Robots and Gollums and Clowns, Oh My....

Clowns are funny. Clowns are entertaining. Everybody loves clowns, don't they?

I think most people do, yet there are those that find them creepy. Disturbing even. Small children may initially react with terror to a clown before they learn that the clown is just a funny man. I'm reminded of Seinfeld's Kramer and his aversion to clowns. I think of the creepy clowns in fiction, such as the clown in Stephen King's It.

So what gives. Why do clowns so easily give rise to the creep factor?. I don't know - not for sure, but I recently read an article in New Scientist that seemed to raise some possibilities. It was talking about the creep factor in the character of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, which they referred to as the gollum effect. It refers to the fact that people are more creeped out by human like creatures rather then non-human creatures. It is like the twisted humanity is disturbing on some level.

This is an area of some investigation by robotics researchersinterested in human-robot interaction. These researchers call it "The uncanny valley" effect. Robots that are clearly robots do not seem disturbing to the average person, but the closer they come to simulating human features, the more likely they are to seem disturbing. They think that this causes a breach of expectations in the mirror neurons of the brain - the appearance of humanlike characteristics in something that is less than human jarring on the mind.

It is suggested that this is an innate reaction to the detection of infectious disease. A diseased person seems less then human - the characteristics of their disease jar on the expectations of humanity, causing an avoidance reaction, which would probably be a wise move on the part of primitive persons, who would thereby avoid infection.

This brings us back to clowns, humans who act in aberrant ways, and appear different to regular humans. Could it be that adverse reactions to clowns in some people and small children is caused by the same process? Just a bit of speculation, but something to think about.

Be seeing you,
Escherwolf (who has nothing against clowns).