Clowns are back for Halloween, but this time, they’re … cute?

Hello, and welcome to Group Chat, where culture reporters Rebecca Jennings and Alex Abad-Santos discuss the topics currently blowing up our (and probably your) phones.

Happy early Halloween!

In the spirit of the one holiday where people get to dress up as whatever they want, we’re going to be chatting about how this Halloween’s unofficial theme seems to be clown.

What? Huh? Really?

Clowns — scary and less so — are everywhere this Halloween: in our decor, in our movie theaters, and even on our bodies. Why, in this world full of infinite possibilities, would someone dress up as a clown?

To get at the heart of this trend, our very own Rebecca Jennings donned jester garb and went to a clown-themed party. It turns out that the veil between clownery and Rebecca’s interior life is quite thin. But this trend is much larger than just one party in Brooklyn, or even one clown.

It’s a bigger conversation about what clowns mean to us, what they say about the time (tragic, comedic, both?) we’re living in, and why culture’s obsession with them has shifted over the years.

Alex Abad-Santos: RJ, I heard you were a clown this weekend? Tell me and the world about your clownery.

Rebecca Jennings: I finally embraced my true form and dressed up as a little androgynous French mime on Friday night. It was for a clown-themed birthday party, and let me tell you, people went all the fuck out for it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Clowns are having a moment!

Alex: To be honest, I am surprised you didn’t go as yourself.

Rebecca: It wouldn’t be a proper group chat without Alex bullying me!!!

Alex: I only know of one clown party — it’s gay, it’s killer clowns, it’s in Brooklyn. But I live in my own little silo of culture and nightlife.

Of course, killer clowns and the fear they bring have been part of the pop culture circus since Stephen King’s It in 1986, and it’s been huge over the last eight years. There were people dressing up as scary clowns in 2016. There’s also the whole thing about Donald Trump being an orange clown — even the New Yorker put him on their cover that way.

Rebecca: I mean, there’s also the fact that Terrifier 3 had a pretty big release this weekend, which is a slasher movie about “Art the Clown,” so killer clowns are clearly still having a moment.

Alex: And not to mention the terrible flop that is Joker: Folie à Deux. Okay, but why are these other, non-scary, even sort of pure clowns having a moment now too?

Rebecca: For the past two Halloweens, and I’d say this one in particular, I’ve been inundated with TikToks predicting that “cute vintage clown” will be a really popular costume this year, as well as makeup tutorials on how to achieve the look. Always emphasis on the “cute” and “vintage” part though — the inspo is Pierrot, not Pennywise.

I think part of that is because “clowncore” has actually been kind of a vibe in fashion for a few years now (some example fits here). My most stylish friend calls her personal aesthetic “little lad,” which I think is related. Sometimes we all just wanna be little guys leaping around whimsically.

In terms of Halloween costumes, I think “vintage clown” is at an all-time high on Google search traffic in part because of the snowball effect, where a few people did it in a cute way a few years ago and those images are now being used as reference and inspiration.

Alex: I guess, I want to ask you — since you are both performatively a clown and a self-described clown — did dressing up as a clown feel like you could be your true self? Was it a freeing moment? She may be a clown, but she is free — is that what people ostensibly could now say about you?

Rebecca: LOL. I suppose, if they wanted to. Let it be known I’ve never aspired to be an actual clown.

But I do want to acknowledge that there is a bit of a clown resurgence in comedy right now. My fiancé actually wrote a great piece for Slate on this after we went to Edinburgh Fringe, about how comedy in the 2010s had reached this very weird place where everything had to be moralistic and political in nature, which is why mainstream stand-up right now feels like a bunch of middle-aged men making fun of pronouns. Clowning is a way of pushing back against that and bringing silliness and absurdism into live comedy.

I don’t really think that this overall relatively niche alt-comedy scene is the reason people are dressing up as cute clowns for Halloween. But I don’t think it’s entirely unrelated?

Alex: My favorite clown reference is from the 2015 hit movie Spy starring the indomitable Rose Byrne and the hilarious — when she isn’t in movies written by her husband — Melissa McCarthy. In that masterpiece, Byrne’s character keeps telling McCarthy’s that she reminds her of a “sad Bulgarian clown.” “You’re funny, that’s the Bulgarian clown in you,” she says, reminding us that no matter how bleak life was, it was an accomplishment that the Bulgarian clown could smile through it.

I feel like the clown moment is sort of our way of acknowledging our own existential crises. The world is flooding, burning, dying. It might be easier, at this point, to laugh at it — and us. The easiest way to accept that life is a bleak comedy is to acknowledge our own clownhood. Am I attaching too much thought to clownery?

Rebecca: Spy is like a top 25 film for me, probably. Perfect movie.

But yeah, life really do be feeling like a circus these days. There’s definitely something to the idea of the “fuck it” vibes we’re seeing everywhere from politics to partying. Online, people have been using clown filters for years, because we all end up feeling like big idiots, living in the world we do. Nothing makes sense and the joke’s on us!

Alex: With the rise of clown aesthetics, I think it’s probably worth noting that we might be done with the “sexy” costume. You know, like sexy nurse, or sexy football player, or like sexy news topic (sexy concrete house that weathered hurricane Milton!). Does the rise of Halloween clown mark the downfall of “sexy” costumes?

Rebecca: Alex, I must break this to you, we will never be done with sexy costumes. There were absolutely some sexy clowns at the party I was at. But I think that’s beautiful. One of my other costumes this year is “sexy Miss Trunchbull” from Matilda. What are you going as?

Alex: “Sexy Miss Trunchbull” sounds terrifying. I am going to be going to a gay disco party where the theme is “bloody disco.” Original, right? Also, the logistics of sweat and fake blood feels gross. I was thinking about going as a fangbanger from True Blood, or like “sexy” Bert and Ernie. But truth be told, a gay guy party always ends up in shirtlessness so there’s really no point.

Should I screw it all up and go as a sexy clown?

Rebecca: Send in the clowns, baby!