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Clowns: Evil Or Funny?

Clowns: Evil or funny?

  • Clowns are evil and out to get you

    Votes: 34 44.2%
  • Clowns are funny and out to entertain you

    Votes: 10 13.0%
  • Clowns are sad blokes trying to make a living

    Votes: 29 37.7%
  • Clowns are a national institution - how dare you imply that they are sinister in any way

    Votes: 4 5.2%

  • Total voters
    77
If you were wondering what Janet Street Porter makes of killer clowns, wonder no more!

In a very lazy piece for The Independent she vaguely blames the whole craze on New Line Cinema and this new fangled internetz thingy.
 
If you were wondering what Janet Street Porter makes of killer clowns, wonder no more!

In a very lazy piece for The Independent she vaguely blames the whole craze on New Line Cinema and this new fangled internetz thingy.
Blimey, "lazy" is a tad generous! "It" isn't being released until next September, so New Line would be shooting their bolt a bit early. New Line and Stephen King have said no, this ain't our doing, mister. The other film that got caught up in the craze is Rob Zombie's "31", which was released a few weeks back, so clearly not really anything to do with that.

I do agree that it is a phenomenon that has been given life and longevity by social media, which is now feeding upon itself in the classic tradition of any craze or hysterical event. The use of the clown is both interesting and banal; clowns are weird; they are strange, odd, and other. They are also somewhat sad and tragic. They are the fool, the Joker, the Trickster. Pulcinella, Pierrot, Harlequin, Punch himself, clown blanc, Grimaldi, Dan Leno, Charles Chaplin, Norman Wisdom. They exist for a specific reason; to point out the foolishness of the ruling classes or the generally accepted mores. They are vital and valuable, and this feeble craze undermines their power (if you overthink it!)

Clowns were scary before Stephen King invented Pennywise, they are the embodiment of pandemonium; laws and rules do not apply to clowns, and clowns, though visible are invisible because of the mask, whether that be a scary rubber mask from a joke shop or the mask that a real clown wears to express his clown persona, his other being. Clowns point out the absurdity of life. But taken to extreme, to the point of hysteria, the essence of the clown is lost and you are left with silly people being stupid. Or stupid people being silly.

In this instance, I'm going to say that the "killer" clowns are pathetic, but not in the way some of their ancestors were, and they only exist because social media, and the media in general, enables their existence and spread. I rest assured that real clowns will overcome this ridiculous affront to their art, and that clowning will carry on its disturbing, peculiar, and valuable vocation beyond the whims of some bored and suggestible fools. And as for the "real" killer clowns, put your giant red feet up and have a cup of cocoa whilst waiting for things to get back to normal. Patience!
 
What does all this mean for Comic Relief's Red Nose Day? Is that now a tarnished thing of the past?
 
What does all this mean for Comic Relief's Red Nose Day? Is that now a tarnished thing of the past?

Not as tarnished as the BBC's Children in Need.
 
‘Killer clown’ stabbed by terrifed friend in Berlin
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The 'killer clown' involves pranksters dressing up as clowns and frightening passersby. Picture: Peter Byrne/PA Wire
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Police said a 14-year-old in the group responded by pulling a knife and stabbing the clown, only to find that the person behind the mask was a 16-year-old acquaintance.

He rendered first aid until emergency services could arrive.


READ MORE: ‘Killer clown’ craze arrives in Scotland


The older teenager was taken to hospital, while the 14-year-old was released to his parents.

A rash of sightings - some confirmed, some not - have been reported in Europe and the US of people dressed as clowns and acting in a disturbing manner.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/world/killer-clown-stabbed-by-terrifed-friend-in-berlin-1-4268026
 
“I just saw it sitting there” — knife-wielding Arbroath “killer clown” sighting
by Rob McLaren
October 27 2016, 6.51pmUpdated: October 27 2016, 10.21pm
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Clowns like these have allegedly been spotted across the UK
An Arbroath woman claims she saw a “clown with a knife” sitting in the middle of an unlit path in the dark.

Rachael Crighton spotted the figure as she was about to walk down the path which connects Camus Road and St Abb’s Road in the Hayshead area of the town on Monday night.

The terrified 18-year-old said she ran away as the clown started to stand up.

Rachael said she had previously been informed by a friend of a similar but separate incident at the site.

The sighting comes as the craze for people dressing as “killer clowns” to scare people in the run-up to Halloween continues. Police would not say if there had been any Arbroath sightings.

Rachael said: “It’s a path that’s between houses and it doesn’t have any lights. I was just coming home from my mum’s house on Monday at about 8pm and I shone my torch down the path and I just saw it sitting there.

“It was wearing a white mask with scary teeth and a red wig. I saw it starting to stand up and I just ran and went another way.

“It’s a little bit unsettling. I was only a few metres away but wasn’t close enough to see if it was a real knife or a toy knife. I ran out of there.”

