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You are here: Home / Popular Culture / Open Thread: The Unbearable Clown-ness of Being

Open Thread: The Unbearable Clown-ness of Being

by Anne Laurie|  October 14, 20105:13 pm| 45 Comments

This post is in: Popular Culture

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Jon Ronson, a reporter probably best known for The Men Who Stare At Goats, interviews the two men who are Insane Clown Posse, niche-cult violent rappers now self-exposed as hardcore Christians:

I suddenly wonder, halfway through our interview, if I am looking at two men in clown make-up who are suffering from depression. I cautiously ask them this and Violent J immediately replies. “I’m medicated,” he says. “I have a lot of medicine that I take. For depression. Panic attacks are really a serious part of my life.” He points at Shaggy. “He’s gone through some things as well.”
__
“You do a show in front of how many hundreds or thousands of people.” Shaggy nods. “You’re giving your full being, your soul, to every person in that crowd, every pore in your body is sweating, you’re fighting consciousness, just to get it out of you, and after the show all your fans are partying, ‘Yeah! Rock and roll!’ And you’re just here.” He glances around the dressing room. “You’re just fucking sitting here.”
__
Violent J turns to him and says, softly, “If we moved furniture for a living we’d have a bad back or bad knees. We think for a living. We try to create. We try to constantly think of cool ideas. And every once in a while there’s a breakdown in the engine… I guess that’s the price you pay.”
__
Shaggy nods quietly. “I get anxiety and shit a lot,” he says. “And reading that stuff people write about us… It hurts.”
__
“Least talented band in the world,” Violent J says. “No talent. When I hear that I think, ‘Damn. Are we that different from people?'”
__
He looks as if he means it – as if he sometimes feels hopelessly stuck being him.
__
It’s just a terrible twist of fate for Insane Clown Posse that theirs is a form of creative expression that millions of people find ridiculous.

(h/t Andrew Sullivan)

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45Comments

  1. 1.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    October 14, 2010 at 5:20 pm

    L, G & $ covered this a while ago. I still don’t understand why no one seems to think there might possibly be massive amounts of Fucking With You going on here.

  2. 2.

    Cris

    October 14, 2010 at 5:22 pm

    It’s just a terrible twist of fate for Insane Clown Posse that theirs is a form of creative expression that millions of people find ridiculous.

    No it isn’t. If your stage persona involves wearing clown makeup, people finding you ridiculous is the expected outcome. That’s not a twist.

    And reading that stuff people write about us… It hurts.

    Hope you’re not a goon. When I was a regular reader of the Something Awful forums, Juggalos were up there with furries as a top target of derision.

  3. 3.

    Warren Terra

    October 14, 2010 at 5:27 pm

    Ronson may be best known for the nonfiction book that inspired The Men Who Stare At Goats but he is also the creator of a wonderful series of quirky half-hour documentaries on BBC Radio 4 (most titled “Jon Ronson On”, though I think a couple of one-off shows had individual titles), which people should catch if they get a chance. Just within the realm of possibly mad pop music superstars, his trip with Robbie Williams to investigate UFO sightings, in which the twoof them apparently want to believe, was a classic.

  4. 4.

    QDC

    October 14, 2010 at 5:28 pm

    If you don’t read the whole thing you’ll regret it for the rest of you life. “A giraffe is a fucking miracles…it’s got a neck like a dinosaur.”

  5. 5.

    Hunter Gathers

    October 14, 2010 at 5:29 pm

    Juggalos are the highest form of White Trash that exists on the planet. Ignorant, hateful, crank addled idiots. In clown makeup, no less. There’s a reason people trash Juggalos on a constant basis. They fucking deserve it.

  6. 6.

    Barb (formerly gex)

    October 14, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    Wait. They dis science for spoiling the enjoyment and mystery of life, but they take anti-depressants? Anti-science Christians need to live like the Amish or fuck off.

  7. 7.

    John - A Motley Moose

    October 14, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    I met both of them while I lived and worked in the Detroit area during the 90’s. A friend of mine, who owned a graphic design company in Royal Oak, did all of their posters and cd covers. This was a poorly kept secret amongst their inner circle. I’m surprised it didn’t come out 15 years ago. For that matter, neither one of them is very bright. I’m surprised they could continue to carry it off.

