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| rdfs:comment | - The past 30 years or so have seen a surge in the popularity of evil, Joker-style Monster Clowns who deliberately and very effectively invert everything clowns were traditionally assumed to represent - that is, making people laugh, especially children. However, there was a time when clowns were treated in the popular media as sympathetic figures of whimsy and silly fun. Pretty much the only clown left in the public eye who is still permitted to act at all clown-like is Ronald McDonald. (And now that he's being phased out of the advertising, we don't even have him anymore.) But in days past...
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| abstract | - The past 30 years or so have seen a surge in the popularity of evil, Joker-style Monster Clowns who deliberately and very effectively invert everything clowns were traditionally assumed to represent - that is, making people laugh, especially children. However, there was a time when clowns were treated in the popular media as sympathetic figures of whimsy and silly fun. Pretty much the only clown left in the public eye who is still permitted to act at all clown-like is Ronald McDonald. (And now that he's being phased out of the advertising, we don't even have him anymore.) But in days past... For clarification, it should be noted that a degree of irony is intrinsic to most clown performances, and indeed to humor in general. The traditional "tears" painted on a clown's cheeks are there to show that he is laughing on the outside but may be crying on the inside, an acknowledgment by the performer that most humor contains at least some element of laughing at another's pain. This is most played up in old-school, down-on-their-luck "hobo" clowns like Emmett Kelly Jr., though the ultimate artistic expression of the tragic clown concept is probably the title aria in the opera Pagliacci. The "Non-Ironic" in the trope's name simply refers to the clowns listed here not being evil or deliberately frightening. See The Jester for a more common type. Examples of Non-Ironic Clown include:
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