{"id":31662,"date":"2022-10-25T22:28:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T22:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=31662"},"modified":"2022-11-03T14:20:35","modified_gmt":"2022-11-03T14:20:35","slug":"the-creepy-clown-emerged-from-the-crass-and-bawdy-circuses-of-the-19th-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-creepy-clown-emerged-from-the-crass-and-bawdy-circuses-of-the-19th-century\/","title":{"rendered":"The creepy clown emerged from the crass and bawdy circuses of the 19th\u00a0century"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Madeline Steiner<\/a>, University of South Carolina<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scary clown has become a horror staple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Featuring Art the Clown as the main villain, Damien Leone\u2019s new film \u201cTerrifier 2<\/a>\u201d is so gruesome that there are reports of viewers vomiting and passing out<\/a> in the theater. And every Halloween, you\u2019ll see vicious clowns stalking haunted house attractions<\/a> or trick-or-treaters dressed as Pennywise<\/a>, the evil clown from Stephen King\u2019s \u201cIt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be hard to imagine a time when clowns were regularly invited to children\u2019s birthday parties and hospital wards \u2013 not to terrorize, but to delight and entertain. For much of the 20th century, this was the standard role of the clown<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, clowns have always had a dark side. Before the 20th century, clowns in American circuses were largely considered a form of adult entertainment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my own research<\/a> on the history of the 19th-century circus, I spend a lot of time in archives where I regularly come across vintage photos of clowns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I don\u2019t consider myself afraid of clowns. In fact, I always try to remind folks that today\u2019s clowns are serious artists with an enormous amount of training<\/a> in their craft. But even I have to admit that the clowns I come across from old circuses give me the heebie-jeebies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drunken, lewd clowns in drag<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For most of the 19th century, circuses were relatively small, one-ring events where audiences could hear performers speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These shows were rowdy affairs<\/a> in which audiences felt free to yell, boo and hiss at performers. Typically, clowns would engage in banter with the stoic ringmaster, who was often the target for the clowns\u2019 pranks. Borrowing comedic traditions from the blackface minstrel show<\/a>, circus clowns used puns, non sequiturs and exaggerated burlesque humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One very popular clown act, which Mark Twain depicted<\/a> in \u201cThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,\u201d involved a performer disguised as a drunken circus patron who shocked the audience by entering the ring and clumsily attempting to ride one of the show\u2019s horses before dramatically revealing himself to be part of the show. Famous 19th-century clown Dan Rice was known for including local gossip and political commentary<\/a> in his performances and impersonating prominent figures in each town he visited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The jokes they told were often misogynistic and full of sexual double-entendres, which wasn\u2019t a problem because circus audiences at this time were mostly adult and male. Back then, circuses were a stigmatized form of entertainment<\/a> in the U.S., considered disreputable for their association with gambling, grift, scantily clad female performers, profanity and alcohol. Church leaders regularly warned their congregations not to attend the circus. Some states even had laws banning circuses altogether<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Clowns in the 19th century were often sinister, vulgar characters. Library of Congress<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Clowns played a part in the circus\u2019 seedy reputation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Showman P.T. Barnum noted<\/a> that part of the appeal of the circuses \u201cconsisted of the clown\u2019s vulgar jests, emphasized with still more vulgar and suggestive gestures.\u201d Clowns also subverted gender norms, with many appearing in drag, often exaggerating the female figure with cartoonishly big fake breasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early 19th century, some circuses also featured a separate tent that contained a \u201ccooch show.\u201d Male patrons were invited, for a fee, to watch women dance and strip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Circus historian Janet Davis notes<\/a> that some of these performances included clowns in drag \u201cplaying gender-bending pranks on dumbfounded men who expected to see nude women.\u201d In a shocking revelation, Davis also notes that at some cooch show performances, gay clowns had sexual encounters with male audience members \u201cduring and after anonymously crowded scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These clowns, suffice it to say, weren\u2019t for kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clowns clean up their act<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t really until the 1880s and 1890s, when entertainment impresarios like Barnum made efforts to \u201cclean up\u201d<\/a> the circus to draw in a larger audience, that clowns truly became associated with children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After circuses started traveling by railroad, they could carry more equipment, allowing them to expand from one ring to three. Audiences could no longer hear performers, so the clown became a pantomime comedian, eliminating any potentially vulgar or suggestive language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Circus owners, aiming to make as much money as possible, tried to court a broader audience, including women and children. That necessitated the removal of any scandalous acts and strict monitoring of their employees\u2019 behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Circus<\/a>
At the directive of P.T. Barnum, clowns became palatable to families with young kids. Bettmann\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The shows with the most staying power, like Barnum & Bailey\u2019s Greatest Show on Earth, were known as \u201cSunday school\u201d shows<\/a>, free of any objectionable content. They successfully portrayed themselves as the purveyors of good, clean fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clowns played a role in this transformation. With now-silent acts focused on physical comedy, their performances were easy for children to understand. Clowns remained tricksters, but their slapstick comedy was seen as all in good fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This had a lasting effect. Clowns entertained families at the circus, and, as entertainment moved to film and television, child-friendly clowns followed there too. Clowns became staples of children\u2019s entertainment in the 20th century. A popular television program featuring Bozo the Clown<\/a> ran for 40 years, from 1960 to 2001. Beginning in the 1980s, clowns became regular visitors to children\u2019s hospitals<\/a> to cheer up young patients. And companies like McDonald\u2019s<\/a> used clowns as mascots to make their brands appealing to children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in the 21st century, there\u2019s been a sharp turnaround. A 2008 study<\/a> concluded that \u201cclowns are universally disliked\u201d by children today. Some point to clown-turned-serial killer John Wayne Gacy<\/a> as the turning point, while others may blame Stephen King\u2019s \u201cIt\u201d for yoking clowns to horror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon examining the history of the American circus, it almost seems as if the period in the 20th century when clowns were beloved by children deviated from the norm. Today\u2019s scary clowns are not a divergence from tradition, but a return to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madeline Steiner<\/a>, Postdoctoral Fellow of History, University of South Carolina<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Madeline Steiner, University of South Carolina The scary clown has become a horror staple. Featuring Art the Clown as the main villain, Damien Leone\u2019s new film \u201cTerrifier 2\u201d is so gruesome that there are reports of viewers vomiting and passing out in the theater. And every Halloween, you\u2019ll see vicious clowns stalking haunted house attractions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":31663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[5798,12805,1530,12806,8082,15,696,1499,3771,7014,228,313],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31662"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31763,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31662\/revisions\/31763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}