Bedtime for Bozo
by Bruce Feiler

These days, being a clown isn't all fun and games.

This article appeared in the New York Times Magazine on October 27, 1996. It is included here with the kind permission of Bruce Feiler. This article is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of Mr. Feiler.

Mr. Feiler asks, "Please send me any additional information and any response you get. I am considering doing a larger story on some of the implications in this piece and would love further documentation and anecdotes."

Like millions of Americans, I grew up loving clowns. I loved going to the circus as a child and watching clowns get mercilessly yet painlessly bopped on the head by swinging buckets and out-of-control ladders. I can still remember the feeling of horror -- mixed with secret delight -- the first time I saw a clown threaten to toss water onto a crowd, only to throw confetti instead. And when, as an adolescent, I first learned to juggle (with a handful of oranges that soon turned to pulp), it was a defining moment of my life. Suddenly I was on the other side of the illusion.

Eventually, after working as a street performer and a junior-high-school teacher, I spent a year as a clown with America's last great tented circus. At first it was thrilling. I was surprised to discover that even though I still felt awkward in my floppy shoes and bright red nose, to the children around me I was already their friend. "Hey, Mr. Clown," a girl called out. It took a moment to realize she was talking to me.

Soon, though, my exhilaration soured. While my makeup seemed to offer kids an instinctive reason to trust me, to the adults it offered a reason to distrust me.

To be sure, calling someone a clown has been an insult for years. (Witness Bob Dole's recent invocation of Bozo.) But increasingly clowns are seen as weirdos, like Krusty from "The Simpsons" and Homey from "In Living Color," or deviants, like John Wayne Gacy and Stephen King's Pennywise, both serial killers who dressed as clowns.

Though some people have always found clowns disturbing -- because of the seedy surroundings of the big top or the reliance on physical humor -- now many feel that behind the face of a clown there may be a rapist waiting to pounce.

Almost immediately upon joining the circus, for example, I was given a list of things I couldn't do: if a mother asked me to hold her child or if a child asked to sit in my lap, I had to say no. In my first month an adolescent boy asked if I would sign the back of his hand since he couldn't afford a coloring book. I happily obliged. A mother nearby snatched her daughter's hand and said loudly, "Never let a strange man do that to you."

"I tell you, it's no fun anymore," he said as he packed his floppy shoes and drove off the lot. "Once you take away the contact with the kids, you take the fun out of clowning."

This episode is part of a larger pattern of not trusting other people, especially those who choose to spend their time around children. Clergymen, day-care workers, even supermarket Santas have all felt the stigma. Clown agencies in big cities are now being asked to send female clowns to birthday parties instead of males. In the era of Michael Jackson, Americans have developed a near paranoia about men who interact with young people. Ultimately this is what chased my friend Buck from the ring: a climate of mistrust, a sexual McCarthyism that seems to be spreading across America.

As someone who has spent a lifetime around children, I find this attitude deeply troubling. We ought to be able to teach kids to be cautious without telling them that everyone they meet is pernicious.

If anything, how you react to a clown is probably a greater reflection of your inner thoughts than those of the clowns. This is the unspoken secret that only children understand. An adult looks at a clown and sees a person in makeup. A child looks at a clown and sees something else entirely -- a caricature, a cartoon, a creature that's somehow unreal, beyond gender, beyond human. Not surprisingly, the child is right. Clowns, at their essence, do all the things that children want to do: act silly without being reprimanded, fall down without being injured. Clown makeup, so central to adults, is not a mask, shielding inner evil, but a mirror, taking what's deep inside the viewer and projecting it back. The evil, in other words, is in the eye of the beholder.

Bruce Feiler, the author of "Under the Big Top: A Season With the Circus" is writing a book about country music. He can be reached on-line by sending email here.