How to draw pennywise the dancing clown

How to Draw Pennywise - Really Easy Drawing Tutorial

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Learn how to draw a great looking Pennywise with easy, step-by-step drawing instructions, and video tutorial. You can now easily create a beautiful Pennywise drawing.

Complete Pennywise drawing

Jump to the step-by-step instructions.

Pennywise the Dancing Clown, also known as It, was the title character of the Stephen King novel, a television series, miniseries, and films.

Who is Pennywise? "The character is an ancient cosmic evil which preys upon the children of Derry, Maine, roughly every 27 years, using a variety of powers that include the ability to shapeshift, manipulate, and go unnoticed by adults."

The idea of a scary clown is based on the uncanny valley, a hypothesis which "suggests that humanoid objects which imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers. "

Scroll down for a downloadable PDF of this tutorial.

While clown-like actors have been a part of entertainment since ancient times, the development of modern circus clown makeup - complete with a white face, red triangles, and an exaggerated grin - has been making some viewers uncomfortable since 1801. Numerous spin-offs and spoofs of the scary clown motif have been made, such as the "Gutter Clowns" of the Disney animated series Pepper Ann.

Would you like to draw a cartoon of the villainous Pennywise the clown? This easy, step-by-step character drawing tutorial is here to show you how. All you will need is a pencil, an eraser, and a sheet of paper.

If you liked this tutorial, see also the following drawing guides: Oogie Boogie from the Nightmare before Christmas, Frankenstein's Monster, and Mike Wazowski from Monster Inc..

Step-by-Step Instructions for Drawing Pennywise

How to Draw a Great Looking Pennywise for Kids, Beginners, and Adults - Step 1

1. Begin by drawing an oval. This will help you to form the clown's face.

Easy Pennywise Drawing - Step 2

2. Erase two portions at the top of the oval and replace them with irregular curved lines. This forms the clown's high forehead and hairline.

Easy Pennywise Drawing - Step 3

3. Erase the bottom of the oval. Use curved lines to contour the cheeks and chin. Use additional curved lines to enclose the ears, and detail them on the inside with curved lines.

Easy Pennywise Drawing - Step 4

4. Draw Pennywise's eyes. Use curved lines to enclose the teardrop-shaped clown makeup above his eyes. Then, use curved lines to enclose the shapes of the eyes. Shade a small circle in each to indicate the pupil. Finally, extend two curved lines upwards from each eye, and allow them to meet at a point. Draw curved lines between them to indicate the furrowed brow.

Easy Pennywise Drawing - Step 5

5. Continue sketching the face. Use pairs of curved lines to continue the clown makeup below the eyes and across the cheeks. Enclose inverted triangular shapes with rounded points to form the sneering mouth and the paint around the mouth. Use vertical lines to indicate the teeth. Finally, use curved lines to enclose the three-lobed shape of the nose.

The outline drawing of Pennywise's head and face is now ready.

Easy Pennywise Drawing - Step 6

6. Draw the neck ruffle. Begin by extending curved lines from the bottom of the head. Connect the first and the last using a long, curved line. Then, use overlapping curved lines to form the ruffled edge.

Easy Pennywise Drawing - Step 7

7. Extend curved lines below the opposite side of the face. Connect some with curved lines, forming overlapping layers of the ruffle.

Add More Details to Your Pennywise Picture - Step 8

8. Use a series of overlapping curved lines to form the clown hair. Texture the hair with curved lines.

Complete the Outline of Your Pennywise Drawing - Step 9

9. Use curved lines to form the shoulders.

Color Your Pennywise Drawing

Color your cartoon of Pennywise the clown. He typically wears white and red makeup. Then, head over to our cartoon characters drawing section for more of your favorite heroes and villains.

Easy, step by step Pennywise drawing tutorial

Click HERE to save the tutorial to Pinterest!

