New attraction causing a stir at Alton Towers
By Sylvie Metcalfe and Claire McCann
On Tuesday the 5th October, the Alton Towers theme park, Staffordshire, was under protest by a swarm of angry clowns, chaining themselves to the park’s gates. Alton Towers recently revealed plans for a special Halloween attraction at their park featuring a circus event, titled ‘Carnival of Screams’. The theme park uses a spooky video to advertise this attraction on their website: a black and white film roll including distorted fairground music and newspaper clippings with the headline “crazed clowns terrify local community”, complete with pictures of clowns with manic expressions and baring sharp teeth.
This event was staged as the clowns felt this attraction depicted them in an unfair light, already casted upon them by Stephen King’s novel and film ‘IT’ and ring leader Fips the Clown stated on live radio 5 that it was “all fun for them but for us it’s our livelihood”.
But Helen Dutch aka Daffy Dill, children’s entertainer from Dumfries and Galloway, felt that the ‘Carnival of Screams’ would not affect the clown profession in Scotland. She stated that “there has always been scary clowns” but also added that most people who are clowns “have very kind hearts” and they do it because they “love entertaining and want to lift spirits.”
The Alton Towers ride aims to home in on phobias of the public and create a terrifying experience, aimed primarily towards the adults and teenagers — not young children. Bob Baker who operates as children’s entertainer Bob Bonkers in Glasgow feels it is the adults that fear clowns rather than the children, “it’s more the adults that are scared, adults can pass their anxiety about clowns onto their children.” When entertaining, Mr Baker only wears makeup at outside events to allow children that are scared the opportunity to walk away, and has been taught how to approach children and apply clown makeup in a subtle way.
Despite the stigma attached to clowns the reality seems to be that children’s entertainers are not being directly affected and have been juggling these issues for many years.