Harmless or horrifying, much like Halloween itself, clowns can be both depending on your perspective.
Across the nation, creepy clown sightings crowded the news and social media earlier this month.
Even Durango was not immune: Someone dressed up as a clown was reportedly carrying a stick while intoxicated behind the Durango Community Recreation Center as reported to the Durango Police Department early in October.
The hysteria brought more attention to both the crazed clowns and the harmless entertainers, who have had to defend their professions on the national news.
In response to rumors about clowns threatening schools on social media, both Durango School District 9-R and the Bayfield School District sent out letters saying there was no reason to be concerned. The letters encouraged parents to talk to their kids about reputable sources of information.
Without prompting from school staff, Bayfield Middle School students decided among themselves that dressing up as clowns during the Halloween celebrations on Friday wouldn’t be funny or appropriate, Principal Tod Lokey said.
They followed through and he didn’t see a single clown costume. “They self-regulated really well,” Lokey said.
Clown costumes were rare at the Three Springs 10th annual Fall Festival on Saturday, but there were a handful of Batman-inspired Jokers and Harley Quinns soaking in the sun.
Tarantino Benallie, 14, came as the Joker with disconcerting teeth attached to the outside of his face to further exaggerate his smile.
Benallie is a fan of the Joker because he is Batman’s rival. But he finds clowns and their constant smiling and laughing scary.
“You don’t know what’s behind the mask,” Harley Quinn impersonator Danielle Embree said of clowns Saturday.
The interest in clowns in Durango has been low for awhile, according to Durango-area clown Ruben Balaguer.
When Balaguer, also known as Cataplin the Clown, performed in Chicago, he was busy almost every single weekend, and he enjoyed his work.
“I like to make people laugh, make the kids laugh,” he said.
He did many shows with the Mexican community because clowns are traditional in certain regions of that country.
“They have a different kind of entertainment; it’s very common to have a clown,” he said.
When he moved here seven years ago, his business dropped off. He suspects it is because there is a much lower population in the area, and the clown tradition isn’t as strong. It’s been about two years since he performed. He is also a part-time pastor and a substitute teacher.
Even when he was performing with a partner in Chicago, some children didn’t find them funny at first.
“We’d have to do a lot of things to finally make the kids comfortable with us,” he said.
Clowns are a masked exaggeration of humanity, and while some are benign, others violate our sense of decency, said Fort Lewis College Psychology Professor Brian Burke.
“I think clowns are scary because they contrast the innocence of childhood and silly humor with a more macabre underbelly, i.e. the enigmatic mask and the unknown intentions,” he said in an email.
The fear of clowns, or coulrophobia, is fairly common, and a 2008 survey of more than 250 children between 4 and 16 years old found that all of them disliked the clowns used in a hospital’s decor, Burke said. The University of Sheffield in England polled the children to help improve hospital design.
But there are some nationally known clowns who make people laugh and look at the world differently, said former mayor Michael Rendon.
Rendon did some clowning briefly for preschool classes and his act included juggling and stilt walking.
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton are examples of the best sort of clowns because they make fun of society in a beneficial way, he said.
“People can use their power for good and bad. And I see clowns the same way,” he said.
He invited Wavy Gravy, a clown known for his environmental and social causes, to speak at Fort Lewis College when he was the director of the Environmental Center to show them how to mix activism and humor to fend off burnout.
“There’s all sorts of clowns that do great stuff,” he said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
