Clowning Around.
14 young teenagers were arrested here in France on Saturday night. They were armed with baseball bats, knives – and guns. Nothing particularly unusual in that; it is legal (for adults!) to buy a gun in France – what was different about this ‘gang’ is that they were young teenagers – and all dressed as circus clowns.
They were part of a growing sub-culture of ‘scary clowns’ that is spreading faster than Ebola. It started in America (where else!) where a clown in a ‘Ronald MacDonald’ type outfit posed outside a restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico for some publicity shots – presumably hoping to sprinkle a little MacDonalds marketing magic onto the restaurant in question. The resulting picture found its way onto social media.
Within days, a Twitter account had sprung up – The Real Wasco Clown – (Twitter have suspended the account now – but the hashtag continues) and Scary Clowns armed with an alarming array of weapons were popping up in Wasco, Delano and Bakersfield. When Police turned up in response to calls from members of the public, the only clown they managed to catch was an unarmed 14 year old who said he was responding to something ‘he had seen on social media’ – however, other calls had claimed that clowns were armed with machetes and chasing people down the street.
Still within a matter of days of these events, Portsmouth Police in Britain were called out to reports of a Clown chasing people down the street – again a 15 year old boy. He appeared to be following in the footsteps of an earlier ‘Northampton’ clown who claimed to be copying Steven King’s It’ rather than responding to social media. The London Metropolitan police report that they dealt with 117 clown-related incidents in 2013 alone.
Two days later, police in Montpellier, France, arrested a man dressed as a clown after assaulting a man with an iron bar. Then in Bethune last week a man was given a suspended six-month jail sentence for chasing minors down the street dressed as a clown while brandishing a stick at them. Last week French police arrested a group of five teenage vigilantes armed with a teargas canister, hammer and truncheon who had set out to hunt down a clown after hearing about it on Facebook.
On Monday, a woman who had just got out of her car in Paris called the police, saying two clowns – one of whom was armed with an axe, which mercifully turned out to be fake – had attacked her, a source said. They escaped when a passer-by armed with a baseball bat tried to stop them, although one was later detained when police spotted him, white make-up still all over his face.
Whilst in the US and Britain, the appeal of this phenomenon could be put down to Halloween – Halloween is unknown in France apart from a few ex-pat kids hopefully going round door to door, much to the bemusement of the French, ‘trick or treating’. ‘Tis a mystery to be sure.
A genuine Internet phenomena. Out of interest, I looked up the supposedly ‘correct’ word for fear of clowns – Coulrophobia – and discovered that it of itself is a creature of the internet, though the term is being widely bandied about in the media both here and on the continent – it only exists in the Online Etymology Dictionary. The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the term “looks suspiciously like the sort of thing idle pseudo-intellectuals invent on the Internet and which every smarty-pants takes up thereafter” – so Ms Raccoon wont be using it!
I can find plenty of articles explaining why children are frightened of clowns – but nobody seems to be hazarding a guess as to why this is mainly children who are dressing up as clowns and arming themselves with serious weapons to terrorise adults…has Lord of the Flies come to life?
Anybody got any theories?
- John Hall
October 29, 2014 at 10:42 am -
It’s the obvious, I fear. Burkas and niqabs seem to proliferate but it would be a very brave police enforcer/prosecutor that would attempt to arrest someone for wearing clown make-up. Identity becomes hidden and an alter ego can be entered unchallenged. If that takes the top off an id that seeks an expression of violence free from public censure as the identity of the perpetrator remains unknown we have only ourselves to blame by indulging every nonsensical claim to freedom of expression/religion/identity instead of insisting upon a basic backstop of adherence to a shared set of cultural values.
- Robert the Biker
October 29, 2014 at 10:48 am -
Quite so, there is the anonymity and the cheap thrill of scaring someone shitless; a cheap entertainment for the moronic.
I predict that this will continue until:
1. Someone in America or possibly France does this to a person with a carry permit for a pistol who proceeds to blow their stupid head off.
2. Someone comes to the rescue of their wife/girlfriend and beats the tosser bloody and into a coma over hereNot a cheap entertainment anymore, no more evil clowns!
- The Blocked Dwarf
October 29, 2014 at 12:10 pm -
3. someone in a clowns suit with a fake axe scares someone like The Bestes Wife In The World and discovers that terrifying a paranoid psychotic is a really,really, REALLY bad idea …. that ‘flight or FIGHT response’ isn’t a Ryanair slogan.
