I don't fear clowns, but they should fear me

Seems legit.

Every Thursday morning for the past few weeks, I have woken up at 5:30 a.m. to go for a run before work. It is still quite dark at this time of day. And one part of my Thursday route takes me along a path through a heavily wooded area, where it is even darker. If I'm lucky, I get some hints of light from the still-ascendant moon, but on most mornings, the clouds and the thick covering of branches overhead block even that. In such a place, every stir, every breaking twig, every rustle in the leaves can tap into your primal fear and become cause for alarm. But not for me. In fact, I have emerged from this point on every one of these runs disappointed. Why? Because a killer clown has not emerged from the woods. I know it makes me sound like the guy in the horror movie who's not afraid of the monster or not convinced that it's real when I say this, but...

...I so desperately wish one would.

First, some background. In case you somehow haven't heard, killer clowns are on the loose in America. Because 2016 definitely needed to get weirder. No one really knows where the first incidents began, though it seems the first reported one involved children in South Carolina in August. But now they are everywhere. Killer clown sightings or threats have disrupted life and closed schools in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I grew up; in Ann Arbor, Michigan, near where I went to college, and in Hillsdale, Michigan, where I actually did go to college; in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., where I now live and work; and in many other places throughout the country (and the world). Coulrophobia is the technical term for fear of clowns, and it is, apparently, on the rise.

Pictured: A killer clown? (If looks could kill)

It's possible that all of this is just a mass shared delusion. Much as no one can point to exactly where the sightings began, very few of the sightings themselves (except for one) can be truly substantiated; many of the rest seem to be recycled from a few years back, the work of pranksters or trolls, or urban legends resuscitated and gone viral. It's happened before, and probably will happen again. And, in the meantime, real clowns, the ones who aren't trying to kill you, are suffering, and trying to combat the stereotypes (no, seriously).  

But there has to be some legitimacy to the fear itself, at least, even if the current killer clown wave is not as widespread as reported and believed. Why do we fear clowns? There are many explanations. Some psychologists blame the "uncanny valley" effect of clowns: They look real enough that we are able to recognize that there is something vaguely, indescribably inhuman about them. Others say that certain off-putting physical characteristics about the standard clown make us more psychologically receptive to an anxiety related to their inherent unpredictability.

Other explanations point to the cultural ramifications of two figures, one real, one imaginary: serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who investigators discovered would go to children's parties dressed as a clown; and Pennywise the Clown, aka It, the monster devised by horror author Stephen King. King, incidentally, has told everyone to calm down, despite having helped create this fear, and despite encroachments of the clown hysteria on the Maine setting so familiar to his work (maybe he's just in the pocket of Big Clown). Any of these explanations, or all of them, could be at play.   

Pennywise the Clown

I, for one, have no fear of clowns (again, if this were a horror movie, such a quote would just be begging a clown to off me. But I'm not in one. Right?). I've never been particularly fond of them (except the Joker, of course), but they don't frighten me. And, frankly, they shouldn't frighten you, either. For, as far as I can tell, the clowns that have appeared in this current wave--if any can truly be said to have appeared--are cowards. They prey on the solitary, the vulnerable, the isolated, the defenseless. They appear in the dark, using cheap tricks and cowardly stunts to lure their prospective prey. And they rely on, indeed, they feed on, the fear of their potential victims. Take all that from them, and they have nothing. Take, for example, this admittedly superficially creepy-seeming video of a knife-wielding clown trying to break into a house:



Yes, this does seem frightening. But think about it. A supposedly terrifying clown, seeking to sate its blood lust, thwarted by common house locks? Michael Myers he is not. Here's another example:



So yes, that's a clown in a cemetery at night. It seems pretty scary. But you know what? The person who recorded this video is in a car. Physics tells me who would win that battle.

Fortunately, people are starting to get wise to these "killer" clowns' act. In Australia, a group of people supposedly beat one up. And in England, someone who is somehow not Jared Van Dyke has dressed up as Batman to chase any killer clowns he sees. I cannot quite condone this behavior, as I try not to wish harm upon anyone. But surely, by this point, anyone dressing up as a clown with the intent of creeping people out knows what's coming. They should, anyway. And the clown opponents have the right idea. Depriving these cowardly clowns of the fear on which they thrive is the key to their defeat. Whatever it takes to do that for you, do it.

