Art the Clown Is a Little Baby Bitch Boy
And we love him for it. Happy Halloween, clowns!
“Oh my god his teeth,” Oden says, cringing.
The two of us are on our couch, watching Terrifier, and Art the Clown is smiling like the freak that he is, showing us every one of his sharp, wet, black-lipstick-smeared teeth.
“It’s giving Killer Klowns from Outer Space,” I say.
They too had predatory, wolflike teeth. So did Pennywise from Stephen King’s IT. It’s a classic killer-clown motif, apparently; turning their perma-smiles into snarls.
“Do they have to be so wet?” Oden asks.
Art the Clown starts silent laughing, his mouth opening wider than it seems like a human mouth should be able to. The fact that it’s painted black, and that the lipstick stretches way beyond the actual borders of his lips, adds to the freakiness of the image. His face looks like a gaping hole.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
I’ve been a little bit obsessed with Art the Clown this past week. He really slaps for me. The black-and-white aesthetic, the way he moves. He’s scary but also a joke, and he’s deeper than you might think, totally steeped in grindhouse horror and ancient clown lore. His creator, Damien Leone, apparently wanted to strike a uniquely 2010s horror villain that could stand alongside the classics: Michael Myers, Freddy, Jason. Do you think Art the Clown hits the spot? I do. Let’s get into it, shall we?
I like to start with inspiration. Where did Art the Clown come from? Who made him? The first and most obvious answers are the classic horror villains. He often moves like Michael, slow and clumsy, like he should be easy to evade (even though his victims never manage to). He’s masked, sort of like Jason, although his prosthetics give the illusion that you’re looking at a real, albeit deeply fucked up, human face. He also can infiltrate dreams like Freddy—the dream sequence in Terrifier 2 at The Clown Café is one of the creepiest parts of the movie.
There’s also some bits of Pennywise baked in, although the patron saint of IT is all about what Art is not: Art is black-and-white where Pennywise is colorful; Art is silent where Pennywise is chatty. Art is also more real than Pennywise; he’s a human man, it seems, if maybe also some kind of immortal demon, where Pennywise is a shapeshifter, a figment of the imagination, a murderer you have to believe in to get killed by, like some kind of sadistic Santa Claus. And most importantly, Art is a killer of (mostly) hot, adult women, where Pennywise hunts children.
This is where things get interesting for me—Art the Clown’s sexuality. His kills are gendered, stylized. When he murders men, it’s usually because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. These guys are wrenches in his plan; they’re pawns, inconveniences, potential obstacles along the way. He kills them quicker (if not, necessarily, quickly). But the women? Art luxuriates.
The rhythm of his girl-murders mirror a sexual encounter: first, there’s foreplay, in which Art taunts them, teases them, tantalizes them with hints of what’s to come. Then, there’s the preparation. He traps them somehow, readies them for horror. By the time he’s ready to actually kill, these women are making sounds. They’re making facial expressions. And he goes slow. By the time these poor women actually die, they’re begging for it, and so are we! The sweet release of death is a relief for the woman he literally sawed in half from labia to chin.
And this is where I get stuck on him. Not because women murderers are unique—every slasher film is a massacre of Hot GirlsTM.
But because Art the Clown is really just Pierrot’s darkest potential realized.
Who is Pierrot, you might ask? Because you are a normal person, and not a weirdo steeped in clown lore, like me. Let me tell you!
Pierrot is the original Sad Clown. He originates in 17th century Paris with the commedia dell’arte, and you’ll recognize him. He’s always dressed in black and white, just like Art. Sometimes, he’s depicted as a woman named Pierette (which is a whole separate lesbian story we’ll get into another time). But always, Pierrot is a sad, pitiful boy, yearning for Columbine, the woman who doesn’t love him back. His entire personality revolves around being a jilted simp for her.
When I watch Art the Clown, I see Pierrot taken to a toxic, homicidal extreme. Pierrot’s sad-boy schtick has fermented into rage, and also into self-obsession. He’s so entitled to the women he desires that he takes everything from them—their literal, actual lives—not to mention, in most cases, some random body parts. Let us not forget the woman whose torso Art skinned and then wore like a dress, running around like some awful murderous-transwoman-trope straight out of Silence of the Lambs.
Art the Clown is the perfect 2010s villain because he is a crazed fucking incel! A demented little simp! A narcissistic loser boy who’s also very stylized, very camp, very pleased with himself.
He reminds me of the losers on Reddit who bitch about how they want a big-titty goth girlfriend delivered to their front door like takeout.
He reminds me of the hipster boy I went on a date with in my early 20s who drank craft beer and had an overpriced haircut and who demanded a blowjob after telling me he lived, by choice, in a van on Coney Island.
He reminds me of several ex-girlfriends, and also some choice family members, who leered at my body like total creeps and then threw a tantrum when I didn’t smile obediently.
Art is every woman’s nightmare Tinder match. He is the guy lurking in the back of the party who no one invited. He is the creep staring at you on the subway platform when it’s too late to disappear in the crowd. He is maybe your dad, your ex, your icky uncle.
He might not be unique to the 2010s or 2020s, but he’s uniquely visceral in our era, a time when this type of entitled, misogynist, loser-man has gotten super loud in the face of his approaching obsolescence.
He is also, honestly, a delightful little joke. David Howard Thornton, the actor who plays him, says he took a lot of inspiration for the role from comedy. And you can see it! His body language often gives Lucy & Ethel, ribbing each other through a series of hijinks.
There are elements of Charlie Chaplin too—the way he slinks around, the overwrought shock when he’s caught being sneaky. And there’s his silence! It’s giving film-is-a-brand-new-medium-and-we’re-goofing-our-way-through-it, the way silent film actors had to be cheesy, wild, over-the-top with their movements and facial expressions because movies weren’t trying to be realistic yet.
It’s hilarious when you look at the layers, just like the incel culture Art invokes. They’re pathetic! They’re babies! They’re little bitches whining about how disempowered they are when in fact they are anything but! Of course, it’s all terrifying too. Because little bitches can get really fucking violent when they’re self-absorbed and desperate enough.
It’s this combination of hilarity and desperation that makes Art—and perhaps, all clowns—really unsettling, I think: that the laughs are often the saddest, scariest parts of their performance. It’s funny because it’s sad, it’s sad because it’s funny. It’s absurd and ridiculous and also absolutely horrific. It is both and. And none of it is quite what it seems.
“Yiiiiiiiikes,” Oden and I both whine, cringing through the final scene of Terrifier 2.
Art’s only surviving victim, a woman whose face he’s absolutely mangled, is giving birth alone in a room at the psychiatric facility she’s trapped in. There’s so much blood.
“Is she disemboweling herself?” I ask.
This woman has just pulled some kind of intestine-looking tube out from between her legs. But the answer is no—it’s an umbilical cord of sorts, and it’s attached to Art the Clown’s decapitated head, which is maniacally cackling and covered in wet, black, demonic vagina juice.
“Oh, god,” Oden moans, lowkey retching.
The wetness. It gets him every time.
“Oh, it’s so unhinged,” I wheeze, laughing at the absurdity of this whole scene.
I can’t wait to watch Terrifier 3, which we’re saving for the weird time between Halloween and Thanksgiving, because it’s lowkey a Christmas movie!
In the meantime, kids, remember what my brother always says.
Stay away from clowns.
Or, don’t! I sure as hell ignore his advice.
From Art the Clown and his weird little demon girl—who I met at a lesbian costume party, of all places—Happy Halloween, clowns!
Ummmm, hate clowns. Fun piece though.