Pennywise Drawing Tutorial - Easy & Fun Printable Pages

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I ♥ Derry: Tommy Lee Wallace's It 30 Years Old

Articles

12:36 November 18, 2020

"King knows for sure: everyone has their own Pennywise, who has been on their heels since childhood, and he does not have to be a clown at all," - 30 years ago, the premiere of the TV movie "It" by Tommy Lee Wallace took place. Made according to the precepts and rules of television of the 90s, more like a play than a film, Wallace's picture for someone is just a harbinger of a more powerful (successful) attempt to recreate the horror of Derry on the screen (we are talking about Muschietti's adaptation). But "It" 1990 years old, devoid of advanced special effects, permission to demonstrate violent scenes related to children, fake blood scares with the kind of horror that you invent when your hands are tied. Nastasya Gorbachevskaya talks about how this adaptation was created.

Ahead of Stephen King and the film director, be it Tommy Lee Wallace or Andy Muschietti, in front of Derry, in front of the library with a glass transition from the children's section to the adult section, the Aladdin cinema and the Kenduskeg wasteland, higher than Paul Bunyan and brighter than the yellow cape of Georgie boy, in front of them all, the dancing clown Pennywise rushes in the forefront. Emblem, symbol, figurine on a shelf, print on a T-shirt, tattoo on the shoulder: a creepy clown with tousled hair, a colorful outfit and two (three, ten) rows of teeth. "We're all flying down here!" - bursting laughter promises popcorn and cotton candy, and instead of a fair holiday, the most terrible nightmares come to life. If you try to retell the plot of the novel in a nutshell (in this case, the movie, in general, is forced to become a retelling of the book), everything will run into paradoxical cat and mouse: children run from the clown all over the city, 27 years pass (30, eternity), and now adults are already running back and forth across Maine after and away from Pennywise. The perfect soldier of the pop culture front: there are hardly any non-fans who can name all seven losers by name, but it will not be difficult for them to recognize Pennywise. The sad irony is that, by and large, "It" is hardly a story about a scary sewer clown.

Stephen King wrote the novel for a long time and painfully, and after the publication on September 15, 1986, he fought with critics in the same way: too long, too lengthy, too confusing and cruel - nothing is sacred for the king of horror! Naturally or in spite of, nevertheless, the book became a bestseller, sales did their job: “It” took place on the shelves of readers, and the shelves of the writer occupied awards. The love of King and filmmakers is mutual to a manic obsession, but, alas, it is not always equally fruitful. The end of the 80s was a good time for this marriage of literature and the screen: "Stand by Me" almost simultaneously with the release of "It" broke records of box office and audience adoration (King and Rob Reiner applauded each other), and at 19In 1989, Mary Lambert's "Pet Cemetery" scared everyone terribly.

The ABC channel, having acquired the film rights to It, was determined to ride this wave of success: at first, George Romero took the job, but did not grow together. He planned to compact the novel into at least eight episodes (no less than six), the channel did not share the fuse of the author's ambitions: the quota was first reduced to three, and then completely cut down to two. Screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen (author of the adaptation of Carrie 1976 years old) approached the tome: is it a joke to turn more than 1000 pages into 200? Tommy Lee Wallace was invited to the vacated role of director. Prior to that, he worked several times with John Carpenter as an artist and managed to independently shoot the continuation of the cult "Halloween" under serial number three: the only one that did without Michael Myers, and belonged to the franchise with only one sign. It is difficult to judge now whether it was a lucky coincidence or an evil fate: before the script was sent, Wallace did not hold the book in his hands, but, of course, he knew about King firsthand. Having received the manuscript, the director refused to do what Muschietti and Doberman later embodied with passion: to divide the life of losers into before and after, to break King’s systematized and parallel structure into independent volumes, breaking up the dynamics of the mirror narrative. TV version 1990 years is a retrospective look, like the novel itself: a story about grown-up children who are trying to remember what happened that very summer, when they supposedly managed to defeat the evil clown.

Wallace's project was held hostage from the very beginning, and today it is in even narrower grip: on the one hand, the original novel hangs like a rock and the eternal cries of readers: "The book is better!" On the other, Muschietti's two-volume book with a monstrous budget and pompous CGI bravados is propped up: the first chapter broke box office records in the R category. There is also palpable cramping: a crowd of people (there are seven of them only in the club of losers) must be pushed into a square frame of 1. 33:1. But the trouble is not only in the literal screen format, but also in the strict broadcasting charter. The first season of "Twin Peaks" has started - television seems to have begun to gradually change, but it was still an uncompromising and hardened organism, not ready to accept the risky rules of the game. One of the main commandments of the blue screen was: children should not be endangered. But isn't that what Stephen King wrote about?