- Robert the Biker
October 29, 2014 at 12:19 pm -
Quite, I imagine having to lie in A&E while the doctor stopped laughing long enough to pull it out of their arses would put them off clowning for life.
- The Blocked Dwarf
October 29, 2014 at 1:11 pm -
Joking aside, unnecessary rectal implantation might be the least of his worries, I’ve seen psychotics ‘lose it’ and it scares me rigid. The phrase ‘danger to others’ doesn’t even come close. A large part of my life is taken up with scanning the street that the Bestes Wife and I are walking down, on the look out for ‘idiots’…ie people who by their actions, often unwittingly, might trigger a major psychotic incident. That Dukes Of Hazard car horn that makes me jump can sound horribly like the first Trumpet Blast of the Apocalypse to someone who once thought the window cleaner was a demon come to take her soul to the pit (thankfully I got to her before she could push him, from his ladder).
If this clown craze catches on in Norfolk I will be genuinely worried or to quote Pratchett “No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable”
- Robert the Biker
October 29, 2014 at 1:54 pm -
Doesn’t sound like an easy life by any means. I hope these idiots stay away from you or go back to cow-tilting or whatever.
All the best, Robert
- Robert the Biker
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Robert the Biker
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Robert the Biker
- Joe Public
October 29, 2014 at 10:50 am -
Marvel Comic’s ‘Obnoxio’ has a lot to answer for.
- GildasTheMonk
October 29, 2014 at 6:59 pm -
Too right!
- GildasTheMonk
- Roger
October 29, 2014 at 10:52 am -
Montpellier has expanded more than I realised, it seems now to stretch from the Med all the way to Northern france.
- Fat Steve
October 29, 2014 at 10:59 am -
and which every smarty-pants takes up thereafter” –—not just you Anna!!!
- Roderick
October 29, 2014 at 11:03 am -
Is it now open season for anyone to dress in a way that conceals their identity? Bank robbers must be pleased.
- Moor Larkin
October 29, 2014 at 11:06 am -
Ah for the clip round the ear, and the caustic advisory, “Stop clowning around.”
Stanley Kubrick may have a part in this. The behaviour all sounds a bit “Clockwork Orange” and one of of Kubrick’s early movies from 1956, “The Killing” featured a robbery by a man in a clown mask. Some kind of Jungian Flow here I reckon.
http://cdn.filmschoolrejects.com/images/TheKillingClown.pngOh for the days when film buffs were couch potatoes……
- Fat Steve
October 29, 2014 at 11:18 am -
And as an afterthought from the important point of pretentious language —an author who identified the inherent individual desire (Gosh should that be need) to inflict gratuitous physical violence on others (and much else in the dark side of human nature) and its presence in everyone including by individual members of the Euro Elite one might read J.G. Ballard’s SuperCannes —A Clown outfit is just an effective prop and Halloween just a plausible opportunity to act it out.
- Ho Hum
October 29, 2014 at 11:19 am -
They’re being possessed by the spirit of John Wayne Gacy
- SpectrumIsGreen
October 29, 2014 at 11:29 am -
The latest series of American Horror Story, entitled Freak Show which currently being shown in America and on Sky in the UK features a killer clown called Twisty. Not entirely unconnected I’m sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Horror_Story:_Freak_Show
- Moor Larkin
October 29, 2014 at 11:43 am -
Presumably the French ones do it without making any sound at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LOe65NVjzk - Cloudberry
October 29, 2014 at 11:48 am -
It sounds as if the French kids are trying to intimidate. Filming it on the mobiles? The two UK examples seem more like pranksters. I think street entertainers are great as long as it’s just cheeky and there’s no ill intent. A few years ago, I was walking down the side of the main square in Munich and a woman in front of me going in the same direction suddenly jumped back and cried out as a fit of barking started up from the end of a side-street. Then she started laughing. It was a guy in a clown suit down on his hands and knees at the corner of the street barking at unsuspecting passers by. A (friendly) clown suit was probably essential for getting away with that!
