Scary Clowns are so Passé: On Writing an Evil Mime Artist

Scary Clowns are so Passé: On Writing an Evil Mime Artist

By Chrissey Harrison

A phobia of clowns is known as coulrophobia. With their exaggerated features, clowns are very “other”, even monstrous – it only takes a small shift in perspective to turn a caricature into a grotesque. They also behave in challenging, transgressive ways, which plays into our fear of social uncertainty and confrontation. At an instinctive level we perceive that people acting in unpredictable ways might be a threat. 

So, it’s not surprising a lot of people find clowns scary, or at least unnerving. It’s hard to know how much pop culture portrayals of the “scary clown” – perhaps best epitomised by The Joker or Pennywise from “IT” – played on these existing fears or introduced a wider audience to them. Whichever the case, the scary clown is now a solid trope.

A solid trope that this news story from 2016 confirms has been done to death. 

Time for something different?

Clowns, costumes, masks, pantomime and mime share a common heritage. And yet the clown seems to hold a unique place of fear for people (I checked this with that most robust of research methods, the Twitter poll). But why?

 

Is it because the “Evil Clown” is a recent dark spin off from an otherwise wholesome branch of comic theatre? “Oh no it isn’t!” I hear you say, and you’re quite right. We can trace these traditions back to ancient Greece and Rome where performances included real executions and acts of debauchery. (You’ll never look at a kid friendly pantomime the same way again).

Maybe people aren’t quite as scared of mimes because they’ve never seen an evil version of one. Which surprises me because there’s plenty of potential.

The unpredictable behaviour that makes clowns unnerving is taken to an extreme in the art of mime. Their expressions as often contradict their actions as exaggerate them, and those black framed eyes hold a challenging glint.

You can’t argue with a mime, you can’t reason with them. Silence is terrifying. We rely so heavily on language to navigate social interactions that taking it away evokes deep, primal fears. The animal predator, the foreigner invader, the unknowable spirit. The demon.

Mimes interact with objects born of their imagination. Invisible objects they convince you are real. It’s a kind of magic. The mime sees and exists in layers of reality you can’t perceive, where they have power and you can only abide by their whims. 

Honestly, who would want to write another scary clown with all that to draw on?! Especially since there are already so many examples of scary clowns it would be hard to carve out a space for your unique take. 

There’s plenty of space for a scary mime. I am going to fill it. 

Writing a Demon Mime Artist

That said, I didn’t set out to not write a clown. I’d always been set on using a mime. More specifically I was set on exploring the premise: what if the invisible things were real?

Mime is an illusion, and illusions are all about visual tricks, visual deception. Translating that to the medium of prose storytelling has its challenges! Authors describe things that don’t exist for the reader every day, but it’s not so often we’re called to describe things the characters can’t see. You can only get away with using the word invisible so many times! It required a different approach to description. A narrative equivalent to negative space. Here’s a little taste. I’ll let you judge whether it works:

BLOCK QUOTE

The young woman who’d passed them moments before stood shaking her fist. No, not shaking, hammering, but there was nothing but open space around her. She felt her way around in a square and came back to where she started, describing an invisible box surrounding her. 

“Do you cover mime in your workshop?” Elliot asked, without taking his eyes off the girl. 

The circus lads moved up beside him. “Not really, no.” 

Around her waist her long skirt began to lift, drifting out as if supported by water that was gradually rising around her. There was nothing beneath her but grass. She stared down aghast, eyes wide, and her mouth opened in a cry that didn’t reach beyond the box. Elliot glanced at Sam and they both broke into a run. 

Within moments the young woman was standing on her toes with her neck tipped back. She scrabbled against the walls of her prison. Her feet lifted off the ground, and any hope Elliot had that this was just some performance piece shattered. The girl waved her arms frantically, trying to hold herself up against rising water that couldn’t possibly be there. Her eyes briefly met Elliot’s with a silent plea for help. 

Abruptly, her ascent ceased, and her head tilted back further. She pressed her palms up and pounded a fist against the invisible ceiling. 

Elliot reached the tank, put his hand out and encountered a hard surface. His eyes were telling him there was nothing there, but he could feel it. 

 

With its dark and disturbing heritage, uncanny abilities, and chilling lack of voice, surely the evil mime artist is more than a match for the scary clown.

—

Chrissey is an author of supernatural thrillers and other spec genre fiction. Books about monsters, magic, action and adventure, and fragile human characters trying to muddle through as best they can.

Her debut novel, “Mime”, follows paranormal journalist Elliot Cross and his colleague Samantha as they investigate a string of unusual deaths. Burning with no flames. A bullet wound with no bullet. Mauling by invisible animals. The culprit? A demon with the appearance of a mime artist, whose invisible creations are fatally real. 

The book released on 28th June 2020 and is available from most book retailers. Find out more at http://chrisseyharrison.com/mime

You can also find Chrissey on Twitter @ChrisseyWrites http://twitter.com/chrisseywrites

MIME

There’s a supernatural serial killer on the loose…

Elliot Cross didn’t believe in monsters. At least, not until his brother died at the hands of something unnatural.

Four years later and a string of impossible deaths leave the police baffled. Consumed by a desire to shine a journalistic light on the supernatural world, Elliot sees a chance to make a difference. Enlisting the help of his (only) employee, Samantha, he quickly identifies the culprit – a demonic mime artist whose invisible creations are fatally real. 

Way out of his depth, Elliot’s only hope is renowned demon hunter Gabriel Cushing. But tracking down Gabriel is only the beginning… The search for a way to end the demon forever will take Elliot and Sam across the country, uncovering lost history, buried secrets, and a few new truths about themselves.

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