In the summer and fall of 2016, reports of “killer clowns” lurking at the edges of American towns spread from community to community. This week, Mike and Merinda watch the documentary Clown Panic currently streaming on Hulu to explore that moral panic and ask how it spread. Was it local media, Facebook, Pokémon Go, a Rob Zombie movie, or something deeper about how we form communities around fear and safety?

They also get into how the film treats the rural, Southern communities where many sightings happened, and why one interview subject’s portrayal bothered them. Mike makes the case that the clown panic is part of a larger cultural shift that began around 2013–14, one that also explains our current cult documentary boom.

Plus, Merinda recommends a new podcast, Experts in a Dying Field, and Mike shares his latest grilling obsession.

Links

Zac Morris’s deep dive on the 2016 clown panic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOq7-B207U8

Interview with the documentary’s makers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMFAFc8zn8

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Special thanks to the REL Digital Lab in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama for production assistance. The views expressed in this episode are our own as experts and researchers in religious studies and do not represent the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.