Filmmakers had to get out so as not to disturb the established moral bar: blood only in the sink, in photographs and inside the damned balloons. If you do not know in advance, then you may not notice: the hooligans, led by Henry Bowers, put a knife to Ben's body, but do not injure him - the audience's perception itself paints a picture of the injury (almost like Hitchcock in the murder scene in the bathroom). The budget, redistributed in favor of the salaries of numerous actors (funds colossal for TV, but still not exhaustive), was only enough for a stubby spider (the chthonic monster in the finale), which actress Annette O'Toole called "the king crab of Alaska"; Stanley's severed head was filmed by locking Richard Maser in an iron refrigerator drawer (ironic for those who remember the book), and more often than graphics, animation was used in post-production.

What is left for horror authors when the 80s are breathing down their backs, literally flooded with gallons of fake blood? Almost the main charm of the genre (in the case of slashers for sure) was the demonstration of new sophisticated murders, spectacular show-stoppers, savoring the spectacle of violence. How to make a clown be scary on screen if he can only stand in the corner, playfully wave his hand and smile periodically?

The creators are left with only the power of the word and the pauses between: the actors, though they can act out the horror on their distorted faces, scene after scene, but more often they remember and endlessly tell each other about how scared they were. Perhaps this is the alpha and omega of the novel: the confession of adults, accomplished and successful people about how they were creepy and lonely in childhood, and they were afraid, of course, not of a clown. Wallace's "It" is not really a TV series or a TV movie - it's a play filmed on camera, almost naked dramaturgy, a play performed with the help of lines stolen from the pages of Stephen King.

At first glance, "It" pretends to be a theatrical fairy tale: if not about a troll under a bridge (Norwegian folklore inspired King), then about Snow White-Beverly and her six dwarfs lost in the thicket. The losers are like commedia dell'arte masks, nominal stencils, little men in multi-colored caps: Quiet, Grumpy, Veselchak, Clever - characteristic caricatures, equalized in a sense of their fear. In Wallace's optics, both children and then adults form a single closed system, a wandering mechanism, a played ensemble, crumbling into fragments and reassembling, by and large existing only by this unity. One more line spoken aloud, one more monologue and one memory, and each of the characters becomes the bearer of his own tragedy with a human face. Although not Greek or Shakespearean, instead of Othello, Ophelia and Horatio, there are only Bill, Ben, Mike and Stan, but their quiet drama of an unhappy childhood is more tangible and understandable to everyone in Maine, in Michigan or Kansas, it is quite possible that in Danish kingdom too. Injuries that have become everyday, be it the death of a brother, the indifference of parents, domestic violence, racism, complexes, blindness and deafness of neighbors - all this was feared by the losers, and not by the bloodthirsty clown. Wallace, laying out his performance into mise-en-scenes and acts, was well aware of this report: his losers become stronger every time they say their feelings out loud. When there is no need to sit, clasping your knees with your hands, one on one in a dark closet in front of your horror, but you can share the fear equally among everyone, there is less and less of it each time.

Only periodically the theatrical action is interrupted by the circus. A calliope plays, the curtain opens, a smart entertainer appears. Tim Curry, elevated to the Olympus of adoration for this role, is a clown at least a real (analog, if you will). There is no ephemeralness, transparency or hints in it, Pennywise is a tangible and concrete avatar of fear, you can touch it with your hands, and the children's world is primarily tactile - reality is known by touch. But, of course, it is not he himself who is terrible, but the fact that he knows the most secret and most intimate, which sometimes you cannot even know about yourself.

