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Thursday, October 24, 2019

Wrinkles the Clown

Because I am not particularly interested in creepy clowns, or in clowns in general, I had several times passed over Wrinkles the Clown among my film viewing choices, thinking that it was probably just an IT spinoff. Realizing, however, that this is actually a documentary, I decided to give it a watch. 

Wrinkles the Clown is the story of an unnamed retired Floridian who decided one day to place an ad on Craig's List offering, for a fee, to attend parties, scare misbehaving children, and prank people. 

Wrinkles himself was amazed at the eager response to the ad. Who knew that so many people would feel the need to scare their naughty toddlers into adjusting their behavior? For Wrinkles, it doesn't take much. It's an easy buck (though he charges far more than a buck). The suffering parent need only threaten the child with a phone call to Wrinkles the Clown. The kids themselves will have seen him on YouTube, lurking in bedrooms, on street corners, in the dark, frowning ominously, clutching his bouquet of balloons. They will have seen IT as well, the Stephen King creation who eats children, even good ones. 

The offending children will shriek in terror, promise repentance--nonetheless, they have gone too far, the call has been placed, and, sure enough, Wrinkles soon shows up in the back yard, or at the bedroom window, staring, frowning. 

Predictably, some have responded that this is parentally irresponsible, tantamount to child abuse, a cruelty that will scar the child for life. To this, Wrinkles (who narrates the documentary)responds the parents have done the same thing since time immemorial by threatening damnation and eternal suffering in hell at the hands of God. The difference is that children don't believe in God anymore, but they sure as hell believe in Wrinkles the Clown. They've seen him, after all, on their iPhones, their iPads, their laptops. 

Both terrified and thrilled, the children have begun also to call Wrinkles' number. shrieking with delight when his message service clicks in. "He's real! Oh my God!"

Now Wrinkles gets thousands of calls every week, from parents, from children, from admirers, from haters. He hears everything from curious inquiries to incredibly violent threats and crude curses. 

But the most interesting thing about this documentary, to me anyway, is its showcasing of the astounding stupidity of so many common American citizens. Children have an excuse for being ignorant, right? They are only children, and have not yet learned. But what about the adults? What's up with a man who calls a clown in order to describe how he is going to beat him to death, hang him from a tree, burn him alive? What's up with people who panic at the random report of a gang of clowns lurking in the woods? Clowns were reported  driving around in a van, looking for children. The police were called. Apparently someone has called on Wrinkles to come and sort out the human race in general? Is that it? And yet, all they had to do was look the thing up on Google. Wrinkles the Clown is the alias of a retired Floridian who, seeking some pocket money, placed an ad on Craig's List. Why this willful preference for the counter-intuitive, the conspiracy theory, the urban legend, the shadowy adversary? 

Is it any wonder, after all, that millions of these folks voted for Donald Trump, and continue to so violently believe in him? They are immune to facts, bewitched by fables, confident and proud in their ignorance. They are no more than children themselves--and misbehaving children at that. 

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