  8. 8.

    Sad_Dem

    October 14, 2010 at 5:32 pm

    Suicide isn’t funny, unless it’s a clown doing it.

  9. 9.

    Jrod the Cookie Thief

    October 14, 2010 at 5:33 pm

    As somebody who has, regretfully, actually heard a lot of ICP while growing up, let me just say that their claims that their old albums were secretly Christian are about as believable as a James O’ Keefe joint.

    Better backing beat, though.

  10. 10.

    Earl Butz

    October 14, 2010 at 5:33 pm

    “Least talented band in the world”

    Well, look at that. Violent J is finally right about something for the first time in his dumbshit redneck life. I hope he and his fat fucktard partner die in a fire; their music makes the people who listen to it even more stupid than they already are, which is the last thing our nation needs at the moment.

    Fucking talent, how does it work?

  11. 11.

    Davis X. Machina

    October 14, 2010 at 5:34 pm

    I have a student I see frequently carrying around an ICP biography. With post-it notes marking favorite passages.

    And it’s hardcover.

    We live in end times.

  12. 12.

    freelancer

    October 14, 2010 at 5:35 pm

    I agree with LGM that the invoking of Keats is the most hilarious thing in this piece.

    “A giraffe is a fucking miracle. It has a dinosaur-like neck. It’s yellow. Yeah, technically an elephant is not a miracle. Technically. They’ve been here for hundreds of years…”
    …
    “Thousands,” murmurs Shaggy.
    …
    “Have you ever stood next to an elephant, my friend?” asks Violent J. “A fucking elephant is a miracle. If people can’t see a fucking miracle in a fucking elephant, then life must suck for them, because an elephant is a fucking miracle. So is a giraffe.”
    …
    We watch the video for another few seconds: “It becomes apparent that Shaggy and J consider any understanding of the actual workings of these ‘miracles’ to be corrosive. To them, knowledge is seen as a threat… For ICP a true understanding of ‘fucking rainbows’ would reduce them to, as Keats put it, ‘the dull catalogue of common things’.”

    Burn.

    also:

    Magnetic force, man. What else is similar to that on this Earth? Nothing! Magnetic force is fascinating to us. It’s right there, in your fucking face. You can feel them pulling. You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. You can’t touch it. But there’s a fucking force there. That’s cool!”
    …
    Shaggy says the idea for the lyrics came when one of the ICP road crew brought some magnets into the recording studio one day and they spent ages playing with them in wonderment.
    …
    “Gravity’s cool,” Violent J says, “but not as cool as magnets.”

    ICP is a professional music act that have been around for 2 decades, yet didn’t know that speakers are powered by large magnets until just now.

  13. 13.

    13th Generation

    October 14, 2010 at 5:37 pm

    I’ve been wondering, and I may ask this in every future thread until I get a satisfactory answer.. Where the hell did Matako_Chan go?

  14. 14.

    Citizen Alan

    October 14, 2010 at 5:37 pm

    @John – A Motley Moose:

    That’s sad. I was never a fan, but after the “magnets, how do they work” bit took off, I held out hope that they were working the most brilliant piece of performance art in history. I suppose that was too much to hope for.

  15. 15.

    Zifnab

    October 14, 2010 at 5:41 pm

    @kommrade reproductive vigor:

    I still don’t understand why no one seems to think there might possibly be massive amounts of Fucking With You going on here.

    Occum’s Razor. Maybe this is one giant brilliant spoof. Maybe these guys are just a little bit crazy and a little bit stupid.

    I watched a documentary on how pop culture was selling out in the 90s – how good looking young people would be paid to show up at parties to dance on camera. And how this stock footage was then reused in rap albums and Sprite commercials and a half dozen other venues.

    ICP was featured prominently as a come-from-nothing band that wasn’t afraid to sell out for anyone or anything.

  16. 16.

    Andre

    October 14, 2010 at 5:49 pm

    @Cris:

    Hope you’re not a goon. When I was a regular reader of the Something Awful forums, Juggalos were up there with furries as a top target of derision.