And yet, the paradox and unshakable strength of this dramaturgy, which concerns matters much darker than dolls, werewolves and blood in the shell, is that it is indeed a relative of a fairy tale. Only in a fairy tale can Juliet come to life if Romeo wants it with all his might. Olivia Hussey played the young Capulet in the film by Franco Zeffirelli, here she is the wife of the leader of the losers Bill Denbrow, a stutterer in the past, a best-selling author of novels in the future. Audra could not stand the meeting with the dead fires in Ono's lair, fell into a trance and forgot herself. Wallace screens King's finale in interlinear form: Bill and Audra, limp and indifferent, rush along Kansas Street on Silver's old bicycle, and Juliet comes back to life. "Silver, go ahead!" - the child believed that it was possible to overtake the devil himself on it, the adult imagined that it would be possible to cheat death. This is the whole difference, children believe in the magic of ordinary and favorite things, adults forget how magic works.

Tommy Lee Wallace's "It" is not horror itself, nor panic, nor illness, but a feeling of goosebumps, ripples of breath, and oppressive foreboding. The scary/not scary criterion, as well as better/worse comparisons, can hardly be measured with a thermometer or a ruler, they collapse and scatter into different voices. For those who were born in the 80s, it is likely that there is no scarier clown than the one that Tommy Lee Wallace had in the noughties - Muschietti. But the fear that hides behind the white skin of the dancing scoundrel will be common in another 27 years. King knows for sure: everyone has their own Pennywise, who has been on his heels since childhood, and he does not have to be a clown at all.

IMAGES OF CLOWNING IN AMERICAN HORROR FILM0001

UDK 7. 038.53 https://doi.org/10.34680/2411-7951.2021.2(35).258-262

S.A. Malenko, E.O. Petrov

: IMAGES OF CLOWNING IN AMERICAN

HORROR FILM

Hollywood in the variety of its genres turned out to be, perhaps, the most significant world cinema platform, most sensitive to the essence of Carl Jung's theory of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Particularly vivid visualizations of her were undertaken in American horror films in the images of the most odious characters, symbolizing the archetype of the "Shadow". This symbolism turned out to be especially relevant precisely because mass culture has abandoned positive ideals everywhere and the American horror film, through numerous shadow images, is persistently trying to express what is absolutely impossible to do within the framework of other genre forms and trends. It is the clown and, in particular, one of his most popular and widespread images, Pennywise, that should be attributed to the most striking shadow symbols of Hollywood. The terrible hero "It" by S. King becomes a transcultural, all-civilizational symbol, organically connecting archaic mythologies with the demands of modern mass culture in relation to the knowledge of the supernatural contents of Nature, Man and Society. The most powerful negative connotations of the image of Pennywise only emphasize the tragic unpreparedness of modern culture for a full-fledged reflection on the problems that human civilization has come across, systematically and consistently destroying the archetypal world of childhood.

Keywords: American horror film, archetype, Shadow, Trickster, clown, child, childhood

We all fly down here [1].

Pennywise

Mankind has always felt a paradoxical craving for periodic experience and

unconscious "living through" fears, and especially those of others. To do this, most world cultures throughout all epochs continuously generated myths, legends, fairy tales and fables, actively saturating them with vivid images of terrible creatures that were passed on from generation to generation, each time pointing to "extreme forms of unconscious denial and repression of social experience and morality. » [2]. With the development of the popular culture industry, this trend has not only not disappeared, but on the contrary, it has significantly increased due to the emergence of a rush, increasing year by year demand from the consumer masses for visual images of horror and fear. And if today we ask the question, which nightmarish image in the history of European culture is one of the most memorable and frightening, then, probably, the most common answer, perhaps, will be one - this is a clown. At the same time, it is significant that the clowns themselves appeared relatively recently in continental culture, but this truly archetypal image originates from court jesters and theatrical clowns, whom royal persons sometimes even elevated “to the rank of court advisers” [3, p. 17].

