The two concepts that stood out to me from Noël Carroll’s Horror and Humor to connect horror to comedy were the ideas of eliminating the scary element of a monster and acknowledging the incongruities that underly comedy. In her theory of comedy, Carroll believes that comedy arises from the incongruities of contradictions, a “violation of our standing categories, concepts, norms, and commonplace expectations” (154). In its connection to horror, Carroll states that taking away the “threatening edge” from a monster or divert our attention from it, the monster then is reduced to a “clownish, comic butt”(156). Therefore, horror comedy works when the contradiction arises in which the previously scary and harmful monsters gets reduced to an appropriate object of laughter. The position that she pushes on the success of horror comedy reminds me of the movie This Is The End, specifically the scene where the main characters try to do an exorcism on the possessed Jonah Hill.
Above is a scene featuring the recently-possessed Jonah Hill and his non-possessed friends trying to successfully do an exorcism. The concepts proposed by Carroll are obvious: first, we see how Jonah Hill’s possessed character does not act like a normal scary figure. He insults his friends in a buddy-buddy fashion while exchanging sarcastic quips with Jay Baruchel’s “The power of Christ compels you!”. An additional contradiction of the norms is how his friends act in this situation: Seth Rogan and Jay wrestle like children and the normal characters get sidetracked about the hidden food, forgetting about the dire situation that they’re in. Finally, the chase scene is an excellent example of a typically-scary situation being funny.
Seeing their facial expressions as Jonah chases them makes me laugh without fail. In regular horror movies a chase scene is one of the most intense parts of the film; however, something about seeing these grown men scream and run like children makes this scene perfect and gives more evidence for Carroll’s conclusions.
I like the example of This is the End because I think it connects well to the idea that Cynthia Miller expressed in page xix, regarding how horror comedy can either make less scary the horrifying material, or it can distort the horrifying situation into “a surreal nightmare.” That is a film which relishes in not explaining the bizarre occurences, going from a party of hollywood elites to Danny McBride running a post-apocalyptic cannibal sex cult.
I also think that the star personas of these actors really helps in this, as all of them are known for their stoner comedy roles. It helps that they’re playing themselves as well. If it was someone like Danny Trejo or Jamie Lee Curtis it would be less screwball, maybe equally comedic but with a vastly different type of comedy.