Curse of the Death Clowns

There are other "death clowns" out there (even if we ignore the obvious Phantom Clowns, Killer Klowns and Gacy, who was known as the Killer Clown):

• Brandon Lee, died in a freak accident (itself following the "curse" that killed his father) while making the film version of The Crow - a character sporting a very death clown look: The Crow Face (as noted by cryptodan on the Cryptomundo entry linked to above). That said nothing else unpleasant has happened to any other wearers, in particular the wrestlers Sting and Raven who are probably the longest running wearers of the look. Nothing yet anyway.

• The Insane Clown Posse have a rabidly loyal fanbase, The Juggalos, who (thanks to the bands violent rap routine) count among their number more than their fair share unsavoury characters.
  In February 2006, Jacob Robida, went on a murder spree, killing three.
  This was followed by an outbreak of violence from a group of Juggalo in June of that year leaving dozens injured. The Seattle Times reported it as "For several nights last month, a group of thugs with black hooded sweat shirts pulled tight over their heads, including at least one in "angry" clown makeup, terrorized visitors to Pierce County's Fort Steilacoom Park" and "Victims of the Fort Steilacoom violence reported that one woman was wearing black clownlike eye makeup and other attackers were dressed in black hoodies, Guttu said. One person carried a machete. The Insane Clown Posse is often identified by the symbol of a laughing clown carrying a meat cleaver or hatchet."
  In February 2007 Bryan Grove stabbed his girlfriend's mother to death. She (and other Juggalos) are also charged with murder. The Rocky Mountain News has an article on this and I couldn't help noticing the description of the girlfriend: "Tess Damm of Lafayette calls herself a "Juggalette" who designed her MySpace .com page with several pictures of two rappers dressed in clown makeup.". The end of that article includes a number of other cases.

Wikipedia has more on the Evil Clown archetype, of which The Joker is part (disappointingly I can't find much else on the mention they give to Siats - cannibalistic clowns from Ute mythology). There is also this interesting piece on "Coulrophobia & The Trickster".

On the Nature of the Death Clown

The Death Clown is no ordinary Fool. By donning the mask they separate themselves from the normal conventions of society and the role itself gives them free license push things a far as they'll go (and beyond), inhabiting the true nature of the Trickster.

I'm very much reminded of the ukukus, the main participants in the Qoyllur Rit'i festival, who completely adopt the half-bear Trickster persona once they don the traditional mask until the final ceremony high on the glacier where massive sleep deprivation (and in the past ritualised battles) can prove fatal.

Elsewhere you can see parallels with Pulcinella (later the Punch of Punch and Judy) and even The Mask, the latter having an interesting overview on Wikipedia:

Furthermore, the mask affects the personality of the wearer by removing all personal social inhibitions. Taken another way, the wearer takes off his metaphorical masks - his social inhibitions - by putting on an actual mask. Not only is the wearer's Id totally in control, but the power imbued by the Mask gives him or her the ability to realize those impulses.

Of course, this kind of sanctioned madness will be draining and variations of the quote I give at the top of the entry keep circulating. It seems to come from his last interview:

He is here in London filming the latest episode of the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight (Bale plays Batman, Ledger the Joker). It is a physically and mentally draining role - his Joker is a 'psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy,' he says cheerfully and, as often happens when he throws himself into a part, he is not sleeping much.

'Last week, I probably slept an average of two hours a night,' he said. 'I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted and my mind was still going.' One night, he took an Ambien sleeping pill, which didn't work. He took a second one and fell into a stupor, only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing.

Source (reprinted from the NY Times)

There is also a longer interview with Nicholson about the dangers of being an actor and prescription medicine which uses suitably apocalyptic language:

Hollywood, Nicholson said, is like a monster. It is to be ridden, understood and conquered. There are rules of engagement, and those who do not grasp them can be swept aside.

...

Nicholson is a survivor, the biggest beast in the jungle. He’s a rogue who, when not at his Colorado home, delights in living in the road known as Bad Boy Drive (Mulholland Drive, Beverly Hills, the old haunt of Warren Beatty and the late Marlon Brando). For most of his working life he has never explained and never complained.

Ledger, on the other hand, was a victim: a young man who pushed himself too hard to live in the big time. He looked set to achieve a great career but there was something lacking. A ruthlessness, perhaps, or a thick enough skin to deal with the demands of celebrity and the publicity machines of the film studios.

One of his latest roles has special relevance. Nicholson played an iconic deranged Joker in the 1989 film Batman. Ledger has delivered such a striking and frightening Joker in the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight, to be released this summer, that it easily matches the original. Michael Caine, who reprised his role as the butler in the film to Christian Bale’s Batman, told me a few months ago that it was so good it made him forget his lines.