In essence, clowns are professional or amateur circus performers, designed to entertain and amuse the audience with stupid jokes and strange, eccentric antics. But why do children, and even adults, literally freeze at the sight of a man with grotesque makeup and an awkward outfit? Deep fear, definitely, comes from childhood, both of the person himself and of all mankind. The child sees an obscenely large and defiantly painted clown and does not understand at all how to react “correctly” to him. At first glance, this is an adult, the same as his parents, but at the same time, he is completely different from them. Not only does he not teach or educate anyone, but in general he does exactly the opposite. That is why, it is children who are always the most “receptive to a familiar physique in combination with an unfamiliar face” [4]. Pronounced antisocial behavior, coupled with a defiant, and in some places frankly terrifying (especially for a small child) make-up, behind which true emotions and intentions are completely unguessed, a grimace, complemented by an exaggerated smile, are completely capable of pointing not only at a child, but also at an adult , uncommon horror.

In addition to the image of a werewolf clown, which is already “problematic”, from the point of view of an unstable child’s psyche, real, sometimes quite terrible murders are mixed in, and popular culture itself, which is just on this balancing act between fear and with laughter constantly “breaks” a solid bank. So in 1978, the murders of thirty-three people were almost accidentally solved in the United States. It is significant that John Gacy turned out to be a terrible criminal - “a law-abiding, respected citizen, freemason, member of the US Democratic Party, treasurer of a charitable society, who loved to dress up as a clown and entertain kids, would be the last person the police could suspect of kidnapping, raping and killing more than 30 teenagers and young men” [5]. And although in reality Gacy did not commit murder at these holidays, and was also never seen in a clown costume, the image of a made-up merry fellow was irrevocably defiled and since then has become even more terrifying for children.

In 1986, the famous writer, who eventually received the title of "King of Horror", Stephen King completely put an end to the once good and beautiful image of a fun fair clown, creating his famous novel "It", the main antagonist of which is just the bloodthirsty killer of children - the clown Pennywise. The book was a phenomenal both commercial and reader success, highly indicative of both the horror genre itself and the entire fiction of the twentieth century. One of the clear indicators of such reader and then audience recognition of the talent of the master was the fact that it was successfully filmed twice: at 1990 in the form of a mini-series, and then in 2017 and 2019 - in the form of full-fledged horror films. We will talk about the latest screen versions in more detail.

The character "It" in the book and film of the same name is by itself far from a classic and always cheerful, farcical clown. This is just one of many images that He loved the most. After all, what is presented in the film as a Clown is initially a much more ancient, ontological Evil, due to which it does not have a single form, not a single, specific image. In fact, "It" diligently absorbed human fears for several thousand years. And the clown became the latest and, perhaps, the most beloved image of this universal fear.

The archetypal King's literary and then Hollywood "It", or the grotesque, dancing clown Pennywise, who "It" was constantly presented as, is a terrible image of the "Trickster", a comical and nightmarish trickster demon, typical of popular culture. As rightly pointed out by C. G. Jung, the author of the concept of the collective unconscious archetypes: “The trickster is the forerunner of the savior, and like the latter is God, man and animal in one person. He is at the same time an inhuman, and a superman, and an animal, and a divine being, the main and most frightening sign of which is his unconscious. For this reason, his comrades (obviously, "ordinary" people) leave him, which, apparently, indicates a catastrophic and, alas, tragic, lagging behind his level of consciousness from the general mass. He is so unconscious of himself that his body is not one; his two hands beat one with the other" [6, p. 347].

It seems to us that the above thought of the founder of analytical psychology very accurately describes the essence of the main Anti-Hero of the Hollywood film under consideration, since “It” clearly has an inhuman nature. Pennywise himself, whose main feature "is the ability to transform into anything, taking on various forms and types, adapting to the fears of the persecuted victim" [7], during another battle with a team of school "losers" openly and defiantly calls himself a "devourer of worlds", which for the mass audience is an unambiguous allusion to the truly cosmic power of the terrible "It", because from the original novel we learn how long it has existed, and where it came from to Earth. As Stephen King writes, “Before the universe, there were only two things. One was It Itself...” [8, p. 551]. But at the same time, it should be noted that all the terrible deeds of the insidious dancing clown contain very little conscious and rational, otherwise even unreasonable children would not have been able to successfully avoid his persecution so often throughout the film. It should be specially noted that Pennywise himself specifically allows and deliberately provokes this terrible “competition” for a reason, because, as a real Hollywood horror hunter, it’s not enough just to kill and eat unfortunate children, it’s very important for him to first frighten them very much, surround them with a context of fear . It is significant that, unlike natural scenarios of persecution, such Hollywood scenarios of visual horror hunting (both for the direct participants in the action and for the audience) almost always involve a special “trophic” emphasis on the production, escalation and subsequent collective symbolic consumption of fear, the ideology of which is based on in fact, it acts as the main product and "trophy" of the entire Hollywood terrible conveyor. However, due to his truly "professional" irrationality, the Hollywood villain clown Pennywise constantly flirts and every time, it would seem, accidentally "misses" his prey, although it is worth noting that this obviously "losing" scenario actually brings him much more "horror glasses", because children are becoming more and more afraid of him.

