There’s this weird idea in some circles that clowns are Clowns, that is, rather than simply being regular (or even odd) people interested in entertaining through the use of elaborate makeup and comic tomfoolery, these people are in a sense a different race or even species of human, homo comedien.
Under this conception coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, becomes a form of racism.
The popular association of clowns with cannibalism, epitomized by the Internet meme “Can’t sleep, clowns will eat me” (started by the character Bart Simpson in the episode of The Simpsons “Lisa’s First Word“) is highlighted i the film Zombieland in which one of the characters must overcome his fear of clowns by confronting a clown-zombie.
The Ute tribe of Native Americans in the western United States have tales of the siats, a cannibalistic clown monster.
Could all these ideas be pointing towards a central reality? I was thinking about this when I encountered a book entitled The Circus Baby by award winning children’s authors Maud and Miska Petersham. The book, beautifully illustrated tells the goofy and underwhelming story of a mother elephant who observes a family of clowns and decides to treat her baby elephant as a human baby, with disastrous and comedic results.
What’s unsettling about the story is that the clown family is just that, a family of clowns, never shown without their makeup, and what’s more unsettling is the name of this clown: Zombie.
Note that this is a family of clowns. They are never shown without their makeup, and like the world of Bobcat Goldwaithe’s classic Shakes the Clown, it seems that the makeup is not artificial, but a part of them, skin pigmentation. But there’s an added subtext given the name of the clown family, Zombie.
The Zombie family seems so civilized, but it’s impossible not to wonder, given all the evidence I’ve amassed: What is in the pie they family is eating? Is the inclusion of the baby tiger a metaphorical clue? That beneath the cute exterior of this scene lurks a savage blood lust?
In this picture, the last depiction of Zombie the Clown we are treated to, we see a proud clown leading his wife and son ace to their tent. Note the posture of the father and son as opposed to the posture of the mother. She seems guarded and withdrawn, in counterpoint to the father’s strength and pride. This is not a healthy family dynamic. This is a family hiding something.
So is this pleasant seeming children’s book some sort of coded reference to the reality of siats, the Ute clown monsters, a precursor to the Juggalos of ICP infamy (How do magnets work?), or a family of cannibalistic serial killers in the vein of John Wayne Gacy? I will leave it for you to decide for yourself.
