Jonathan L. Crane writes that “postmodern horror […] drifts back and forth between scares and laughs without warning” (p148). This brought to mind the HBO series The Last of Us, a comedic zombie-horror. The Last of Us fits Noel Carrol’s description of horror fiction as a narrative containing a monster that is designed to elicit an emotional response from us which is a mixture of fear (at the potential danger of the monster) and disgust (at the ‘impurity’ of the monster) (p151); our main characters Joel and Ellie seek to avoid the ‘infected’ (zombie-like monsters) who elicit fear and disgust as, from the outset of the show, the danger and threat they pose is clear, and they are indicative of the ‘impurity’ which Carroll describes given that they are a mutated infection gone to the extreme. However, despite the tension and horror these monsters cast over the series, Joel and Ellie’s interactions are frequently laced with comedy. One such moment can be seen in the following clip:
This scene illustrates what Crane describes above as the fine balance between horror and comedy, moving without warning between fear and laughter.
The humour in The Last of Us seems to all fit under Carroll’s claim that “in order to transform horror into laughter, the fearsomeness of the monster- its threat to human life – must be sublated or hidden from our attention” (p158); we are temporarily distracted from the threat of the ‘infected’ through Joel and Ellie’s comedy, it becomes temporarily ‘hidden from our attention’ as we get caught up in the humorous nature of some of their interactions. But there seems to be a distinction here between the horror and the comedy, as the moments of humour are mostly completely distinct from the moments or horror with infrequent overlap; while the comedy can brush up against moments of fear (like in the scene above), the comedy is not about the horror or terror of the situations they find themselves in, but a distraction from it. However, this poses a question for the nature of horror-comedy: to what extent is a show like The Last of Us a horror-comedy, given that the moments of humour are mostly completely detached from the moments of threat/fear? Yet, if a true horror-comedy requires humour that is directed at the object of terror, then arguably there are not many true horror-comedies; and shows like The Last of Us would need to be described in some other way, and it is not clear what this might be. As such, it seems that there needs to be some further clarification about the nature of a horror-comedy, specifically regarding the necessity of an interplay between the objects of fear and humour.
Its interesting that often zombie-horror films contain moments of humour. I wonder if the zombie is much like the clown in its wide potential for both humour and horror — the zombie shares a similar ‘self-contradictory’ and ‘categorically transgressive’ nature to the clown, being neither fully alive nor dead, and also posses an ‘alternate biology’ that enables it to withstand physical blows, like the clown (Carrell). Your point about the distinct positioning of moments of horror and humour is really interesting — I wonder if horror can be an object of comedy in instances where comedy is able to release the tension built up moments of horror/threat — like a comedic jump-scare.
This made me wonder more about the balance that must be drawn between the scary and the humorous in horror-comedies, and how far the humorous side can push the scary side until it becomes unbalanced and no longer works. I feel like The Last of Us uses humour that does not downplay the threat in order to avoid this unbalancing.
This is such an interesting take on the readings, I often forget about the comic aspects in TLOU but as you have pointed out the ways in which the comedy comes through aligns really well with the readings.
I completely agree with your point that, here, that the humor distracts from the horror rather than the two working together. It’s an interesting balance that builds on how to categorize the genre. I’m so excited for season two to come out!