Here come the clowns ... and there goes my best joke
Hardeep Singh Kohli
AMAN shows up at a psychiatrist’s surgery. He has no appointment but is adamant that he must see a doctor. Immediately. It is explained to him that all the psychiatrists are fully booked but there are spaces available the following week. He says he is only in town a few days and it is something of an emergency. Finally, the receptionist submits and the man wanders into the consulting room. He sits. He speaks. “Doctor, I’m in a terrible way. My life seems pointless. I have no idea why I should even be alive. Every day the same drudgery. Doctor, please help me …” The doctor removes his glasses. He takes a moment. “My friend, these are not uncommon feelings. Many people share them. Try and find the positives in life. Forget yourself. In fact, I know exactly what you should do. The circus has just arrived in town. They have this clown, Carlos – he’s amazing. He’s so funny, so entertaining, a comic genius ...” The patient starts to weep uncontrollably. “What’s wrong?” says the doctor. “Do you not like clowns?” “Its not that,” splutters the patient, between sobs. “I AM Carlos the Clown …” I have loved and told that joke for 20 years, but little did I think that I might employ it in the context of a global phenomenon people are calling ‘Killer Clowns’. Just when you thought this world couldn’t get any more bizarre, they send in the clowns. The genesis of this troubling masquerade of terror couldn’t be further from the hysterics of the a f or ement i one d Carlos. While some silly students thought it might be fun to dress as clowns and, well, clown around, there is a deeply sinister, sometimes criminal, component to this cult of the clown. Shadow-lurking clowns have terrorised school children, damaged property and some have even been found carrying dangerous weapons. A clown with an axe couldn’t be further from funny.
I have a friend who is coulrophobic; she has a fear of clowns. You can’t even mention the word in her presence. And it’s not an altogether uncommon fear. While statistics are difficult to collate, it has been suggested that as many as one in 10 Americans fears the Cocos and Carloses of this world.
I’m a fan of clowns. Ever since my dad took us to see the Moscow State Circus some four decades ago, clowns have been my friends. The sensation of the Edinburgh Fringe last year was Puddles, a 6’6” Australian clown with the most incredible voice. Clowns are great, but they have to be in context.
A white painted face in a white suit leaping out the bushes while you stand waiting for the bus is anything but entertaining. The craze for killer clowns, fuelled by social media, has arrived in the UK, having swept fire-like through America and Australia.
We have witnessed a vigilante reaction to the white-faced ne’er do wells; having only just computed the notion of killer clowns, it appears that a clown purge is now upon us. It seems that Pokemon-searching has been superseded by clown-hunting. In certain parts of America, clown-hunters have been arriving tooled up, some even with assault weapons.
It’s seldom I’m left perplexed and speechless by world events. There is a lawlessness to both those dressing as clowns and those hunting them down. While America stands on the edge of a political precipice and the not so United Kingdom roils and rails against a lack of Marmite, while a bloody civil war rages in Syria and the Tories decide to re-brand themselves as the xenophobic and anachronistic Little-Englanders, and while homophobic and anti-immigrant attacks are on the rise, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by killer clowns.
Sometimes it feels very hard to be optimistic, to see past the zeitgeist and convince oneself and others that change is going to come. For the first time in 20 years, I think I know exactly how Carlos the Clown feels.