It’s like the chicken or the egg. Which came first: Stephen King‘s rambling novel about a demonic presence in the form of a clown? Or our irrational fear of the red-nosed fucks in the first place?
Clowns are supposed to be funny. Obviously, they’re not. Their oversized features, chalk-white skin, red lips and big stupid pantaloons are all designed to make small children burst into tears.
Yet despite all of this, people still choose to dress up as a clown for money, and it’s these people – a.k.a. professional clowns – who’re pissed that King’s ‘It‘ is being remade for 2017.
“It’s gonna be bad for clowns,” said professional clown Guilford Adams, in a feature on the official clown response to ‘It’, published in MEL Magazine. “It’s ruining our business,” added fellow clown Nick Kane.
King, however, is none-too-sympathetic.
“The clowns are pissed at me,” he said on Twitter. “Sorry, most are great. BUT… kids have always been scared of clowns. Don’t kill the messengers for the message.”
The clowns are pissed at me. Sorry, most are great. BUT…kids have always been scared of clowns. Don’t kill the messengers for the message.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) April 10, 2017
And look, he’s not wrong. John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer who murdered 33 people in Illinois in the 1970s, had a day job performing as a clown at children’s birthday parties – long before King’s novel came out in 1986. The Joker in the Batman comics is a psychotic, murder-happy clown. And in the original ‘The Sims‘ game, a tragic clown would appear if your Sim was miserable, and would basically follow you around crying and coughing, only leaving if you sold or burnt the Tragic Clown painting. I don’t know who put that NPC into a children’s game, but they were not right in the head.
King even gave his thoughts on the prevalent nature of clowns in pop culture last year, when we had that spate of people dressing up as clowns and terrorising people for the hell of it.
“When I wrote my novel ‘IT’, I set it in Bangor, because it’s a town with a tough and violent history. I chose Pennywise the Clown as the face which the monster originally shows the kiddies because kids love clowns, but they also fear them; clowns with their white faces and red lips are so different and so grotesque compared to ‘normal’ people. Take a little kid to the circus and show him a clown, he’s more apt to scream with fear than laugh.”
Anyway, just to fuck with you, here’s the absolutely psychotic trailer for the new film. Good luck sleeping, now or ever.
Photo: It.
