounce on her with a sharp knife?
Who can forget the bizarre face of Batman’s nemesis, the Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger? I could not get over that scene where he sliced his mouth to get that exaggerated sneer permanently etched and scarring his face. Watching the knife slicing his raw flesh was enough to scare the socks off me. He was disturbing in an unfamiliar, evil and grotesque way.
Most analysts and psychologists believe that children are scared of clowns because of their excessive face paintings. It unsettles them to think that danger is disguised in thick makeup and they do not have the capacity to fight it or confront it alone.
As a child, I was also afraid of our generation’s version of the boogeyman. I imagined a monster hiding under my bed that would grab my arm and drag me under. If I felt my chest tightening up, I pulled the blanket over my head and prayed for morning to come.
In medieval times, court jesters were hired to lift the spirit of the brooding king. In Italy, they had street entertainers called Comedia dell’arte, a highly disciplined art requiring both virtuosity and a strong sense of ensemble playing. In Chinese opera, as well as in Japanese stage plays, clowns release the tension and make the audience feel safe that it was only make-believe and far from being real.
I like the cousin to the clown, the mime artist, who could imitate all sorts of quirky movements without speaking a word. The French mime artist Marcel Marceau elevated this art to a new level.
Sidesplitting acts may also show the clown going through physical pain but the audience does not take him seriously. When clowns exchange slapstick antics to emphasize their clumsiness, we forget that their pain can be real and can actually hurt.
During the staging of the opera Pagliacci once, Canio the tenor was driven by jealousy over his wife, Nedda, who played the soprano on stage. When the curtains rose, Canio was consumed with jealousy and momentarily forgot about the play. He demanded to know the name of his wife’s lover. Filled with rage, he stabbed his wife on stage and the audience thought that it was part of the act. When he sang the final aria, the audience cheered, unmindful of his tragic life and the misery that was tearing up his heart, onstage and off.
On the other hand, there is the other kind: The clown who genuinely spreads cheer and makes people laugh with abandon. He doesn’t allow his personal misery to get in the way of making people feel so good that they forget their problems and anxieties. This clown has a giving, generous heart.
The actor Robin Williams played Dr. Patch Adams in a movie version of the latter’s life. Dr. Adams went on to organize a group of volunteers dressed as clowns in an effort to bring humor to orphans, patients, and others. Here, clowns represented hope, generosity and love.
Another clown expresses the misery of falling in love with the wrong person. The layers of makeup become his mask, perfect to camouflage his heartache. He is happy to be her clown, make her laugh even at his expense.
When you fall in love with the wrong person, you go through the day listlessly. You could put on a façade and masquerade as the unaffected party but at nightfall, you collapse with your head buried in your pillow bawling your eyes out. The pretending part could tire you out. But, in time, you’d realize that you were never cut out to play the aggrieved party so you snap out of it before melancholia gets out of hand.
I watched Anthony Newley in the Broadway musical Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. When he sang What kind of fool am I? it opened up some old wounds. The story revolves around Littlechap, a clown performing in a circus. He allows his growing dissatisfaction with life to lead him into the arms of several women only to realize that what he always had — the love of his wife — was more than enough to sustain him.
There is a clown to trigger fear, laughter, sadness, remorse, fun, kindness, pleasure, good humor, tragedy, hope and love.
Which door do we open?