Yet that is not what I plan to do if my dreams come true and a clown does materialize on that dark stretch of road this coming Thursday. My preferred weapon is not physical. It is psychological. Readers of my blog will know that I am capable of making myself very frightening.

If I see a clown, I plan to return to this dark place within my own soul, to retrieve that voice, to laugh wildly, and then slowly approach the clown as I say something like this:

I know you. I've seen you before. You think that mask makes you scary. You know what that means? It means you don't know the first thing about fear. True fear doesn't need a mask. True fear is what's beneath the mask. True fear is what happens when you look the darkness in the face and the darkness stares back. You have a lot to learn about true fear. Lucky for you, I'm a good teacher. Now, let's get started on the first lesson...

That, with the proper creepy affect, would be enough to scare away anyone of these poseur clowns, I reckon. And if it doesn't work, well...I can pretty safely guarantee that I'm faster than any random clown I encounter. But if it comes to that, I don't think it will be the clown I'm really running away from. I think it will be the monster inside of me, the monster inside all of us, the thing that really makes us scared, that I'll be fleeing. Unfortunately for me, and for everyone, there's no escaping that monster. For, in the end, the clowns are us. And we're the clowns we really need to be afraid of. 

Spock, Willy Wonka, and Captain Ahab - My three fictional analogues

Last week, a fun little challenge popped up on Facebook: Describe yourself in three fictional characters. I am usually averse to such Facebook trends, but this one intrigued me. We are a pop-culture-saturated age, and we find some sort of weird, profound joy from identifying with fictional characters created by other non-fictional beings. Thus, I enjoyed seeing what friends came up with about themselves, and began to wonder what three characters best fit me. Unable to think of any good fits, I jokingly suggested three fictional characters I had actually (sort of) portrayed: Han Solo, The Joker, and Ed from the play Degas C'est Moi:

Disney/Lucasfilm never called me about this one. They'll regret it

Still waiting for Warner Bros. in case Jared Leto quits

At least I'll always have Degas C'est Moi

But while I do identify with certain aspects of each of these roles--Han's sarcasm and irony, Ed's penchant for bombast and observation, the Joker's...hair--I don't really think any of them really describes me. Nor do some of the other choices I considered when trying to create my trio, including:

-Patrick Bateman from American Psycho

I'm actually not a huge fan of Huey Lewis and the News, for one. Also not a serial killer. Or wealthy. 

 -Milo Thatch from Atlantis: The Lost Empire

While I am passionate about Atlantis, I'm not quite as nerdy or bumbling as Milo.

-HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey

My relationship to humanity may be tenuous, but I'm not as cold as HAL.

-Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen

Again, my relationship to humanity may be tenuous, but I'm still human. 

-Jack from Samurai Jack 

If this I were a list of three fictional characters I wish I could be, rather than who describe me, Jack would be at the top (sorry, Jared). As it is, however, I haven't earned being Jack. But someday, perhaps...

In the end, however, after much deliberation, I settled on three fictional characters who have probably never been thought of together before, and may well never again be though of together after this blogpost: Spock (as portrayed by Leonard Nimoy), Willy Wonka (as portrayed by the late, great Gene Wilder), and, last but certainly not least, Captain Ahab, as written by Herman Melville in Moby-Dick. Some explanation is in order to explain these three rather disparate choices.

1) Spock (as portrayed by Leonard Nimoy)

This choice is highly logical.

Spock was the most palatable expression of the emotional distance, reliance on reason, and sometimes-tenuous connection to humanity that inclined me toward the choices of Patrick Bateman, HAL 9000, and Dr. Manhattan above. Half-Vulcan, Spock's primary mode of existence in Star Trek is to value reason above all else. And yet Spock is also half-human, meaning that, unlike many Vulcans, he has actual emotions to deal with. In Spock's original incarnation, he rarely, if ever, lost control of his emotions absent the intervention of some personality-alternating external force (like mating). Most of the rest of the original series treated Spock's character as a source of deadpan humor, as a means of profound meditation on what it means to be human (even though Spock technically wasn't), and, in his finest hour, as a source of selfless nobility. I am nowhere near Spock in my detachment from emotion, nor my ability to rely solely on reason. But I do relate to Spock in often (perhaps too frequently) valuing logic above sentiment, in sometimes failing to relate to my fellow human beings, and in regarding with skepticism what others irrationally assume or take for granted. Thus, Spock is my first choice.