    Furries were accepted by the Goons a while ago-there are plenty of :out” furry Goons these days.

    Juggalos, not so much.

    @kommrade reproductive vigor:

    L, G & $ covered this a while ago. I still don’t understand why no one seems to think there might possibly be massive amounts of Fucking With You going on here.

    It’s brought up fairly regularly that they are professional trolls in a certain sense (after all, white guys don’t slap facepaint on and rap about murder without any awareness of the absurdity of the whole thing) but the recent “conversion” comes across as more of a desperate mid-life crisis-type “reinvention” than an attempt to genuinely troll anybody.

    There comes a point in every troll’s life when simply everything they say is assumed to be a joke. At that point, most people either give up, or decide they don’t need to make the effort anymore and do whatever.

  17. 17.

    Amir_Khalid

    October 14, 2010 at 5:57 pm

    @13th Generation: I kind of miss her too. She once told me my name was really cool.

  18. 18.

    lacp

    October 14, 2010 at 6:00 pm

    ICP = Tea Party: The Next Generation

  19. 19.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 14, 2010 at 6:01 pm

    @13th Generation: She did mention something about classes starting back a while ago. On the other hand, maybe she was proselytized one time too many.

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 14, 2010 at 6:05 pm

    @Andre: In this context, what is a goon? And for that matter, what exactly is a juggalo?

  21. 21.

    Bubblegum Tate

    October 14, 2010 at 6:05 pm

    This is one of my favorite exchanges I’ve ever seen in music journalism:

    “Ah!” I gesticulate. “If you’re explaining to your five-year-old son what fog is, then why do you not want to meet scientists? Because they’re just like you, explaining things to people…”
    __
    “Well,” Violent J says, “science is… we don’t really… that’s like…” He pauses. Then he waves his hands as if to say, “OK, an analogy”: “If you’re trying to fuck a girl, but her mom’s home, fuck her mom! You understand? You want to fuck the girl, but her mom’s home? Fuck the mom. See?”

    Anyway, while ICP makes terrible, terrible music (I don’t even care too much about their content–their beats suck, and neither of those guys can rap worth shit), I think Violent J is a pretty smart, funny dude. his interview with The Onion AV Club is a good read.

  22. 22.

    Brick Oven Bill

    October 14, 2010 at 6:08 pm

    Bank Guard: “What the hell kind of a clown are you?”

    Chip: “A crying on the inside one, I guess.”

  23. 23.

    Jrod the Cookie Thief

    October 14, 2010 at 6:08 pm

    @13th Generation: She’s probably working on her thesis: Why My Race Is The Smartest and Yours Is Dumb.

  24. 24.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 14, 2010 at 6:12 pm

    @Zifnab: Merchants of Cool by Frontline. I thought there were more than two members of ICP?

    Fuckin’ magnets indeed.

  25. 25.

    Jrod the Cookie Thief

    October 14, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Goons are forum posters @ Something Awful. The SA forums are one of the two biggest meme producers on the internet, with the other being 4chan.

    Juggalos are obsessive ICP fans, recognizable by their painted faces, body odor, misogyny, and their love of fucking shit up.

    Basically, juggalos are the worst fandom in existence. Yes, worse than Sonic kiddies. Worse than shippers. Worse than furry Sonic shippers.

  26. 26.

    The Pale Scot

    October 14, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    If anyone hasn’t seen the spoof, here it is,

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGbdomlBnJM

    2 weeks later and it still cracks me up,
    50% of Americans distilled into a 3 minute video

    How do suitcases always know where to meet you?

    I might get a tattoo of that.

  27. 27.

    Anne Laurie

    October 14, 2010 at 6:14 pm

    @John – A Motley Moose:
    __

    For that matter, neither one of them is very bright. I’m surprised they could continue to carry it off.

    Two quotes:

    Arthur C. Clarke: “It has yet to be proven that intelligence is a survival trait.”

