Claims: in history of clowns

2 claims
Narrow claims Pick any combination. Press Enter to apply typed text.
Clear filters
Speaker
Target
Topic
Certainty
Claim text
Date range
25 Sep 2017
Ancient cultures in Greece, Babylon, and Egypt used clown-like masks and red outfits to disguise child sacrifice rituals.

And that in ancient Greece, Babylon, and Egypt, child sacrifice cults. What about Persia? Would put on red outfits for blood. What about Celtic people? And red manes for blood. And white faces. Because they knew. They had to tell the villagers, you bring your kids. That's the ultimate act of submission, is to bring your two-, three-, four-year-old right when you love them the most. And God said, bring me your son. The funniest, the sweetest, everything. And they're going to torture them in front of all you. They're either going to grill them on a big, hot metal plate in front of the idol with a fire under it, or they slice them up and the priest drink the blood, and then a lot of times make you drink it. The Aztecs did it, everybody else did. Everybody else. And in almost all cultures, the people doing it, instead of wearing an executioner mask, because sometimes somebody might still get mad at the village who still has their instincts and kill you. So you don't wear a mask, a hood, like the executioner. You wear a clown mask with a big red mouth. You're scary. And big red hair for blood.

25 Sep 2017
The modern clown archetype originated from Joseph Grimaldi in the late 1700s.

That tradition does exist, too, but a lot of it comes from this guy who's from the mid to late 1700s. He ended up dying in 1837, but he was basically credited with the modern-day clown. He's a guy named Joseph Grimaldi. I think I've heard that name before. Yeah, he's the big clown. Nope, never say that again. The thing is, before that, clowns were side characters and stuff that would come in to... In that last paragraph they're talking about, you'd have a very serious thing and then the clown would come in and be like, just do a weird dance or whatever. Joseph Grimaldi was the one who was like, fuck this, the clown is the star. And so he became a massive star. He became a massive star by putting the clown front and center. And he did all that like... All that character stuff. All the face paint. He had a mohawk. Sometimes he painted his cheeks red and what have you. But because Grimaldi was such a star, the character he'd invented became closely associated with him.