Yet away from the studio Ledger was nervous and uneasy in the spotlight. That vital flaw was exacerbated by his personal and professional life. There was a broken engagement in September to his actress fiancée Michelle Williams, mother of his two-year-old daughter Matilda. There was overwork, with The Dark Knight, a complex role in I’m Not There and most recently a punishing schedule as the lead in the director Terry Gilliam’s film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. He was taking the make-believe world of acting too seriously for his own good.

Source

It certainly does seem he had worked himself into a state where he could have become a danger to himself, which does seem to recall the ukukus.

There also other odd things emerging from Ledger's last days.

The last set of pictures from the Imaginarium set include this of Ledger as a Pierrot, a sad clown and fool with, according to some claims, very early origins including this startling statement "It is also claimed that in ancient times, the broad red mouth of the character was created by physically cutting the mouth to make it larger" i.e. exactly the same a Chelsea Grin we flagged as being a feature of the current celluloid incarnation of The Joker which draws on early legends and stories (although I'd want a solid source for that claim).

eLLUMINATI and Inside the Comsic Cube look at odd aspects of this and also have photographs from the set (from the David Icke forum), including this startling one of Ledger being hung with arcane symbols drawn on his forehead (including a triangle with a circle in it!!):

And going back to the start: Just how ordinary is the Fool? I notice that although Inside the Cosmic Cube make the link to the Hanged Man tarot card (despite the fact it doesn't really fit the symbolism of the card), eLLUMINATI includes The Fool tarot card in their entry, and the interpretation is interesting:

So filled with visions and daydreams is he, that he doesn't see the cliff he is likely to fall over. At his heel, a small dog harries him

I'm afraid it is very easy, when ill/addicted/exhausted, to mess up your medication - I was ill many moons ago and discovered that I was taking twice the safe doze for paracetamol thanks to poor product labelling and not being on the ball. When you aren't fully connected with the real world and life's troubles are nipping at your heels, the precipice is always nearby.

The Killing Joke

Entertainment Weekly have said:

After Brokeback, Ledger's characters began to take a darker turn. There was the drug-addiction drama Candy, which I fear I'll never be able to watch again without cringing, and his forthcoming turn as a bedraggled, scary-looking Joker in this summer's Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight. I'm sure no one will be able to watch that one either without seeing unintended ironies and eerie portents of doom.

So let us do just that and take a look at The Killing Joke.

Alan Moore's The Killing Joke is one of the main references for the film The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger was given a copy, according to his interview with Newsarama:

DRE: Have they given or asked you to read certain comics?

HL: The Killing Joke was the one that was handed to me.

The odd thing is that he doesn't seem to have finished them - which is unusual as The Killing Joke in particular isn't that long and can be read in a sitting (even if it warrants re-reading after). One can only wonder why. From IESB's interview:

IESB: Were there any specific comics you based your version off of?

LEDGER: Well, The Killing Joke is the one that's being passed around and Arkham Asylum kind of. But I really tried to read the comics and put it down.

However, the comic book Joker doesn't seem to be the basis of the distinctive look Legder is sporting and Christopher Knowles (author of Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes) has delved deep into things and concluded it is based on Killing Joke, the band (who notoriously got heavily into the occult and in 1982 decamped to Iceland to sit out the apocalypse). Specifically the look of Jaz Coleman, an example of his look can be seen in the video for the song "Hosannas From the Basements Of Hell":

Paul Raven, the bassist from Killing Joke, also died in his sleep, three months ago on October 20th, 2007 - is that a Raven/Crow link I see looming again?

Inside the Cosmic Cube points out that Terry Gilliam was in the Python's whose sketch The Funniest Joke in the World featured a joke that kills and is sometimes known as The Killing Joke.

On This Day in History / A Clownwork Orange

Wikipedia provides us with a few interesting picks for the day Heath Ledger died: 22nd January. So on this day in history we see:

• 1905 - Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg, beginning of the 1905 revolution.
• 1946 - Creation of the Central Intelligence Group, forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Births:

• 1561 - Sir Francis Bacon, English philosopher (d. 1626) - centre of the Shakespeare didn't write them conspiracy
• 1869 - Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk (d. 1916)
• 1906 - Robert E. Howard, American author (d. 1936) - wrote Cthulhu Mythos stories, which link in with Arkham, as does Grant Morrison's Batman story: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, which, as we have seen, was also used as a reference in Dark Knight. Inside the Cosmic Cube also highlight the Sirius angle: "Why so Sirius?" and "A Sirius House on a Sirius Earth." This was, of course, a big theme for Robert Anton Wilson. and Temple's The Sirius Mystery.
• 1959 - Linda Blair, American actress
• 1968 - Heath, Japanese bass guitarist (X Japan) - freaky coincidence

Weirdly, 22nd January had been designated as a kind of Orange/Demon Day because of the various conjunctions. I can't explain it properly but Etemenanki do and they have plenty of diagrams and oddity. Orange Gate 2008 and the Demon Days - very evocative.