2) Willy Wonka (as portrayed by the late, great Gene Wilder)

Please, tell me more about how you think you're really worthy of this choice.

Peter Kistler, a friend of mine (and guest writer for this blog), once chose Jafar, the villain from Aladdin, as the Disney character I most resembled. When I was talking to Peter earlier this week, I realized that the combination of quiet introspection and unpredictable theatricality that made him choose Jafar as my Disney analogue also applied to Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Wilder's Wonka is at different times calm, quiet, sarcastic, brilliant, passive-aggressive, literary, erudite, terrifying, wrathful, bombastic, warm, loving, and affectionate--sometimes in the same scene. And he is all of these things behind an often-inscrutable exterior, one hiding a great mass of seemingly contradictory emotions and personalities that leap out every once in a while. I wouldn't call myself anywhere near this complicated, but I do manifest at least some of the vastly distinct characteristics of Wilder's Wonka, often within minutes of each other. And I think I can seem, while not as mysterious as Wonka, at the very least somewhat difficult to understand. Finally, I think I do have a penchant for making obscure allusions, as Wonka often does. All of this, I think, contributes to the Wonka in me.

3) Captain Ahab

I don't have many white whales in my life, but when I do, you can be darn sure I'll chase them.

In Chapter 115 of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab, commander of the Pequod and initiator of its doomed voyage of vengeance, breaks the long solitude of its sea-bound search via an encounter with another ship. At this point, the crew of the Pequod has seen nothing but one another, their ship, and the open ocean for weeks. You might think that Ahab would be interested in exchanging pleasantries with the other ship's captain, or perhaps socializing in an even more relaxing fashion. But no. That is not Captain Ahab. All that Ahab wants to know from the other ship's crew is whether they have seen Moby-Dick, the great white whale who bit off Ahab's leg years before, leaving him in a constant state of physical and emotional turmoil. When he learns they have not, and are in fact heading home, he cares no longer for the conversation, nor the crew, and continues the Pequod on its chase. There is a similar scene in Chapter 59 of the novel. A crew member thinks he has sighted the whale Ahab seeks, and so Ahab quickly commandeers a smaller boat out to sea to meet his foe. When he finds that the crewman 'only' sighted a giant squid - "The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld, and returned to their ports to tell of it" - this is how Ahab reacts:

But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel; the rest as silently following.

People often find it strange when I tell them this, but I find this single-minded, megalomaniacal behavior incredibly relateable (although, unlike Ahab, I would be much more interested in a giant squid than a white whale). The more positive spin on all of this, if you're looking for one, is that I am determined, focused, persistent, and passionate about the things that matter to me. But the more Ahabian way of putting it is this: Life itself compels me to care about many things that I otherwise might disregard. Yet there remain a great deal of concerns, topics, and other such things in which I simply have no interest. And there are a few things to which I am passionately, almost obsessively dedicated. I am, moreover, not hesitant - and, indeed, rather callous about - delineating which is which, often to a degree that turns off even those who know me best. I cannot stand small talk, for example, and often steer a conversation directly into an area in which I am comfortable - like aliens - rather than waste precious minutes dawdling about pointless trivialities. This relentless focus on some things at the expense of all others appears to the world as a level of uninterest that can seem quite off-putting.

Due to a poor sense of moderation, moreover, my white whales tend to consume my very being when I do find them, as anyone who has seen me in the throes of some passion project can attest. This often leads me to extremes in physical or mental behavior in service of my momentary obsession. I can, furthermore, - and often do - keep ideas, goals, and (more than I'd like to admit) grudges locked away in my head for years before finally getting the chance to act on them. I'm not saying I'm Captain Ahab, but...well, maybe I'm Captain Ahab.

So, there you have it: I have described myself in three fictional characters: Spock (as portrayed by Leonard Nimoy), Willy Wonka (as portrayed by Gene Wilder), and Captain Ahab (as written by Herman Melville). What do you think of my choices? Do they make sense? Do they make too much sense? Do you have any other suggestions?

Finally, perhaps most pertinent: Are you now frightened to know me? 

Applause for the Waco Kid, aka Gene Wilder (1933-2016)

My local Blockbuster prominently displayed this image of the late Gene Wilder, back when Blockbuster was still a thing.

