Clowning Around

Let’s talk about clowns, and my wild Hypothesis around them.  In the USA clowns are a mixed bag.  Some people says they are joyful and legitimately like them.  Some people see them as rather fearful things or even have fears based around them.  In Japan this fear hasn’t really taken root and they even find the American fear of clowns rather peculiar.  And the thing is, in the past clowns were considered very kid friendly among American Audiences, see Bozo the Clown.

So what happened?

Well, first we must discuss our primate cousins.  It was recently noticed that body language is very evolutionary conservative among great apes.  They all can read each other’s body language rather well.  A researcher noticing this put out a study where they asked random people on the internet to look at videos of chimpanzee behavior and ask what was being conveyed by their body language.  Humans got it right 75% of the time.  So humans are in tune with great ape body language to a degree.  The test is on a few publications.  You can take a version of it here.

Conventional wisdom with Chimpanzee’s is that a smile with teeth is bad news and will get you mauled.  This isn’t 100% true.  If you dig on the subject you’ll find that yes fearful chimps will give a fearful grin.  But happy chimps can give a joyful smile with teeth.  One must read the rest of the face and see what is what.  If the lips are drawn back tensely, it's a fearful smile.  If the lips are more relaxed the chimp might be making less fearful faces. 

So a toothy grin even among chimps isn’t always a sign of menace, but it definitely can be.  And It can be among humans, you probably never thought about it much.  But it’s right there in our vocabulary, a “nervous smile”, a “menacing grin.”  These are all terms within our non-verbal communication.  And the chimps can probably read all that from a smile, and if they are unsure if you, and you are giving a menacing grin they might take it the wrong way.  Teeth are an important ingredient for such grins, so while a non-toothed grin is not necessary to convey joy, it is a “safe” style of grin.  More on this later.

Clowns have a long and varied history in our culture.  There’s actually a very interesting bit of lore you can read up on the topic if you look up the Harlequinade in the Wikipedia.  A common feature is the use of makeup to create very extreme facial expressions, this acts as an intensifier on the vibe a face conveys.  And the thing is, a lot of contemporary clowns have been a bit edgier.  While some are not malevolent, just ignorant of magnets, such as the ICP, you got entities such as The Joker and It who just ooze pure malevolence.  Every aspect of Pennywise's facial makeup is fine tuned towards creating sadistic menace.

Let's talk about Joker first.  Just look at a Joker venom victim.  That terrified me as a youth.  Look at that grin.  Are the aspects of that venom an awful lot like that "fear grimmace" in chimpanzees if you were to map the facial muscle movement required to make that level of open eyes and broad smile to a human face?  And then you joker's grin.  Malice, like fangs ready to go for the throat.  A grin like that might be fun if you're behind it and it's about to prank something else.  But around a thing like the joker, wholly amoral with no loyalties, it's terror, at any moment someone might fall victim to a lethal prank.

And then there's Pennywise. The modern depiction draws his smile upwards unnaturally past the eyes ending in sharp thorns.  The eyebrows perpetually drawn down aggressively with color muted.  Forehead is unnaturally large, hair drawn up in spikes.  Irises yellow which gives the impression of the schlera crowding in upon the pupil.  What really is off putting about him is that broad forehead combined with that outfit that sort of obscures the neck, kind of making it look like his face sits unnaturally low upon his silhouette.  This isn't eased by his perpetual Kubrick stare. Every facet of this clowns design is made to amplify his wrongness.  The earlier depiction of him was a bit more "human" but certainly has flourishes to enhance menace.  Curry is real good at emoting with his face.  He was given simple red painted lips on a white face.  Allowing a full facial range of expression.  The corners of his mouth come to harsh sharp points. Eyebrows painted in black and kept thin and drawn in towards the nose in a subtle way that leaves him with a perpetual air of menace.  Again that bold red main of hair over that broad white head and forehead creates this illusion of his face hanging too low on his frame in some weird way that makes him seem a little less human.

Clown depictions I have seen in japan have seemed alot more cheerful.  Japanese Ronald McDonald depictions are an interesting thing to look up on Youtube.  You look at that Lola Pop clown fighter in the Nintendo Game Arms and and she has a general upbeat cheery vibe.  Japan hasn’t really been exposed to as much Menacing Clowns.  Japanese children haven’t had that association of clowns and fear instilled in them. It’s hard to describe in words, but there is a definitely far more dialed back smile-vibe on these clowns.  There isn’t as much forced freneticness among them.  It’s a natural relaxed joy.  Note that world-wide depictions of Ronald give him rounded lips, which reduces his menace.  Eyebrows are pulled upwards in a perpetual joyful appearance.  Hair is kept low keeping his facial posture on his body more natural.  The japanese actors from what I see are less prone to give toothy grins, which I feel helps keep his joy more earnest.

This goes a little deeper because Clowns were a common element in children’s entertainment in the USA.  Bozo the Clown was a TV and children’s entertainment facet starting from 1949 and carried on until the 21st century.  Now let's look at that face.  First off while the smile is bigger you notice its rounded.  In the pictures of him that I saw his smiles always have his teeth open and at least partially covered by his lips.  It makes his joy more boistrous, almost with a child-like air about it.  The forehead is big on him too but the eyebrows are drawn up in an exaggerated happy style which stretches his face up the length of his exposed head-pallatte.  This makes his face appear larger then what it already is, particularly the "eyes".  When a human brain is parsing that facial makeup, it's going to read those huge eybrows and small eyes as a set of cartoonishly large eyes.  Large eyes convey a childlike nature to the human psyche, he's designed around neoteny and in making him look more juvenile you defuse any menace about him.

This is the polar opposite of Pennywise in terms of facial stancing.  Pennywise is more built to convey the opposite of infantile, perhaps feeding into the impossibly old true nature of the eldritch abomination that is that clown.  In a way Bozo is built for joy.

Part of me wonders if modern clowns have been absorbing the gestalt view of clowns and getting a little more toothy in their grins, which helps feed into the vague menace of the concept of clowns.  A toothy grin is up to no good, as I said before, fun if you aren't the one being pranked, but if you aren't sure, it can create unease.  And if it's a fearful grin it communicates panic to you and that makes you uneasy.  I feel that’s a big part of the unease of the modern American clown.