- Robert the Biker
October 29, 2014 at 12:14 pm -
The kids want to wake up a bit! Three or more people coming together for a single criminal purpose is legally a mob. When faced with a mob, there are very few constraints on your action (sawn off shotguns may elict a ‘tut’ from plod) and a pack of clowns attacking or threatening you or family could be met with a very brisk response indeed. It is after all how you reasonably perceive their actions, four tossers with axes charging your wife and kids is not usually taken as a joke and very few juries, men or women, take against a man who defends his wife.
- Robert the Biker
- Ho Hum
October 29, 2014 at 12:21 pm -
After 20 years of people watching the Simpsons, why on earth is anyone surprised if a few Krustys walk down the street? And kids will copy anything that they think is cool, especially cool stuff at which they know their elders will turn up their noses.
- Moor Larkin
October 29, 2014 at 12:53 pm -
I wonder if our citing old TV shows and movies shows how out of touch with the cheeeeldren we really are….
http://guide4games.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/payday2-10-guide4games.com-.png- Ho Hum
October 29, 2014 at 3:34 pm -
Speak for yourself. My Steam account has Saints Row, Skyrim and Fallout in preference, and I might just fail to resist the temptation of GTA5 when released
- The Blocked Dwarf
October 29, 2014 at 3:52 pm -
GTA is still going ?! How quaint. I can recall standing outside Argos one morning several years ago with all the other parents-of-underage-teens waiting to be let in so we could spend what seemed like a huge sum of money for GTA-wtfnumber . Never got the hang of any video game after JetSet Willy myself but that copy of GTA had a cool 80s soundtrack.
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Ho Hum
- Moor Larkin
- JuliaM
October 29, 2014 at 1:55 pm -
“The London Metropolitan police report that they dealt with 117 clown-related incidents in 2013 alone.”
That seems high, until you include the possibility that they aren’t filtering out their own staff….
- The Blocked Dwarf
October 29, 2014 at 2:22 pm -
Jools, the rest of the quote read: “..in 2013 alone. The Home Office confirmed last night that it has instructed senior metropolitan police officers to meet regularly with Leaders of the Clown Community in an effort to tackle ‘Clown Hate Crime’ after a clown , who raped a 12 year handicapped, Asian, girl whilst in costume, was attacked and sexually assaulted with his own red nose by vigilantes. Clown Community Leaders Ringo and Bongo have bravely spoken out about vile and offensives tweets that appeared to blame the victims of Clownophobic attacks.”
- theyfearthehare
October 29, 2014 at 2:30 pm -
hahahahaha and just 117 of them, conforting to know that the met police, as inefficient as ever !
Perhaps its just me, but I welcome this sort of thing. The worlds full of dangerous nutters, surely having them adopt a brightly coloured and easily identified unifom makes the job of avoiding them so much easier
With the right training, perhaps the more observant and intelligent members of our police force might eventually be able to spot them in time
I have to say, there’s a world of difference between someone dressing in a clown suit (promoting the local Maccy D’s) and someone dressed in a clown suit weilding an AXE…..
The other point that springs immediately to mind is this. Submit a freedom of information request to the metroploitan police regarding data that you might realistically expect them to measure and analyse as part of their day to day management operations…. not a feckin chance mate…. to much work yada yada yada
Ask how many clown related incidents… no problem, they have that information immediately to hand, the chief constable is probably updated on these figures hourly…
The older I get, the more I regret NOT turning to a life of crime.
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Ted Treen
October 29, 2014 at 2:34 pm -
Not really news:- here in Blighty we’ve been plagued by 650-odd mugging thieving clowns for years…
- Jacqu1999
October 29, 2014 at 6:58 pm -
I read this to the teenage daughter who responded with a knowing, ‘ah, yes’. She went on to point me in the direction of a band called ‘Insane Clown Posse’ and their numerous Facebook fan groups and then went on to direct me to the Wikipedia entry for ‘Juggalos’. Maybe that could be the origin? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggalo
- GildasTheMonk
October 29, 2014 at 9:30 pm -
I think that clowns are scary partly because the make up dehumanizes, and partly because of the suggestion of either insanity or madness, or mischief, or both. In this sense they are breaking barriers of “normal” human behaviour, unpredictable and thus dangerous – I suspect our unconscious is hard wired to react with self preserving fear to all these factors, for perfectly rational reasons which our ancestors would
They are distinctly disconcerting to the ordinary recognition patterns wired into the human brain. An interesting psychological response. It may be that the distortion of the human face is itself that which cause disruption in the human psyche, and thus fear. Lunatics that break the norms of human body language would be a threat.