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/new...nife-wielding-arbroath-killer-clown-sighting/
 
The great clown panic of 2016: ‘a volatile mix of fear and contagion’
A magic combination of childhood fears, social media and psychology has powered the spread of clown ‘sightings’ around the world. But will Halloween mark ‘peak clown’? And what should you do if you are confronted by one?



Clowns to the left of me ... strong feelings from our childhoods are contributing to the phenomenon’s endurance. Photograph: Juan Carlos Cardenas/EPA
Steven Poole

Monday 31 October 2016 15.02 GMTLast modified on Monday 31 October 2016 17.22 GMT
It began in the UK on Friday 30 September. Police in Newcastle received reports of someone dressed as a “creepy clown” leaping out of bushes to scare children. Over the next few days, half a dozen such clown incidents were recorded. A teenage clown was arrested in possession of a “bladed article”. On 5 October, the tabloids announced that a “terrifying clown craze” had hit these shores. And so it began to spread.

The first named victim was 17-year-old student Megan Bell, who has a “lifelong fear of clowns” and was chased down the street by one at night. Soon, more clowns began to pop up: in Wales, Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool. Then just about everywhere. Concerned parents made Facebook pages about clowns, thus inadvertently helping to spread the meme. The Metropolitan police advised schoolchildren to call 999 if they saw a “killer clown”. Some observers spoke knowingly of a classic “social panic”, since only a very few of the clown incidents involved actual physical assaults. But being chased down the street at night by a clown, or anyone else, is frightening enough for adults and children alike. As Met commander Julian Bennett pointed out: “Antisocial behaviour can leave people feeling scared, anxious and intimidated, and I would urge those who are causing fear and alarm to carefully consider the impact their actions have on others.” These stories were surreal news fodder, but not, when you thought about them, actually funny. But why clowns? And why now?

The current craze started, as crazes often do, in the US, where, since the beginning of August, people dressed as clowns had been popping up creepily all over the country. There was speculation that it was all a PR stunt for the upcoming release of a movie version of Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel It, which features a famously eerie clown called Pennywise. In fact, the earliest reported incident, a creepy clown standing in the street holding black balloons in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was a marketing ploy for a short film entitled Gagsproduced by a local, Adam Krause. But subsequent clowns began to terrorise children and sometimes attack people, while commentators spoke of panic and hysteria. In Pennsylvania, a teenager was murdered by someone in a clown mask. Two weeks ago, a clown stabbed a teenager in Varberg, Sweden. There are, we are told, “creepy clowns” or even “killer clowns” everywhere. Last weekend, the NSPCC said that Childline counsellors had received hundreds of calls from children worried about clowns. People call it the great clown panic, or clown uprising, or clown invasion, or clown craze, of 2016. And so far it shows no sign of abating.

Full story here https://www.theguardian.com/culture...-of-2016-a-volatile-mix-of-fear-and-contagion
 
A cleaner who got drunk and went hunting killer clowns in Bury St Edmunds with a pair of nunchucks has been spared a custodial sentence.

Krzysztof Rudzki, 22, was given a community service order after admitting possessing an offensive weapon in public.

Hours after he was arrested, a teenage girl was chased through Bury town centre by a clown brandishing a machete.
 
Shades of The Day the Clown Cried - the last clown in Aleppo dies:

Happy children dance with a rosy-cheeked clown in a floppy birthday cake hat and oversized orange tie, their Eid celebrations a rare moment of joy amid the horrors of life under siege in Syria.

Footage of the July 2015 party, shot by activist group Aleppo Media Center, shows a costumed and face-painted Anas al-Basha at the center of the festivities, bouncing a smiling girl on his hip as music plays and youngsters clap along with the tune.

Clown and entertainer Al-Basha, 24, was killed Tuesday in a missile strike in the Mashhad neighborhood of the city's rebel-held east, his brother Mahmoud Al-Basha told CNN

"He wanted to stay to continue his work, to help the children and orphans in Aleppo," Mahmoud told CNN in a phone interview. "This year they started to create schools underground, they would do activities for the children in basements and safe spaces. Before they used to go to gardens and be in the streets."

UNICEF estimates that some 100,000 children are living under siege in eastern Aleppo alone. According to the intergovernmental organization, volunteers in besieged areas have built underground play areas and schools for children hoping to continue playing and learning amid airstrikes.

News4Jax
 
Mixed fortunes in the world of clowning
By Kait Bolongaro Business reporter, Hong Kong

Dressed in a patchwork of bright colours, Ken Ken the Clown fashions a flower out of yellow and pink balloons, and smiles widely.

One of the first professional clowns in Hong Kong, the 35-year-old says that for the past 15 years he has been pursuing what he calls a "positive" career that "makes people happy".

Often fully booked, Ken Ken can earn as much as HK$550,000 ($71,000; £57,000) per year. And such is the continuing popularity of hiring a clown in Hong Kong for kids' parties that he is far from alone.

