ABSTRACT
In the final months of the 2016 presidential election, murderous clowns came for America’s children. At least that’s what the residents of Greenville County, South Carolina, believed when stories of clowns luring children to their deaths began to circulate. By Halloween, days before the 2016 election, alleged clown sightings had become national and then an international phenomenon. This essay examines cinematic killer clowns over several decades of a violent, and fearful, American landscape as crucial for understanding the chaotic rise of the Trump regime. Trump and Trumpism embody all that we find horrifying in the chaos the clown signifies but the same attributes prove attractive to his core of supporters for the same reason. This study examines several decades of this trend in which film, urban legend, and politics reveal that Trumpism represents a particularly astringent phenomenon in the history of American terror and violence as opposed to a simple aberration. Films examined in this essay include the original version of It (1990), Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), Funland (1987), Clownhouse (1989), The Dark Knight (2008), and Clown (2014). Poole analyses the relationship between politics, rumour legend, and violent spectacle in the age of Trump, while engaging the most popular clown horror of recent years and months.