On another note, I have heard stories of Obnoxious Clowns causing mayhem at Chateau Raccoon….- Fat Steve
October 30, 2014 at 12:15 pm -
@Gildas
I suspect our unconscious is hard wired —The commentator Margaret Jervis who used to contribute to this blog wrote an excellent essay about the unconscious using the surrealist image of the furry tea cup to address this issue —quite brilliant and memorable and I commend it to everyone who wants to come to grips with why certain images (such as Clowns or should that be Clowns clutching axes?) are as unsettling as they are- Fat Steve
October 30, 2014 at 12:43 pm -
A link to the Jervis Essay for anyone interested in the notion of how images that are incongruous can unsettle the mind
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9547795/Spectral-Evidence-Fear-and-Ignorance-in-the-Courts- Moor Larkin
October 30, 2014 at 3:16 pm -
And that essay says so much more besides.
Awesome and very very prescient.
- Moor Larkin
- Fat Steve
- PeeweeTheCat
October 31, 2014 at 6:13 am -
Yes.
From my one and only visit to the circus aged around five I loathed clowns. What’s funny about them?
- Fat Steve
- GildasTheMonk
October 29, 2014 at 9:31 pm -
“understand” has been missed. Sorry. You get my drift.
- AdrianS
October 29, 2014 at 10:37 pm -
I thought we had enough scary clowns operating in the Houses of Parliament, without this lot as well
- Engineer
October 29, 2014 at 11:08 pm -
It’s just a phase. They’ll grow out of it.
- Bluekollar
October 30, 2014 at 2:19 am -
Kids just like to copy things they think are cool. Case in point, there was a story once in a local newspaper about ‘gangs’ of kids hanging about in a town centre car park. As it happens I knew just what ‘gangs’ were being talked about, it was just a few annoying chav kids who would sometimes cause problems in the nearby library or toilets, just to get a rise out of someone. For a while after the article appeared, the car park was filled with dozens of kids, all hanging about as they’d heard it was now the ‘in’ thing. Oddly enough, the chav kids gave up after this, their hangout had been ruined by even bigger losers.
- Moor Larkin
October 30, 2014 at 11:05 am -
If kids copy thus, then we seem to be back to the Chucky and the Bulger Murder discussion.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257614/The-police-sure-James-Bulgers-year-old-killers-simply-wicked-But-parents-dock.html
- Moor Larkin
- Ms Mildred
October 31, 2014 at 10:57 am -
I do not recall the clowns of my thirties and forties childhood being flagged sinister. I am quite sure some of the 999 calls are from persons who have been freaked out by family influences and MSM stories. They then allege they are clown phobic, when a clown hoves into view. Maybe even a ‘Mac’ clown gives them a freak out experience. I do recall being quite badly scared by family Ghost Stories and the film The Old Dark House. I do remember my maternal Gran’s house across the street was said to be haunted. My brother was offered it on a plate for £250 after my gran died. He married into a caravan, as he could not live there, due to the ghost stories told in the family (both sets of grandparents had lived there in turn)!This illustrates to me how deeply family ways and stories can affect your adult decisions and raise fears and phobias. The Bulger murderers were possibly fully fledged psychopaths, even so young. I am sure family influences also enhanced these vicious traits.They acted out a video they saw. I was scared witless by TODH. That is the difference, surely?
- Peter Raite
October 31, 2014 at 2:12 pm -
Actually the police found no evidence of any connection with “video nasties.” Venable’s father had rented one of the Child’s Play films a few months before, but it’s unlikely the boy ever saw it, let alone both of them.
- thedude
December 30, 2014 at 1:46 am -
The Chucky movies hardly qualified anyway. They’re just a bit of a laff ffs.
- Moor Larkin
December 30, 2014 at 10:00 am -
The argument was that since Venables & Thompson were barely 10 years-old they acted out the movie rather than seeing it’s post-ironic symbolisms. It was the trial judge himself who first made the claim in his closing remarks, not the media.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nGUmfTrneMkC&lpg=PA110&ots=MFXWUYcE2k&dq=judge%20chucky%20bulger&pg=PA110#v=onepage&q&f=true
- Moor Larkin
- thedude
- Peter Raite
{ 55 comments… read them below or add one }