While he cut a lone figure back in 2001, Ken Ken says that today there are as many as 50 other professional clowns in the special administrative region, and that the number is rising fast.

In fact, such is the current demand for clowns in Hong Kong that employment agencies are organising classes to train up people.

One such agency is Grace Training and Development Centre. Enya Hui, one of its employment officers, says that clowning is now a "viable career path".

The current popularity of clowns in Hong Kong is in marked contrast to the woes faced by the entertainers in the US and Europe, who this year have had to endure the so-called "creepy clown craze".

This unlikely phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic saw people dressing up as scary clowns to terrify children and adults alike. It led to some schools going as far as even banning children from talking about the craze. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38315308?ocid=socialflow_twitter
 
An early 70's unusual clown spoof .. fun starts at 1:43 ...

 
North Dakota police say they are investigating a menacing report involving a creepy clown and a man with a snake.

Fargo police responded to an apartment building Saturday evening in response to a report the pair were scaring several children, WDAZ-TV reported.

Authorities say the snake was a boa constrictor about 3-to-4-feet-long, the station reported.

Police interviewed the clown and his alleged cohort and they could face a felony charge of terrorizing, according to the station.

The clown had a knife, KVLY-TV reported, citing a witness.

The witness said the two men approached the children, asked if they “wanted to see a dead body” and threatened to kill them, the station reported.

The witness told the station the kids ran home and the two men went back to their apartment in another building.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/04/3...cing-children-in-north-dakota-police-say.html
 
The movie “It” isn’t out until September, but motorists in California may have thought they were getting a preview when they spotted a creepy clown standing along Highway 101, wielding a bloody machete.

On Wednesday, deputies from the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office arrived on the scene with guns drawn to find this:

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MONTEREY COUNTY SHERIFFS OFFICE
Police spotted 61-year-old Larry Allen Tovey holding out his thumb like a hitchhiker, local NBC station KSBW reported. He was then handcuffed, questioned and released.

“The guy wasn’t charged because we didn’t have a victim that was threatened by himwith the machete,” the department wrote on Facebook, adding that the “blood” on the knife was just cotton with red dye.

Since a machete is technically a tool and not classified as a weapon, it’s not a crime to carry one in public ― unless it’s being used in a threatening manner.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/creepy-highway-clown_us_5927c118e4b06f6080536aa5
 
This Creepy Clown Motel Has Been Named America’s Scariest Motel
Hot breakfast and nightmares included.
JESSICA SUSS · JANUARY 11, 2017
SHAREPIN IT
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Instagram

If you’ve ever wanted to never sleep again, have we got the place for you! The Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nevada, is open for visitors looking for a thrill (or for people who just really like clowns? Do they exist?).



Flickr/jabbex


If the sight of an illuminated juggling clown welcoming you to the hotel promising “clean rooms” (not much of an endorsement) and “singles for 39.50” fills you with cheer, then come on down to the Clown Motel.

RELATED: These Photos Of Disney World Deserted Before Hurricane Matthew Are So Eerie



Flickr/Kummerle


The lobby is littered with clowns, including a life-sized clown sitting in a chair, cradling a number of smaller clown dolls in its lap.



Flickr/Will Keightley


Oh, and every room is clown-themed: There are clowns on the doors and portraits of famous clowns (hi, Bozo!) hang on the walls.

https://www.simplemost.com/clown-mo...r&tse_id=INF_5a63b8205dc311e790011d41b85aaeb5
 
A tad OTT for a prank.

Police in the US state of Maine have arrested a drunk, one-armed clown who was brandishing a machete.

Corey Berry, 31, from the town of Hollis, was spotted walking down a road in a black hooded sweatshirt and a clown mask, holding the weapon.

He had duct-taped the machete to his arm, which police say had been amputated.

Worried residents began calling 911 at around 18:00 local time (22:00 GMT) on Tuesday.

Local outlet wcsh6.com said Mr Berry ran off into the woods, where police struggled to apprehend him as further emergency calls came in.

State Trooper Adam Schmidt said the clown was highly intoxicated, but cooperative. He told police he had been inspired by previous creepy clown sightings and was trying to play a prank.

Mr Berry was arrested and charged with criminal threatening. He was taken to York County Jail, but was released after posting $200 (£150) bail. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40735815
 
Creepy clowns are an old cliche'. Why doesn't someone do a horror movie wherein a brave clown thwarts an evil-- I don't know. . . lunchlady. . . or cowboy. Get out of the rut!
 
Creepy clowns are an old cliche'. Why doesn't someone do a horror movie wherein a brave clown thwarts an evil-- I don't know. . . lunchlady. . . or cowboy. Get out of the rut!
It'd be a tough call. Everybody knows clowns are unremittingly evil.
 
It'd be a tough call. Everybody knows clowns are unremittingly evil.

I dispute that. Most clowns are silly people trying to entertain. But there's no benevolent place in pop culture these days for something so unironic (or unfunny).
 
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