Near the end of this past August, 2016 once again proved how dangerous a year it is to be an icon of popular culture when it claimed the life of the great actor Gene Wilder. Wilder died at age 83, leaving behind an impressive body of work. Though I am a fan of some of his other work (such as 1979's fun comedic Western The Frisco Kid, in which Wilder stars as a Polish rabbi sent to America and teams up with a post-Star Wars Harrison Ford), it is most likely, however, that he'll be remembered for four films: The Producers (1968), Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein (both 1974).

Others have honored his memory much better than I am capable. Mel Brooks, who directed Wilder in The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein (Wilder had the idea for Young Frankenstein on the set of Blazing Saddles; he and Brooks wrote the screenplay together) had a heartfelt recollection of his time with Gene Wilder not long after Wilder's passing. Wilder himself gave a wonderful career retrospective on NPR 2005. John Podhoretz wondered why he never became the bigger star he deserved to be.

Wilder in Young Frankenstein

And the week after Wilder died, Warner Bros. and AMC theaters gave their own tribute in the form of a  post-celebrity-death cash-grab of which I wholly approve: They re-released Blazing Saddles into theaters for the weekend. I jumped at the opportunity to see one of my favorite comedies on the big screen, uncensored, from start-to-finish. This was a wise move. Though I've seen Blazing Saddles, many times, it is one of those movies (like, say, Airplane) so packed with jokes that you notice something new, or appreciate something old in a new way, almost every time you see it. For one, despite being a thoroughgoing parody of Westerns - once almost as popular in Hollywood as superhero movies are today - it has enough respect for the form and its conventions to - among other things - look beautiful on a big screen. In an increasingly politically-correct age, moreover, it was quite something to see a movie comfortable not just dealing with racism, but deriving humor from it, yet in a back-handedly tasteful way. It was also fun to watch in a full (!) theater with obvious fans of of the movie. Finally, for sheer meta pleasure, I don't think anything beats seeing the scene in which Hedley Lamarr settles down in a movie theater to watch the end of Blazing Saddles while I myself was in a movie theater watching the end of Blazing Saddles. It's been a while since I had that much meta in my life. 

The best part of the movie, of course, is the proto-buddy-cop friendship between Cleavon Little's Sheriff Bart and Gene Wilder's Waco Kid/Jim. Little plays Bart straight but stops just short of bringing him to a fault, and Wilder's Waco Kid is both convincingly washed-up and a credibly laconic deadshot when he needs to be. The two of them together have enough comedic chemistry to have powered a movie all on their own, but Blazing Saddles throws in one of cinema's most important fart jokes, Harvey Korman's hilariously narcissistic Hedley Lamarr, a well-meaning but mostly incompetent henchman in Slim Pickens, Mel Brooks' imbecilic governor, a horse getting punched in the face, and so many other hilarious characters and moments that it's impossible to list them all here.

Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little, having a blast in Blazing Saddles

Instead, I want to use Wilder's performance in Blazing Saddles to draw out some of his greater qualities as an actor. Probably foremost among these is what Todd VanDerWerff called his "comedic generosity." While a star in his own right, Wilder did not hog the screen; he was always more than happy to let co-stars shine and get the punchline, as he does in Blazing Saddles in spades. Here's a great example:



Less evident in Blazing Saddles, but much, much more prominent in his roles in Young Frankenstein and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was Wilder's talent for playing the man just barely keeping it all together. Yes, he could convey a quiet exterior, but he could easily hint at - and, without much prompting, ferociously display - a wellspring of hidden emotions and tensions. He could, moreover, convincingly alternate between both, often within the same scene, without seeming like a ham or a scenery-chewer. Here's probably the best example of that:



Finally, Wilder was perhaps the definitive master of the comedic pause. In the wrong hands, the comedic pause can undercut the humor of a moment meant to be funny, or draw out a joke to the point where it no longer amuses. But Wilder knew exactly how to make his pauses just as long as they needed to be; whether to provide the momentary hesitation that mirrors how the audience feels, or to highlight the awkwardness of whatever situation in which he found himself. The comedic pause is an art; Gene Wilder was its Michelangelo. Here's proof:

 
Gene Wilder's performances will live on for many years to come; his starring role in Willy Wonka alone seems already to have introduced him to an entire new generation of fans. Yet his passing reminds us ever more of 2016's stark question: What will popular culture look like after all of the icons of the Baby Boomer era pass away? Someday, we will have to find out. But, in the meantime, how about a little applause for the Waco Kid: