Red nose, pale complexion, outrageous smile, messy hair and oversized shoes… If this description amuses some people, it can frighten others. At the origin of this fear, many horror films featuring a Machiavellian clown. From the joker of Batman at Pennywise of Thatpassing more recently through attacks by individuals disguised as clowns in the street, the individual with the red nose has become over time, in the collective imagination, a frightening character.
Gradually, really? The clown has really gone from a funny character to a psychopath? No, because contrary to popular belief, the image of the clown creepy is far from recent.
A character who dares to transgress
In the beginning, at the beginning of the 19th century, let’s be honest, the clown was more often ambivalent or disturbing than terrifying. “His character has always been out of step with social norms because he dares to transgress, explains Jean-Bernard Bonange, actor-clown, co-author of Journey(s) on the Diagonal of the Clown * and co-founder of the Bataclown, a clown-theatre company. It is not about willful wickedness, but the playful experience can lead to overflows and disasters which can be frightening. It is therefore worrying at first because it is unpredictable. »
This ambivalence is also explained by the ambient violence around the character. In its edition of April 15, 1919, the newspaper The Crapouillot explains: “there are sad clowns, lamentable clowns with painful masks whose only talent consists in receiving blows: There are entertainers who make you cry. »
The famous Chocolat was one of them. In its edition of December 2, 1906, the newspaper political and literary annals says that he “is content to receive slaps. » « Foottit [son acolyte]is the real clown; Chocolate is – in circus slang – the “stuntman”, that is to say the one who always “scoops”, the poor suffer pain […] »
In the theater too, the image of the character is damaged. In order to understand the origin of the aggressive clown in popular culture, Patrick Peccatte, independent researcher in visual studies, analyzed more than 200 illustrations – magazine covers, posters of plays and films – featuring clowns on more two centuries. “The first figurations of menacing clowns date back, it seems, to the end of the 19th century,” he explains on his website Deja vu.
An aggressive, even murderous clown, in the theater from the 19th century
In 1892, the Italian opera Pagliacci stage, for the first time, a murderous clown named Tonio. It is a play within a play, the story telling of the evolution of a troupe of comedians. During a performance (fictitious, therefore), a man playing a clown realizes that his wife is cheating on him and, confusing the action of the play and real life, kills his wife and her lover with a knife. Many plays will use the same process. “The clown, in these plays, is certainly more tragic than harmful, but his make-up is also the support of a form of ambiguity, analyzes Patrick Peccatte. Spectators do not know that reality and fiction are mixed before their eyes, and the confusion between the two leads to a disastrous conclusion: the mask of the clown hides a real murderer, even if the crime is committed without him knowing it. be aware”
This image of the clown scary then hits the big screen. In 1928, in the film The spies, by Fritz Lang Spione, the leader of a spy network disguises himself as a clown to escape the secret services. “Unmasked, he threatens the inspectors responsible for arresting him with his revolver and ends up committing suicide,” explains the researcher. This is probably one of the very first images of a clown threatening those around him with a gun. »
A sometimes dramatic private life
But his image was not scratched only on the boards and the big screen. His private life, made public when the artist is popular, also contributed to this. In 1838, Charles Dickens wrote the autobiography Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. He recounts the life of the first known clown in contemporary history, a superstar in England at the beginning of the 19th century. His father Giuseppe Grimaldi, also a clown, pushes little Joseph to get on the boards from an early age, with brutality. And if Joseph’s career was a real success, after the death of his only son and his wife, he fell into a deep depression and drowned his sorrows in alcohol, before dying, alone, in 1837.
“Grimaldi had a complicated personal story, confirms Jean-Bernard Bonange. But this is the case for many artists. They have unhappy lives and find therapy in art. What is striking with the clowns is the contradiction between the joyful and endearing image on stage and the sadness and unhappiness in their private life. »
In 1926, reality and fiction intersect in an even more dramatic way when a clown commits suicide on stage, as told by Le Figaro in its September 9 issue. “During a performance at the Volksgarten circus in Vienna, the clown Morval had just amused the audience, who applauded him frantically. He turned to thank with a bow and, at the same time, he swallowed a ball containing a violent poison. He died two hours later. »
The first serial killer clown, inspired by horror films
Half a century later, in 1978, tragedy takes on a whole new dimension. On December 21, John Wayne Gacy, owner of a small business who liked to dress up as Pogo the clown to entertain hospitalized children, was arrested. Dozens of bodies of young men are found in his garden. Gacy, who found his prey while prowling in squares, will be condemned to death for the murders of 33 young men.
“The fact that the image of this amusing character is associated with news items is shocking because there is a contradiction between his appearance and these misdeeds, explains Jean-Bernard Bonange. The media pounced on this contradiction and American cinema rushed into the breach. »
This terrible incident would have inspired Stephen King, according to legend, the clown Grippe-Sou, main character of one of his most famous works: the book That. This horror novel, published in 1986, tells the fight between terrified children who have become adults and an evil entity. The first printing reached one million copies. a million people who will never see the clown the same way again.
Horror movies and clown attacks
In the following years, horror movies are picking up the slack. Of Poltergeist (1982) at ” He came back (1990), a whole generation of children becomes traumatized by the sight of a red nose. And once it entered popular culture, the vision of the Machiavellian clown spread. To the delight of little jokers who, in the early 2010s, dress up as clowns and have fun scaring passers-by.
Red hair and nose, creepy smile and often a dummy weapon in hand, they run after terrified individuals, in parks or car parks. This trend from the United States quickly crossed the Atlantic. On October 10, 2014, a teenager dressed as a clown and armed with a fake knife frightened passers-by in the city center of Périgueux, in Dordogne. In Pas-de-Calais, several jokers (in bad taste) even brandished a chainsaw in front of a school in Liévin, according to France 3 Hauts-de-France. Of the similar episodes take place regularly in the four corners of France, leading to weeks of psychosis… And to see the number of people dressed up as clowns for Halloween, the fear of the clown is not about to stop.
* “Vjourney(s) on the diagonal of the clown »Jean-Bernard Bonange and Bertil Sylvander, L’Harmattan, 2012, 222 pages.