It is human, in this case childish, fears that act as the main existential "food" for the terrible "It", and there have never been any problems with this "resource" on Earth. But why, of all the terrible images invented by mankind, did the terrible alien “It”, within the framework of the visualization of the horror ideology of Hollywood, stop precisely at the figure of the evil clown as the most universal and frightening, truly archetypal image of the “Trickster”? Indeed, the artistic images of clowns in the space of human culture are unpredictable and deceptive, asocial and atypical, which in itself makes it possible to lure ignorant victims, especially children. On the other hand, “It” would never have dared to use such an extraordinary visual strategy if this image had not been so important for mass culture in any era of its formation and was especially in demand among potential “clients”, the most vulnerable and labile - children's - audience in the era mass consumer society. After all, according to K. Krupnova, a columnist for the Kinopoisk website, a terrible Hollywood clown named “Pennywise was created by the imagination of children and lives thanks to children” [9].

Indeed, the main target and the main prey of the terrible clown are precisely children, since his decisive weapon against juvenile victims is their own irrepressible childish imagination, thanks to

which Pennywise for each child is embodied in his most secret and uniquely unique nightmare .

But even if we do not directly start from the direct need of "It" mentioned above to frighten children, then a completely legitimate question arises, why does it do this at all? After all, anyone who by all means inspires fear, in the first place, is very afraid of something himself. In this sense, "It" is far from an exception, since the terrible clown always prefers to attack social "losers" one by one, because he understands that this is how outsiders are much easier to intimidate, since Pennywise himself, in fact, is a figment of their own intimidated imagination. . "Terrible" will never exist at all if no one believes in it. And the terrible clown understands this very well: he is afraid that the children will guess about it, and after that they will become brave, confident, forever saying goodbye to their social role-playing rock of “lone losers”.

If we carefully study the final scenes of two Hollywood films, we will understand that this is exactly what happens. In the first film, children, instead of the expected feeling of fear, begin to get angry at the clown, and then desperately attack him. As a result, Pennywise, who did not expect such a turn of affairs at all, has to flee in panic into the bowels of his deep hole, which happens for the first time during his entire stay on Earth. Having suffered a severe defeat, he has to go into early "hibernation" in order to then begin a new cycle of terrible atrocities and take revenge on his offenders, only after a generation, after a long twenty-seven years.

In the second film, which takes place twenty-seven years later, the "losers" club of children meets again to deliver the final and decisive blow to the tough dancing clown. By the beginning of the final battle, the heroes learn one terrible wisdom, about which the “king of horror” Stephen King himself wrote in his novel: “All living beings must live by the laws of the form in which they reside. For the first time, It realized that perhaps Its ability to change its forms could work against it as well as for It" [8, p. 551]. Former loser children understood that it is possible to defeat this monster only by reducing it to the most insignificant form of existence in the civilizational and sociocultural understanding. Moreover, this must be done not only by demonstrating a complete lack of faith in him, but also by active psychological pressure on an alien creature. And now, after a series of humiliating cries from former children, “It” turns into a creature the size of a baby, from which the main characters literally rip out the heart, thereby putting an end to hundreds of years of murders perpetrated by this alien entity.

