Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. A brain stuff is Christian Seger. When the last time you saw a clown in person, and did you enjoy the experience. Maybe you're one of the people who just doesn't like these jokers, or maybe it's more serious than a passing dislike. Perhaps you have what some call cole rephobia, an intense and excessive fear of clowns. But where does it come from?
Why are people afraid of clowns? There's a lot of speculation here, much of which hinges on history and psychology. Let's look at the history first. Jesters, clowns and other silly entertainers are an ancient tradition. The modern day bozos and Joey's are softer, sanitized versions of the ancient trickster.
Archetype evidence indicates pygmy clowns entertained the Egyptian elite thousands of years ago, and these ancestors of clowns were worlds away from our modern bufood wounds, but they still had the basics down garish clothing and more importantly, the manic ability to do or say taboo things without consequence. The prototypes of contemporary clowns are generally thought to be Joseph Grimaldi and John Gaspard de Bourou, both of whom had
pretty unpleasant lives off stage. Grimaldi died penniless, and alcoholic Deberus killed the boy. It's true this contrast became even more pronounced in the modern day. When the notorious serial killer John Wayne Gayzey was finely apprehended. The public saw numerous photos of his clown persona, and he famously said, a clown can get away with anything. Since that time, the public perception of clowns has changed. In the West,
people don't seem to associate clowns with mere tomfoolery anymore. Instead, we see a duality, a bland veneer of joviality covering something unknown and sinister. Today, some of fiction's greatest villains are evil clowns. There's Pennywise from It, the Joker from Batman, and of course the Killer Clowns from outer Space. So from a folklore or cultural perspective, society has altered our
perception of clowns. But what about the psychology. Author Linda Rodriguez mcrabbie believes people have a fundamental discomfort with clowns because their fishal expressions cannot be trusted, and unfaltering painted smile breeds distrust in an audience. Psychologists like Dr Brenda Widerhold agree. She notes that a fear of clowns or other costume strangers begins around the age of two, when kids start having anxiety about encountering strangers and are still
not always able to separate reality and fantasy. And we can't talk about this sort of psychology without also mentioning Freud's concept of the uncanny valley. The idea uh that when something seems simultaneously familiar yet oddly unfamiliar, it produces revulsion. This is the same principle people get creeped out by by lifelike robots with their ever so slightly off facial expressions. Most people grow out of the sphere as they age, but a minority of the population carries it into adulthood.
The concept of scary clowns has picked up steam in recent decades, and colophobia itself isn't a term that arrives from psychology, while it describes a real phenomenon. It popped up on the Internet as early as the two thousands, with claims dating back to the nineteen eighties. So, in some ways this could just be a fad, but if so, it is a fad built on solid psychological and cultural roots. The concept of the evil clown exists now and isn't going away anytime soon, which is a bit of a shame.
Clowning has gotten a bad rap, and a largely unfair one at that. Check out the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.