Why people are afraid of clowns

[Serpo]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/offbeat/why-people-are-afraid-of-clowns-other-than-the-fa-1v9t

[Glass]

I wondered about clowns. I have met people who claim to really dislike clowns. Luckily you don't tend to run into clowns everyday. You have to go looking for them. They kind of strike me as noisy mimes....the clowns. not the people.

Interesting history: http://www.allaboutclowns.com/history.html

[keehah]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/200812/the-tears-clown

The authors interpret these findings as suggesting that humor represents an attempt to relate from a distance. They also raise the interesting possibility that this distancing is precisely what enables these individuals to be funny, since it allows for a fresh perspective...

Motivations

What motivates the comic? In their study, the Fishers noticed that professional comics displayed significantly more themes of contrasts and opposites. The Fishers hypothesized that the comedian learns, through early life experiences, that life is absurd. They then spend their lives telling jokes to help them understand the absurdity of their own position. They note that much of humor involves spotting and giving meaning to ambiguities, and that comedians are obsessed with instability. They hypothesized that this focus on inconstancy may represent an effort at mastery, and that the comedian seeks to adapt to a threat that was of painful intensity in their early childhood...

At the same time, the professional comics also viewed humor as a technique for controlling and dominating the audience. Indeed, Fisher and Fisher were impressed at how this view of the comic as a fool-priest is consistent with scholarly reviews of the history of the clown, the court jester, and the fool. They also noted how the contemporary comic serves a similar function as the court jester in earlier times. On the one hand, the comic presents himself or herself as the silly fellow that jokes, amuses and entertains. On the other hand, the comic initiates opposing currents, uncovering truths that many people usually try to banish from awareness.

[SLV^GLD]

The only clowns that actually entertain me versus freak me out are rodeo clowns.

[Publico Pro Se]

Here's why:

http://homesecurity.net/img/john-wayne-gacy.jpg

http://prolifickillers.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/pogotheclown1.jpg

http://images.wikia.com/criminalminds/images/0/05/JohnGacyVictims.jpg

http://eotd.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/john-wayne-gacy.jpg?w=137&h=200

(At the time I lived about fifteen miles from the this clown.)

[Plastic]

Clowns and dolls have always creeped me out......

[ximmy]

Mimes are worse...

[keehah]

Mimes are worse...

It is not right that people troll like this to interject ant-mimite attitude in this unrelated clown thread. ;D

[sirgonzo420]

The only clowns that actually entertain me versus freak me out are rodeo clowns.


Again, I'm on the same page with SLV here.

Great minds, eh? ;D

[Korbin Dallas]

:o

[ximmy]

Mimes are worse...

It is not right that people troll like this to interject ant-mimite attitude in this unrelated clown thread. ;D


http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s222/chrisneros/33FUNNY.gif

[BabushkaLady]

I love parades! Here are two clowns that didn't even know I shot them!

[BabushkaLady]

#2

[BabushkaLady]

Oh just a photographer's joke! ;D And to think they pay me to shoot people!!

[Hatha Sunahara]

Publico--

Is that John Wayne Gacy in the bottom of your post? And those kids above? Are they some of his victims?


Hatha

[Hatha Sunahara]

Kinda reminds me of this clown:

Hatha

[Hatha Sunahara]

Was this guy a clown? Or was he something else?


Hatha

[Publico Pro Se]

Publico--

Is that John Wayne Gacy in the bottom of your post? And those kids above? Are they some of his victims?


Hatha


Yup.

About five years after he was caught my cousin bought a VW bug from one of the clown's neighbors. (Cousin would buy VW's fix them up and sell them.) As he was checking out the car cousin was told by the neighbor clown man would occasionally borrow the car to go grocery shopping.