    My first-grade teacher, Sister John Edwards: “There are two kinds of racing greyhounds that get put to sleep after their first day — the ones who are too dumb to chase the mechanical rabbit, and the ones who are too smart to chase the mechanical rabbit.”

    For two not-very-bright-guys from the slums of Detroit, they’ve made a pretty good living, yes? And they’ve worked hard at their trade, even if it’s a disreputable trade, and even if they haven’t worked as hard as professional piano-movers. As an unpaid underblogger, fellow-sympathy requires me to respect the effort even if I don’t respect the results.

  28. 28.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 14, 2010 at 6:15 pm

    @Jrod the Cookie Thief:

    Juggalos are obsessive ICP fans, recognizable by their painted faces, body odor, misogyny, and their love of fucking shit up.

    How sad.

  29. 29.

    John - A Motley Moose

    October 14, 2010 at 6:16 pm

    @Citizen Alan:

    I held out hope that they were working the most brilliant piece of performance art in history.

    Something like Joaquin Phoenix? Unfortunately, no. ICP is strictly wysiwyg.

    I met them at my friend’s business when they were looking at some poster comps for a new show. I was invited to the show and the after-party. Once was enough. I never went to another. That was about the only non-positive memory of the Detroit music scene I have from those years. Admittedly, my main interest was the Detroit blues club scene. That was more about hanging out and toking with some excellent musicians. One group I met outside of the blues scene was Sponge. That was around the time they released Wax Ecstatic. Vinnie and the other members of Sponge left a much more positive memory than Shaggy or Violent J.

  30. 30.

    Jrod the Cookie Thief

    October 14, 2010 at 6:16 pm

    @arguingwithsignposts: You’d expect a posse to have more than two people, but no. It’s just Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J. They do a have pile of hangers-on from the days they tried to run a record label, like, uh… actually, I forget their names. IIRC most of them were more talented than ICP, but not talented enough to not suck, and they faded away.

  31. 31.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 14, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    @Brick Oven Bill:
    I demand that you stop posing as someone you’re not, sockpuppet.

  32. 32.

    sherifffruitfly

    October 14, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    I remember with great fondness the wonderful days of lolling at christian side hug….

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZnmTiqEikg

    lols – it never gets old.

    Gawd bless christians.

  33. 33.

    Comrade Mary

    October 14, 2010 at 6:28 pm

    @John – A Motley Moose: Huh. I know a graphic design person in Royal Oak who, thank goodness, had nothing to do with them. (But I did run a quick Google check to confirm it.)

  34. 34.

    RSA

    October 14, 2010 at 6:33 pm

    @QDC:
    __

    If you don’t read the whole thing you’ll regret it for the rest of you life.

    I was thinking that I may regret finding out about the Insane Clown Posse for the rest of my life. Though the SNL spoof was spot-on: “Fuckin’ blankets. How do they work?”

  35. 35.

    theturtlemoves

    October 14, 2010 at 6:33 pm

    @John – A Motley Moose: So, one of my favorite bands came out of Detroit in the late 80s, then dropped off the face of the earth after a few albums. Rhythm Corps. Ever catch them back in the day?

  36. 36.

    Cris

    October 14, 2010 at 6:34 pm

    @Bubblegum Tate: Pretty much any interview on the AV Club is a good read.

  37. 37.

    cleek

    October 14, 2010 at 6:36 pm

    my favorite bit was this:

    So all those unpleasant characters in the songs,” I ask, “like the narrator in I Stuck Her With My Wang, they’re examples of people you shouldn’t be?”
    …
    “Huh?” Violent J says.
    …
    “Well, it’s very unpleasant,” I say. “‘I stuck her with my wang. She hit me in the balls. I grabbed her by her neck. And I bounced her off the walls. She said it was an accident and then apologised. But I still took my elbow and blackened both her eyes.’ That’s clearly a song about domestic violence. So your Christian message is… don’t be like that man?”
    …
    “Huh?” Violent J repeats, mystified.
    …
    There’s a silence.
    …
    “I Stuck Her With My Wang is funny,” Violent J says.

  38. 38.

    xaneroxane

    October 14, 2010 at 6:56 pm

    @cleek: yeah, that was my “favorite” too… Bleah: Ignorance WAS bliss before I read that article. Anne Laurie, I want those 5 minutes of my life back!