As has been pointed out in various places, Heath Ledger's full name is Heathcliff Andrew Ledger after the literary figure (his sister was named Catherine, the other lead character in Wuthering Hieghts), who also died in bed (haunted to death?), and Wikipedia describes the character as suitably demonic:

A dark-skinned foundling discovered on the streets of Liverpool and raised by the Earnshaw family of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff's past and early childhood before his adoption is not expanded upon by Brontë; in keeping with the supernatural themes present within the novel, it is speculated at one point that Heathcliff might in fact be a malevolent changeling

This is all picked up in the analysis of the supernatural elements of Wuthering Heights:

The novel contains many Gothic and supernatural elements, although the true nature of the latter is always ambiguous. The mystery of Heathcliff's parentage is never solved. He is described by Hindley as an 'imp of Satan' in chapter four, and by the end of the novel Nelly Dean is entertaining notions that Heathcliff may be some hideous ghoul or vampire. The awesome but unseen presence of Satan is also alluded to at several points in the novel, and it is noted in chapter three that 'no clergyman will undertake the duties of pastor' at the local chapel, which has fallen into dereliction.

Ghosts also play a role in the novel. Lockwood has a horrible vision of Catherine (the elder) as a child, appearing at the window of her old chamber at Wuthering Heights and begging to be allowed in. Heathcliff believes this story of Catherine's ghostly return, and late in the novel behaves as though he has seen her ghost himself. When Heathcliff dies, he is found in the bedroom with the window open, raising the possibility that Catherine's ghost entered Wuthering Heights just as Lockwood saw in his dream. At the end of the novel, Nelly Dean reports that various superstitious locals have claimed to see Catherine and Heathcliff's ghosts roaming the moors. Lockwood, however, discounts the idea of "unquiet slumbers for those sleepers in that quiet earth."

In 2003 film The Order the character played by Ledger gets attacked by demons and the story revolves around Sin Eaters and the Black Pope - one was elected on 20th January 2008.

Going back to the topic of orange - Loren Coleman (and others have flagged this) but it is worth a look at the fact that among the material he used for reference was A Clockwork Orange, as discussed in an interview with MTV also replete with "unintended ironies and eerie portents of doom":

MTV: There's this little film called "The Dark Knight" you're doing ...

Ledger: Done.

MTV: Michael Caine told me recently that you'd created "one of the scariest performances" he'd ever seen. Is that part of the goal, to scare the crap out of people next summer?

Ledger: It was one of the goals, yeah.

...

MTV: Is there anything redeeming to this character?

Ledger: Not at all. He has zero empathy. You'll just have to wait and see. It's the most fun I've had with a character and probably will ever have.

...

MTV: Christian Bale has cited "A Clockwork Orange" and Sid Vicious as two inspirations for your performance.

Ledger: Yeah. "A Clockwork Orange" was a very early starting point for Christian and I. But we kind of flew far away from that pretty quickly and into another world altogether. And Sid Vicious, yeah, I guess so. There's a bit of everything in him. There's nothing that consistent. It was an exhausting process. I actually had quite a bit of time off between scenes — weeks sometimes. But it was required because whenever I was working, it exhausted me to the bone. At the end of the day, I couldn't move. I couldn't talk. I was absolutely wrecked. If I had to do that every day, I couldn't have done what I did. The schedule really permitted me to exhaust myself.

A Clockwork Orange also featured a maniac with distinctive eye make-up:

He is explicitly described as a clown in some discussion, most pointedly this from USA Today:

From the ultra-violent hooligans in the Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange to The Joker in Batman, clown characters are often villains, not a child's best friend.

Not also that there worst excesses are committed when wearing masks, Alex in particular sporting a fine dick-nosed model (recalling Pulcinella/Punch). You can see the masks on these pages showing how to make Droog and Alex costumes.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the film is, apparently, inspired by CIA mind control work. Pity I can't find the brainwashing scene on YouTube, so enjoy this instead, in which Alex setting about his Droogs:

For a final word I'll go to the When Clowns Go Bad who, in an entry called A Clownwork Orange, look at the house-breaking scene in the film and conclude:

Alex is a rather Evil Clown. And in this guise does he commit his most heinous act. Is he feeling immortal, like so many adolescents? Is he licentious while obscured behind the thin farcical veil he wears? Or is the guise of a Clown enough to drive any wearer 'round the bend.

Can a clockwork orange tick?

Just so you can keep things ticking along here is some other discussion, debate and speculation showing the current edge of the Ledger synchronicity-ripple.

• Inside the Cosmic Cube do a big update touching on a whole range of topics (including the Chelsea Grin aspect we noted above). Well worth a read even if you don't buy into the weirdness
• Christopher Knowles follows up on some of the alchemy angles raised to suggest links to Rubeo.
• The Daily Behemoth ponders various angles (including an ARG one) and wonders if "might just be that moment when the 'synchrosphere' goes mainstream"
• Ellis Taylor looks at the numerology as well as noting the various birthdays and festivals including the fact that 22nd January is also "the Festival of the Doorways of the Horizon are Opened" and "Festival of the Muses"