Who, What, Why, Where, And How Is The Clown Today?

Abstract

: Between November 2019 and January 2020, I carried out a sociological research meant to indicate the majority opinion on the concept of clown. The results obtained provide the following conclusions. The general opinion on the clown presents itself in statistical data as follows: positive in proportion of 61%, indifferent in proportion of 28% and negative in proportion of 11%. We can thus remark a mostly positive perspective on the clown, with a single modification in the age group of 19-25 years. The percentage of those who never saw clowns at the circus gradually decreases with the age. Why is it that the age group of 6-18 years records the highest percent? Is the circus a form of entertainment much more appreciated after 2000 in Romania? Did the historical and political context after 1950 have an influence on the respective percentage value? 83% of those who felt scared saw clowns through horror movies and 23% of those who saw clowns through movies felt scared. The aesthetics of the horror clown has several origins, developed and crosschecked according to historic-political criteria between the 18 th -20 th centuries. This evolution preserved in the character's necessity the strangeness, the impression of nonhuman or transhuman, of incredibleness of the "character". Its purpose is exclusively that of astonishing the audience by any means available. From acrobatics to story and character, from multifunctionality and the occurrence of duos or trios to caricaturist mirrors of the human, the clown permanently looked to boost immediate emotions in the audience. It was from this association that the horror clown was born at the end of the 20 th century. The study demonstrates the low level of the aesthetic representations specific to the subject of the present research. The absence of elements of authentic clownery, the orientation of collective opinions towards the marketing of the concept, caused first of all by the artists in the field, have as consequence the creation of a non-homogenous, unclear and non-artistic hybrid.