Unless you live with a crippling fear of clowns (and who could blame you if you did) there’s a good chance that you have already seen the new theatrical version of Stephen King’s horror classic IT, which has topped box offices receipts for two weekends straight. Like the rest of the world, IT has been a hit in Indonesia, so much so that Indonesians are seeing references to the film in the most unexpected of places.
Recently, photos of a human head sculpture, unearthed on Monday at the base of Umbul Tiromulyo (a former Javanese royal family pool turned tourist attraction in Boyolali, Central Java’s Kedungan Village) have gone viral on social media, with commenters noting that the head bears a disturbing resemblance to Pennywise, the ancient demonic creature that usually takes the form of a sinister clown in IT.
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While we admit the resemblance is perhaps a bit of a stretch (though the lines on the statue’s face do sorta match the red makeup on the new Pennywise) the thing that really makes it creepy is the way it was apparently just sitting there, underground, much like a certain sewer-dwelling clown…
That seems to have been enough to make the photos go viral on social media. “Until last night, in one Facebook group, the audience reached 6,000 people,” said Mulyono, secretary of Kedungan Village, on Tuesday as quoted by Tempo.
Mulyono confirmed the authenticity of the photos but claimed not to know who dug up the soil at the base of Umbul Tirtomoyo to find the disturbing statue head but said he would look into it.
According to Tempo, the statue is embedded in a corner of the pool complex’s outer wall. Although exclaimed to be some sort of ancient archaeological object in some Whatsapp shares, the statue is apparently made of cement, not carved from stone.
“The statue is made of cement, when I was a child, there were four statues in each corner of the umbul,” said 61-year-old Head of Kedungan Village Government Affairs Ruminto.
Ruminto said the statues were the work of a village artist name Mbah Suro but couldn’t remember when they were first made.
Village secretary Mulyono said that he expected the viral photo to bring renewed interest to Umbul Tirtomulyo and perhaps bring more tourists to the traditional site. He said they would be working to restore more of the original sculptures around the complex and those of other traditional pools in the area to help maintain interest.
We’d say there’s zero chance that the statue head has anything to do with clowns let alone Pennywise but there was the accusation that part of Warner Bros’ marketing campaign for the movie was using fake clown protesters to drum up additional controversy. Could the studio’s guerilla marketing efforts have extended to installing statue heads underground at traditional tourism sites in Indonesia? Well, if they did, then we don’t mind having been manipulated into advertising their movie even more, because if they went to that much trouble they frankly earned it.
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