Professional Clown Club Attacks 'American Horror Story' Over Murderous Character

[Fay Dickson-- AKA doofs]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/professional-clown-club-attac...               

A version of this story first appeared in the Oct. 24 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Real clowns see nothing funny about their depiction in American Horror Story: Freak Show. The FX series from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk revolves around Twisty the Clown (John Carroll Lynch), a serial killer who stalks couples with scissors and imprisons children in an old school bus. 

 

"Hollywood makes money sensationalizing the norm," bemoans Glenn Kohlberger, president of Clowns of America International, the nation’s biggest clown club. "They can take any situation no matter how good or pure and turn it into a nightmare."

With membership in the organization dwindling — its aging base is made up of 2,500 clowns, down from 3,500 in 2004 — Kohlberger, whose big-shoed alter ego is Clyde D. Scope, takes a hard-line stance against characters like Twisty.

"We do not support in any way, shape or form any medium that sensationalizes or adds to coulrophobia or 'clown fear,' " Kohlberger says. 

 

Clowns' enduring image problem reaches back centuries. In "Hop-Frog," an 1849 short story by Edgar Allen Poe, the title character, a vengeful dwarf jester, dresses up the king and members of the royal court in flammable orangutan costumes, them sets them ablaze during a costume parade. In the 1892 opera Pagliacci, a jealous clown murders his wife and her lover with a knife. 

But the modern archetype of the psychopathic clown begins with the Joker. With his green hair, white face, distorted grin and menacing laugh, the character debuted in the pages of the first Batman comic on April 25, 1940. Meant to last just two issues, the supervillain — based in part on a 1928 silent film adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs, about a man mutilated into a permanent smile — proved immensely popular and became the Caped Crusader's most iconic archenemy.