Ben Pobjie examines the dark history of the "maladapted jester" and calls for a policy of zero tolerance towards the looming, murderous "clownpocalypse".
So, this is how it ends. With clowns swarming our streets, terrifying our children and, eventually and inevitably, bringing our entire civilisation crashing down around our traumatised ears. I wish I could say I never thought that clowns would destroy society, but I'd be lying.
The creepy clown "craze" — in which various over-stimulated and under-employed members of the citizenry don chilling makeup and, if they're really committed, fluffy buttons and enormous shoes — began in the US.
But like all nauseating American trends, from KFC to Christian rock, it's found its way here. An axe-wielding clown was arrested terrorising patrons of a McDonald's in Moe in regional Victoria.
In Melbourne, clowns descended on an Elsternwick primary school, and clowns have been accosted as far afield as Canberra and Perth.
The police are taking the phenomenon seriously: Victorian Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton has warned of "dangerous consequences" from the clown infestation, with 18 sightings reported in recent weeks, and more expected in the lead-up to Halloween — famously the most obnoxious holiday on the Western calendar.
Meanwhile in America the situation has become so dire that McDonald's is reducing the number of appearances by its mascot due to widespread public alarm — a welcome move but one which would perhaps be improved by burning all evidence that Ronald McDonald ever existed and then travelling back in time to prevent the conception of the man who created him.
There is no escaping the facts: the clowns are here, and they are coming for you. Not a day goes by without yet another clown story appearing in media outlets across the nation, none of which can apparently find a single image to use that isn't a still from Stephen King's IT.
This is no joking matter. My own seven-year-old daughter is now afraid to go to sleep because she's heard that the clowns are coming to get her. As a father it's heartbreaking to see your child afraid of clowns at that age, after you've worked so hard to make them feel safe and fear nothing except spiders and the National Party.
The very concept of clowning is at fault
Now, it's not that I blame this whole mess on the clowns themselves. They're just people. Terrible people, obviously, but people nonetheless, who have simply been caught up in history's inexorable flow.
No individual clown is to blame for the catastrophic clownpocalypse bearing down on us: the fault lies with the source. The fault lies with the very concept of clowning itself.
Let's think about clowns for a moment. Clowns of stage and screen. Clowns from your childhood. Clowns throughout history. Try to answer one question: what the hell have clowns ever done for anyone?
It's an easy answer, isn't it? Nothing. Nothing, that is, except disturb and unsettle and horrify and drive us all to madness and despair.
Loading...Have you ever seen a clown that didn't make you think that Hell is real and we have been living there all along? Have the stomach-turning antics of the world's clowns ever elicited any response other than the kind of paralysing fear more normally associated with the words "please assume the brace position"?
Wikipedia tells us that clowns have their origins in the "rustic fool" characters of the commedia dell'arte, from the Italian commedia, meaning "comedy", and dell'arte, meaning "that will make you want to kill yourself".
From these early beginnings developed the modern circus clown, who has delighted millions with such classic gags as the seltzer bottle, the tiny car, the bucket full of confetti, and the awakening of existential dread within the ancient soul of humanity.
A rich tradition of clowning has grown over the centuries, and today the clown is as integral a figure in mass culture as the serial killer or the flesh-eating bacterium.
Let's be clear: from the commedia dell'arte onwards, the only true purpose of the clown, and indeed the only purpose for which the clown is fit, has been to ruin lives.
'Broken, grotesque mockery of a human being'
The clown is a broken, grotesque mockery of a human being. Look at the clown's makeup: first we have the face painted white, to represent death; the clown is a living corpse who laughs at the living because he knows what pain awaits them.
Next, the wide, hideous grin, smeared in garish red across the real mouth: here we see the representation of the victim's blood, staining the lips of the ever-hungry devourer of souls; in the clown's grin is the evidence of his savagery and lust for destruction.
Then comes the bulbous nose, sitting like a warning beacon in the middle of the deathly face, telling us to beware even as it draws us in like moths to a flame, urging us to flee with murderous irony.
And then there's the hair, which is totally messed up.
What I'm trying to say is, clowns were put on this earth to make us all wish we hadn't been. It's all very well to express fear and alarm at the malevolent clowns currently stalking our streets, but are they really any better than the clowns we've been seeing our whole lives?
Bozo. Pagliacci. Mark Holden on Dancing With The Stars. These are the names who wander through my nightmares, and the nightmares of billions who were unlucky enough to be born into a world that somehow swallowed the lie that monsters can be loved.
Time for a zero-tolerance policy
None of this is news to you. You know that clowns tap into something deep and bowel-loosening inside you. You know that their smiles are the heralds of your screams. And you know that these leering harlequins who now rule our streets are not deviants from their tradition: they are the fulfilment of it.
All the airhorns and juggling and balloon animals have been leading to this moment, when the clowns emerge from the underworld and claim the surface for their dominion.
You remember looking into the psychotic eyes of a thousand clowns and thinking, one day they will come with axes and guns, and nothing will save us.
Well it might seem hopeless, but I say we don't give in without a fight. It is a matter of deep regret that clowns ever came to be, but we can still resist.
Yes, fight back against the clowns loitering near schools and wandering on highways, but also against the ones infesting our circuses and children's parties. It's time for a zero tolerance policy on these maladapted jesters.
It's only with a concerted group effort that we can bring back a gentler, more peaceful community.
A community without clowns. Right now it's just a dream, but if we want to survive, we have to make it come true.