There is no doubt that the terrible Hollywood clown Pennywise is not only one of the brightest and most terrible Hollywood visualizations of the image of the "Shadow" archetype, but of the entire modern society that vainly considers itself civilized. That is why the clown so fiercely attacks precisely children, who in the modern consumer world are real hermits and outcasts, subjected to systematic persecution of both their peers and the entire “adult world” hanging over them. C. G. Jung rightly pointed out that “The trickster is a collective image of the shadow, the totality of all the lower character traits in people. And since the individual shadow is always present as a component of the personality, a collective image can be continuously created from it” [6, p. 354]. From all that has been said, we can conclude that it is Pennywise, as a bright contemporary Hollywood image of the Trickster, who fully personifies the ideology of systematic generational violence and humiliation.

According to the plot of S. King's novel, the next awakening of Pennywise is always accompanied by massacres, not only by those committed by the clown himself, but also by his henchmen. Such, for example, as Henry Bowers, a mentally ill child who not only keeps the whole school in fear, but is also constantly harassed by his father, and therefore passionately dreams of killing him. And then suddenly a clown appears, who does nothing on his own, but only actively pushes Bowers to commit a terrible murder. Here he is the most striking example of the "shadow" side of Pennywise, who always awakens forces in other people only so that they can commit new evil. The symbolic "shadow" connection is obvious here, because later "It" again turned to Bowers for help, but this time to kill the entire team of losers at once.

Summing up our reasoning, we can conclude that the Hollywood horror clown is a priori a borderline character with clearly expressed antisocial behavior. Initially, the main antagonist of the film "It" the clown Pennywise himself was not on the verge, but he was always the original evil, which, only to strengthen the unconscious impact on children's fears, took on the image of an atypical, unpredictable, kind, dancing clown. This image, according to A.G. Nekita, is “a certain sign of the times, indicating the urgent need to preserve the traditional symbolism of mythical characters that perform both initiatory-individual functions and allow maintaining the necessary archetypal balance in the entire system of social communication” [10 ]. Remembering the famous saying of I.W. Goethe, Pennywise is only “a particle of that force that constantly strives to do evil, but does only good [11, p. 66].

The study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research within the framework of research project No. 18-011-00129.

1. Kinopoisk. All films of the planet [Electr. resource]. URL: https://www.kinopoisk.ru/ (date of access: 10/26/2020).

2. Malenko S.A. Fetishization of "places of fear" in tourist branding of the cultural tradition of American horror films [Electr. resource] // Uchenye zapiski Novgorodskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. 2020. No. 2(27). https://doi.org/10.34680/2411-7951.2020.2(27) .23.

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Malenko S.A., Petrov E.O. The evil genius of childhood or the mad prophet: images of clowning in an American horror film. Hollywood in the variety of its genres turned out to be perhaps the most significant world cinema platform, most sensitive to the essence of Carl Jung's theory of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Particularly vivid visualizations of it were made in American horror films in the images of the most odious characters, symbolizing the archetype of "Shadow". This symbolism has proven to be particularly relevant precisely because popular everywhere has abandoned positive ideals and the American horror film through numerous shadow images persistently tries to express what is absolutely impossible to do within the framework of other genre forms and trends. The most striking shadow symbols of Hollywood should include the clown and, in particular, one of its most popular and common images — Pennywise. The terrible hero "It" by S.King becomes a transcultural, general civilizational symbol that organically combines archaic mythologies with the demands of modern mass culture in relation to the knowledge of the supernatural contents of Nature, Man and Society. The most powerful negative connotations of Pennywise's image only emphasize the tragic unwillingness of modern culture to fully reflect on the problems that human civilization has come up against, systematically and consistently destroying the archetypal world of childhood.

Keywords: American horror film, archetype, Shadow, Trickster, clown, child, childhood.

Information about the authors. Sergei Anatolyevich Malenko - Doctor of Philosophy, Professor; Yaroslav the Wise Novgorod State University, Head of the Department of Philosophy, Cultural Studies and Sociology; ORCID: 0000-0003-4828-0171; [email protected]. Evgeniy Olegovich Petrov — student of the field of study 51.03.01 Culturology, Novgorod State University named after Yaroslav the Wise, Department of Philosophy, Cultural Studies and Sociology; ORCID: 0000-0002-2664-7932; ragnarlotbroc@gmail.