what does it mean to be called a clown
Has anything good ever come from white face paint and a red olfactory organ? Clowns take always occupied a particularly strange piece of popular culture. For decades, their office in our lodge has been debated: Are they joyful, terrifying, a meme, a vehicle for Joaquin Phoenix to win an Oscar? Some vouch for clowns as kids' birthday party entertainers, while others volition forever acquaintance them with Pennywise, the demonic kid killer who lives in a sewer. To say at that place's a separate would exist an understatement.
Merely information technology appears, equally of 2020, we've firmly settled on "clown" as an insult. Its place in the pantheon of disses was solidified in September, when erstwhile Vice President Joe Biden referred to President Trump every bit a "clown" twice in the first presidential debate. Amid several interruptions from Trump, Biden said, "Well, it'due south difficult to become whatsoever give-and-take in with this clown." He then corrected himself, adding, "Excuse me, this person." At another point, while debating healthcare policy, Biden turned to the camera and asked, "Folks, practice you have any idea what this clown'southward doing? Exercise y'all?"
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They were two moments fitting for a circus-like presidential contend. Merely they also had Biden walking quite a tightrope. Some praised him for branding Trump with an apt description, while others deemed the moniker below the chugalug. "I should have said this was a clownish undertaking instead of calling him a clown," Biden after told NBC'south Lester Holt. But what caused this man in his seventies to pull out such a phrase? After all, clowns have existed for centuries and we never saw JFK call Nixon one. (Although, that would've been right on the red olfactory organ.)
Biden's squad likely fed this term to him, after it gained popularity with the Gen-Z oversupply on Twitter and TikTok. Merely there was about a decade of piece of work that led up to the insult being uttered on a national stage. Dorsum in 2010, Urban Dictionary decided that the all-time manner to describe a clown is: "Simply a downright fool, someone who at that place's no other give-and-take for other than 'clown' it explains how stupid they tin be and how footling y'all think about them."
Three years later, a tweet from @skullmandible which cites "clown" as a specially effective fire, went viral. He wrote, "most cutting matter yous can say is 'who's this clown?' because it implies they're a) a clown & b) non even one of the better-known clowns."
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That same twelvemonth, existent-life professional clowns took offense to German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling two Italian political opponents "clowns." Circus Roncalli Manager Bernhard Paul told German news agency DPA, "Being a clown is an honorable, very hard, sensitive, and artistic occupation." Even people who make balloon animals for a living took i wait at the political landscape and thought, "I would like to be excluded from this narrative."
In recent years, clown shoes became the movie industry'south favorite accessory. Information technology was ane of the highest-grossing movies of 2017. Shia LaBeouf channeled his tortured rodeo clown father in 2019's Honey Male child. Then the world lost its listen over Joaquin Phoenix's Joker and what the pic meant (if anything) for social club. None of these were exactly glowing depictions of the profession. Even so, that same clown-obsessed culture constitute its mode to the internet. According to Know Your Meme, the 'Putting on Clown Makeup' meme emerged—a way of depicting "a person making an increasingly larger fool of himself past providing arguments which are deemed increasingly weak or casuistic."
Clown every bit derogatory term was cemented on TikTok this twelvemonth with the "Becoming A Clown Because People Go along Clowning Me" trend. In it, users tell revealing, often embarrassing anecdotes while applying face paint with lipstick. This commonly involves triangles over the eyes, an overdrawn grinning, and that signature rosy sniffer.
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Before long, clowning could be used in several scenarios. For unsavory dating behavior, someone might say, "This man has been clowning me the entire human relationship." To disclose one'due south own shortcomings, they could ask, "Who'southward the clown at present?" And yeah, the give-and-take is oftentimes hurled every bit a dig confronting those deemed incompetent or beneath them, as used by Biden.
2016 is as well worth examining in this investigation. Weeks before Trump became our commander-in-chief, clowns had some other resurgence. Social media users began challenge to take seen killer clowns lurking in fields and alleyways across America. Most of these "sightings," turned out to be a hoax—but they hinted at our uneasy obsession with Bozo. It's as if right around a awe-inspiring election people want to disassociate. Why work through inner anxieties nearly the globe when we can flee from them via clown car?
On their own, clowns aren't gruesome. People who article of clothing polka dot parachute pants and carry red balloons read as pretty non-threatening. But have you ever seen something more devastating than a sad clown with tear-stained cheeks and downcast grinning? It'south off-putting to have our expectations of merriment met with something a little likewise real. Whatever person who has been paying attention the last four years has become that sad clown, painting on a grinning in hopes of a better tomorrow. And then, Trump's gregarious conviction about where nosotros're at reads as strangely every bit smeared white face paint.
Past lodging our fears, our disillusion, our angst onto that figure, clowns become unsettling, the butt of the joke. In a yr filled with trick mirrors, emotional juggling, and an unpredictable ringleader—is there any wonder we're hung up? When we weaponize clowns, our own insecurities most looking like a fool fade abroad. But nosotros nevertheless look for the fox that volition end the circus—be information technology an election, a vaccine, or a New year's day's Eve inaugural. The universe may exist watching u.s.a., thinking: send in the clowns.
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Source: https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a34525416/how-clown-became-the-insult-of-2020/
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