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Clowns are the modern-day equivalent of the Fool. Silly actors with bizarre behaviour that have now been relegated to children’s entertainment, rodeos, and Horror. ♪ One of those things is not like the other. ♫ Clowns have a tendency to upset people despite their often jolly appearance. While I have several theories as to why I’d like to take a look at their ancestry for additional information first.

The Fool

In the courts of Lords and Kings there is always depicted the small man in bright colours and tiny bells. He is the Fool or Jester entertaining the gentry with jokes, japes, and sometimes political satire. The Fool is always near the King ready to provide entertainment or to lighten a grim mood. The Fool is always beside the seat of power listening, watching, and learning.

While the Fool plays the idiot we still know that behind that empty-headed facade dwells true knowledge of great importance. To this day people get the feeling from clowns that know something more than we do, that their plastered on smile is really a knowing grin.

A Face that is not a Face

I think one of the biggest reasons people are unnerved by clowns is that they make themselves into a living caricature that sits well within the uncanny valley. For those not familiar this chart shows the uncanny valley:

The sudden dip in the graph is the uncanny valley and it is populated by those things that look nearly human but evoke an otherworldly or strangely upsetting feeling. 

Clowns with their pale yet thickly layered paint offer us the face of an ageless corpse. Only the dead have no colour and the greasepaint sinks into lines and pores giving a more smooth and childlike appearance. Their bright red lips which would normally denote the blush of health instead bring to mind the vibrancy of blood and danger. The overlarge depiction of the eyes causes one to focus on them and take note of the mismatch between what the makeup tells us and what the person underneath is experiencing. In some cases, it even feels like the person is trapped inside the clown.

He who does not Laugh.

Clowns are surreal in the way they are painted to appear jovial, it tends to spur on the feeling that the joke they are laughing about has you as the punchline. Even more sinister though is the clown that doesn’t smile. The clown that isn’t laughing anymore and has broken the bonds of Hilarity to come out the other side changed.

While smiling clowns can be disturbing they are familiar and invoke the age-old aspect of the Fool, the unsmiling ones take this concept and turn it on its head. Instead of being avatars of humour they become something darker. If you have ever watched a sad clown perform a slapstick routine you will understand immediately. They are no longer performing to mock themselves or the audience they appear to be undergoing some sort of self-prescribed punishment It is unsettling and uncomfortable to watch.

Everything must be in it’s Place

While seeing a clown in a circus or a birthday party can still trigger the uncanny valley feeling the reaction to it is far subdued. Those are the natural habitats of a clown and the expected places to see one allowing us to mentally prepare for their appearance. Clowns found outside these locations offer us no such sanctuary to prepare. Not only are they incredibly conspicuous, they garishly clash with the rest of the world drawing more attention to their not quite human appearance. They leave us wondering what they are doing without a circus or party and if they have some sinister reason for wandering into our reality.

In Conclusion

Why are clowns so scary? Clowns exist within the uncanny valley, they paint emotions on their face in place of human expression, they give off a sense of knowing something you do not and they clash with the normal everyday reality of the world. Clowns are the Other: something that holds up a cracked mirror to reflect humanity and laughs at the result.