Loathe as I am to use use gratuitous expletives[1], sometimes I find them necessary to fully convey the magnitude of joy or horror or whatever it is pertaining to what we're discussing. This is one of those times.

Who loves a clown? No one. It's not like writers just pull the stuff of absolute horror out of thin air -- they usually draw from subjects they find a bit horrifying in real life. In fact, nothing can turn a fun movie into an eye-covering terror-fest as fast as the simple addition of some sinister circus affiliates.

Now: one might think it really wouldn't take a brain surgeon to understand that to the average person (and in particular, the average child), clowns are the stuff of nightmares. On the contrary, however, not only is it beyond an entire hospital staff's immediate comprehension, but it apparently takes a team of researchers and a university-funded study to retroactively discover what I could have told you when I was three years old and screaming my head off in McDonald's.

Oh, for real? Children and teenagers alike found the prospect of rooms adorned with dead eyes and false rictus-grins to be a little bit frightening? Is that what you're telling me? Excuse me if I'm squinting, but my monocle just blasted off and I'm finding it a bit difficult to see.

Meanwhile, the highly-influential clown lobby is crying in protest, spewing forth hateful propaganda of those who would speak out against them -- unsurprising, really, for hate is the only language in which a clown knows how to speak.

Okay, Patch Adams: first of all, that you started your "programme" the same year Stephen King's It was published definitely raises some red flags. Diversion, anyone? Anyway, I'm sure you've been gainfully employed by many a hospital director who finds clowns to be just the ginchiest. Just because some kids are too weakened from aggressive chemotherapy to scream when you honk your dumb nose at them, it doesn't make it any less true that no child of the eighties or later finds your schtick even remotely amusing.

You see, I initially assumed the revulsion of clowns to be pretty much universal in this modern age, but according to the initial article there exists a bit of a generation gap.

So supposedly clowns were believed to be conduits of delight at one point in time, as opposed to the pure evil they actually are? It seems apocryphal, but I do recall my parents speaking rather fondly of Hobo Kelly. I personally find her cruel-eyed visage tear-inducing, so I consulted a co-worker a couple decades my elder, who reminisced of the sheer fun brought by the most horrible and undead of menaces. So then, the generation gap most certainly exists -- perhaps not between "children" and "adults" as the writings so concretely suggest, but certainly between certain eras. More innocent times, when spindly marionettes on television were normal and clowns were not mass murderers.

A related article suggests fear and reviling of clowns as having to do with things like "fear of the mask" and a vilifying push from pop culture, or -- in the case of the children at the hospital -- just a general fear of the unknown, but it has to be more than that. It isn't a learned revulsion, it is wholly intuitive and most gut-wrenching. So forgive us, oh hospital designers and bankrupt clown schools, if kids today (and young adults, for that matter) aren't buying what you're selling. In a threatening and unknown world, we'll take something with a little more comfort and a little less menace, thank you very much.

Give us robots.




[1] In writing, anyway. In speech, however, I'm like a longshoreman on helium.

Hat tip to uncognitive and thefreak. Sorry I claimed this story and then took forever writing it. Such a passionate subject takes a lot out of you, I suppose.