  39. 39.

    John - A Motley Moose

    October 14, 2010 at 6:56 pm

    @Comrade Mary: My friend did the illustration for the Made in Detroit campaign. He also did all of the graphics work for Young Country radio. His place was on the second floor of a building on Woodward. It was actually just south of the freeway, so I guess it was technically Pleasant Ridge. He had a ton of contacts in the Detroit music scene. He also had season tickets at the State Theater courtesy of one of his clients. I got to use those a time or two. I remember using them to go to a Peter Frampton show that had Alannah Miles (Black Velvet) as an opening act. She was either extremely drunk or higher than hell, or both. It made for high entertainment. Especially when she climbed on top of an 8 ft tall speaker enclosure. The dance the security guys and roadies did to try to be in position to catch her if she fell was highly amusing. On the other hand, Frampton was great.

  40. 40.

    John - A Motley Moose

    October 14, 2010 at 6:58 pm

    @theturtlemoves: I heard mention of them, but I think they were mainly before my time in Detroit. I was there from 92-97.

  41. 41.

    New Yorker

    October 14, 2010 at 9:07 pm

    I read the article and decided that if future historians wanted to show the zeitgeist of the time right about when America imploded, they could probably do no better than this article.

    It’s hard to decide what my “favorite” part of the article was. It might be this:

    “Who looks at the stars at night and says, ‘Oh, those are gaseous forms of plutonium’?”

    Um….plutonium?

  42. 42.

    Trueblood

    October 14, 2010 at 10:31 pm

    Imagine if, instead of wild pseudonyms, clown face paint and ridiculous raps, Violent J and Shaggy were two normal looking white guys who sang lyrics written for them in melodies written for them over music that was written for them, and their fans were tween girls. Do I think juggalos are on-par with obsessive tweens? In some ways, yes, because they buy into a product produced for their audience. As the ICP, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope found their niche, they still run psychopathic records, albeit with a smaller roster than they had in their hey-day, and they have a distribution deal with a UMG subsidiary. I’m no juggalo, but haters hate because they don’t have.

  43. 43.

    forked tongue

    October 14, 2010 at 11:14 pm

    For those interested in pursuing this subject, there is always good commentary on the ICP and the Juggalos at the Friends of Tom forum:

    http://friendsoftom.com/forum/index.php/topic,6791.0.html

    http://friendsoftom.com/forum/index.php/topic,5681.0.html

    tp://friendsoftom.com/forum/index.php/topic,7340.msg162226.html#msg162226

    …etc…

    Friends of Tom is a discussion forum devoted to The Best Show on WFMU, hosted by Tom Scharpling, which has some claim to being the source of ICP’s recent notoriety among comedians. It was Tom and his guest Paul F. Tompkins who did an immortal riff on the “Gathering of the Juggalos” video ad, which in turn came to the attention of Saturday Night Live.

    Check it out is all I’m sayin,’ yo.

  44. 44.

    John Bird

    October 14, 2010 at 11:20 pm

    Hey, you can’t not make fun of these guys, but Shaggy being up front about having an anxiety disorder to the press (which he always has been) is actually kind of gutsy, in my opinion. It took him off stage during one early show, from what I understand, and instead of making up bullshit, he was open about why to the press and to the fans.

    Biographies of celebrities, usually posthumous ones, often reveal they suffered from depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and other disorders – and covered by claiming alcoholism, which is LESS stigmatizing in the entertainment business. Shaggy didn’t. That’s pretty cool.

  45. 45.

    NobodySpecial

    October 14, 2010 at 11:30 pm

    @kommrade reproductive vigor:

    I still don’t understand why no one seems to think there might possibly be massive amounts of Fucking With You going on here.

    Shit, I knew the whole thing was a put on back in the days of The Great Milenko. I can’t call myself a ‘fan’, but there were funny bits in parts of ideas there. They also took pains at that time to describe themselves as ‘not shit’ and ‘worthless’.

    How juggalos came into being as anything other than a joke is the worrying part.

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