BOZOPHOBIA: No Laughing Matter
by Mary Elizabeth Williams

Coming to terms with a fear of clowns, one site at a time

This article appeared in the WEIRD column of Web Magazine in June of 1997. It is included here with the kind permission of Shoshana Berger, editor of Web Magazine. This article is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of Web Magazine.

Some people, when they think of clowns, recall happy childhood memories of the circus – of laughter and carefree fun. Me? I think of three words: John. Wayne. Gacy. I don’t dislike clowns, I’m just terrified of them. The big red noses, the frightwigs, the way so many of them can fit into a teeny car – it ain’t right, I tell you.

But I’m also a person who won’t let fear be her master. So I’ve decided to stare down my clownphobia – albeit from the safe confines of my home and computer. If I can learn to deal with digital bozos, maybe someday I can come face to face with a man in baggy pants and big shoes and not feel like screaming.

Initially, I considered entering the scene by degrees – maybe checking out some jugglers, magicians, and balloon artists’ pages. But since I’ve always been a jump-in-at-the-deep-end kind of gal, I’m going to steel myself and head directly into the eye of the storm.

BUBBA AND SNEEZY GET WIRED

The Clowns of America International Homepage is "dedicated to the art of clowning and to brining joy and happiness to everyone" – two missions I have long considered mutually exclusive. Maybe they can convince me otherwise. There are excerpts from Calliope, a journal of clowning that features heated exchanges between Bozos Bubba and Sneezy. There’s information on the annual spring clown convention (an event I envision is catered exclusively with seltzer and cream pies), and an extensive section on the noble history of clowning from the court of Pharaoh Dadkeri-Assi through the Commedia Dell’Arte to the lovable tramp of the 20^th century. It’s all very informative and professional-looking, and if it weren’t for COAI’s clown imagery… But I’m here to conquer my anxiety, so I gaze at the clown on the cover of Calliope until I become sweaty and short of breath.

Still I press onward, poring over reams of material, much of it provided by an entertainer called Cheesecake. As I have a great fondness for cheesecake the dessert, I feel that Cheesecake the clown might be all right. I check out his homepage. True, the photo of him in full regalia freaks me out a little, but from his bio he seems like a perfectly nice human being (a software engineer with the real name Dana Montgomery).

I decide to give Dana a call, explaining my dread of his kind. Mercifully, he feels my pain. "From a child’s perspective, there are a number of reasons why clowns may be scary," he reassures. "A lot of it is in the approach. Here you have a 6-foot-tall blast of color charging at you. The way I try to diminish that is to get down at the child’s level and approach very cautiously – and always ask permission from the child to interact." Seems reasonable to me. Granted, I’m not seeing Cheesecake in his pantaloons as he says this, but his words do soothe me.

I wonder, though, if clowning is such an immediate, corporeal experience, why did he put up a Web Page? "I figured what better way to promote my clown?" he says. It wasn’t long before his site was being used as a resource for other aspiring clowns. "I have helped create some new clowns from clown wannabes," Cheesecake says proudly. "There’s a woman in California who is now clowning because she saw my page and we started corresponding. I had no idea there were so many closet clowns out there." Though Cheesecake seems like a perfectly decent person, I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of him outing all those closet clowns.

Maybe what I need to do is forget about the new guys and get back to the classics. So I go to the Clown Hall of Fame site, the place for young harlequins to worship at the gargantuan feet of their masters. It’s here that I can read up on the brand new Hall of Fame’s inductees: Emmett Kelly, Red Skelton, Joseph Grimaldi ("the father of modern day clowning"), and Bob Keeshan, TV’s first Clarabell. I remind myself that Bob Keeshan is also Captain Kangaroo, a man beloved by generations of young people. It makes me feel somewhat better about clowns.

I continue my research at Clown Alley, a way station of links, links, links on all things clownish. From here I can jump to the homepages of individuals like Fizzo, Huffy, Soda Pop, Yummy, Fudgie T., and Mr. Turquoise ("The northwest’s zaniest clown personality"). I’m just not sure if I’m ready for that much zaniness.

Looking over all these sites, I begin to think that maybe what troubles me about clowns isn’t merely a lingering childhood fear of big, loud, and colorful things, but also the same aversion that keeps me from poetry slams and performance art – fear of entertainment gone wrong.

"The majority of clowns you meet are stupid, lazy, attention-seeking people who have not one funny bone in their body," says Adam Gertsacov, artistic director of the Acme Clown Company and the founder of the Acme Flea Circus. Gertsacov’s jests are not always a laughing matter. For him, clowning means "Riffing on classic themes of authority and status and expectation. It is the willingness to fail in front of people you don’t know."

A visit to his homepage reveals that his shows are definitely not of the Bozo variety. The Clown Company features attractions such as "The One Sure Thing: A Cabaret on Death" and a work in progress called "Rag Narok: A Tale of Destruction Told by a Clown," which promises "live acts of destruction on stage." Cabaret of Death? Acts of Destruction? Cool. Now that’s clowning I can get behind. I guess clowns are regular people after all. I Still wouldn’t want to carpool with one, though.

The Sites:
John Wayne Gacy
Clowns of America International Homepage
Cheesecake the Clown
The International Clown Hall of Fame
Clown Alley
Acme Clown Company

Mary Elizabeth Williams hosts Table Talk at Salon (www.salon1999.com). She has written for The Nation, Bust, Wired, geekgirl, and bOING bOING. Send e-mail comments to here.