Trumpy: The first clown President
Once, he was merely someone to laugh at, now it’s much more disturbing. So just why are so many people suffering from coulrophobia?
You may be surprised to learn that clowns — at least the modern day variety — trace their origins to 19th century Britain and one Joseph Grimaldi.
A famous comic pantomime player on the London stage, Grimaldi was the first recognisable ancestor of the modern clown. He’s the reason clowns are still sometimes called “Joeys”; though his clowning was of a theatrical and not circus tradition.
Grimaldi is so identified with modern clowns that All Saints church in Haggerston, east London has conducted a Sunday service in his honour every year since 1959, with congregants all dressed in full clown regalia.
Once upon a time, the circus clown was all about making you laugh. More recently however, that persona has changed and clowns have taken on a more sinister image.
First, they were mysteriously popping up in the forests of South Carolina and then Stephen King’s It — a veritable clown extravaganza — became the highest-grossing horror movie of all time.
And then there’s John Wayne Gacy. One of America’s most notorious and prolific serial killers, Gacy would often dress up as a clown and perform magic tricks to neighbours invited to his front yard parties in Chicago. After he was arrested, he became known as The Killer Clown. Apparently Gacy once told the police “Clowns can get away with murder.”
In the movie Joker, Joaquim Phoenix’s clown character Arthur Fleck performs stand up at ‘Pogo’s Comedy Club’ in Gotham. If the name POGO sounds familiar, Pogo the Clown was the clown name of John Wayne Gacy.
The name given to the excessive fear of clowns is coulrophobia and whilst there’s something oddly amusing about being scared of someone who is supposed to be funny, it’s actually quite disturbing. Perhaps that’s why the whole notion of what a clown is has changed so dramatically and why, in today’s culture, a clown is often more associated with scaring you, than amusing you.
So why is it people are quite so unsettled by clowns? Some contend their face-paint makes it impossible to read genuine emotion on a clown’s face. Others, that they are able to engage in manic behaviour without any consequences.
And if that sounds a little overly familiar, it’s because we’ve recently seen the emergence of another type of clown, one that’s arguably the most frightening of them all. He goes by the name of Trumpy.
Now I first came across Trumpy when I noticed a small picture of him hanging on a wall in a YouTuber’s video.
It wasn’t that it was scary. It wasn’t even that it was funny. I remember my first reaction was ‘how appropriate’. What better way of representing the 45th President of the USA, than as a clown?
Indeed, the more I thought about it, the more apposite it became and the more I wanted to find the image I’d seen in Jesse Wellen’s room. So I typed the words ‘Trump+clown' into Google and hit images.
What I didn’t see was Jesse’s clown — Trump in suit and tie, with a bulbous red nose and white makeup above his eyes and around his mouth. Instead, what filled my screen was an abundance of Trumped-up clowns. Lots of them.
Just what you call a collection of clowns is hard to define. A clown alley appears to be the most popular, taking its name from the area behind the circus stage used by clowns to put on their make-up. But other names seem equally appropriate, none more so than a pratfall of clowns.
Perhaps best of all is simply calling them a bunch of clowns. Whatever their collective, the one thing for sure was Jesse’s clown was but one of many. In fact, there were at least fifty caricatures of Trump as a clown.
With his infantile tweets, insane rants and childish behaviour, it appears the most essential aspect of the age of Trump is his clownishness. Singlehandedly, he has turned the White House into a three-ring circus.
As well as T-shirts bearing the slogan,“Elect a clown, expect a circus”, you can now even buy Trumpy the clown masks from Amazon!
Delve more deeply, and it seems everyone is seeing Trump the same way.
Back in March 2017, Snoop Dogg released a satirical music video in which the rapper points a toy gun at a clown dressed like Trump and pulls the trigger.
Following Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke called the president a “clown”.
The cover of the 30 October 2017 issue of The New Yorker depicted Trump emerging from the woods as Pennywise the dangerous clown from It.
In November 2017, Eugene Robinson wrote in The Washington Post: “We are running a terribly unwise experiment: What happens when you replace U.S. presidential leadership with the slapstick antics of a clown?”
Only last month, film director Spike Lee hailed Trump “the clown with the nuclear codes.”
And in one of his monologues, James Corden said “Nobody loves a parade more than a clown.”
All I can say is, if the shoe fits…
And it doesn’t stop there…
On 17 January 2020, speaking at a sermon in Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described Donald Trump as a “clown” who only pretends to support the Iranian people but will push a poisonous dagger into their backs.
The truth is, people should have known. If you elect a clown, expect a circus.
Footnote:
On 10 July 2021, CNN reporter Jim Acosta tweeted this:
“An expert on the circus industry recently reached out and urged me to not compare Trump and his comeback tour to clowns at the circus, as that is an insult to clowns. I agree.”
Follow me on Twitter
About the author: Based in Sussex-by-the-Sea, on England’s south coast, Gary is a creative writer and image-maker. He specialises in creating out of the ordinary portraits of musicians and people with interesting faces, as well as photographing some of the world’s finest flowers and gardens, not forgetting an array of automotive exotica.
On the writing side, he has used his research skills to author deep dives into some noteworthy songs beginning with Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’ ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials, ‘Real Wild Child’ by Ivan and ‘All The Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople.
He has also written a biography of Robert Palmer and the stories behind Whitesnake’s blatant Led Zep rip-off, ‘Still Of The Night’, Harry Styles’ anthem to positivity, ‘Treat People With Kindness’ and the little known Queen track ‘Cool Cat.’
Most recently, Gary has penned the fascinating story behind George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ as well as ‘Believe It Or Not’ a look into the rise of fake news.
All these can be found here on Medium, along with his reviews of gigs and events and chats with musicians including the likes of Royal Blood, Joe Satriani and Wolf Alice.
