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I just finished watching a funny video on YouTube in which Pennywise the clown suddenly appears in some guy's house...but except for the initial shock that comes with someone or something unexpected suddenly appearing before you,the guy tells Stephen King's iconic clown that he's not afraid of him,then proceeds to tell him why he's not afraid of him,largely because he doesn't consider clowns scary.
It got me to thinking as to exactly when clowns,long associated with their delightful,madcap,crowd-pleasing antics in the circus,started being considered scary. The circus,as modern audiences know it,dates back to the late 19th century. These days,this form of entertainment is quickly becoming a thing of the past,the best example being that it was just this past year that the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus,after more than a century of performances,decided to finally bring down the proverbial curtain on themselves. There was a PBS special on this,which included their final show. I don't recall seeing any clowns,at least of the greasepaint-and-rubber-nose variety,included in the show. Have they,like live animal acts,become obsolete?
Currently,the most popular movie in the country is Joker,the latest depiction of the nemesis of comic-book masked vigilante Batman,created by Bob Kane in 1939...I imagine that,at that time,the idea of an evil clown must've been quite revolutionary. Yet,supposedly just a few years before,Lon Chaney made his famous statement about clowns at midnight. During the 1950s,popular circus clown like Lou Jacobs were pictured on the boxes of Kellogg's cereals,just a few years after Bozo the Clown made his debut. In the mid-sixties,Ronald McDonald appeared,becoming a staple of the fast food chain's TV commercials.
And yet it seems that it was sometime in the late 60's/early 70's (I'm guessing)that comedy writers began to suggest that there was something wrong with clowns in general...that they were all psychologically maladjusted social misfits whose supposedly kid-friendly makeup concealed a hidden persona. I imagine the public revelations about John Wayne Gacy helped to confirm that notion.
From the Killer Clowns From Outer Space to the Simpsons' Krusty,I can't even recall the last time I saw,or even heard of a kid-friendly clown,at least not in any popular media. Even Ronald McDonald seems absent from the commercials these days. The clown seems to have joined vampires and werewolves as an icon of horror,if the selection at any Halloween store is any indication.

Is this really what's happened to the clown?