In Horror and Humour, Noel Carroll explains how the lines between horror and comedy can be easily blurred, as the genres share many characteristics – leading to the development of horror-comedy movies that explore their overlapping properties. He references Freud, who states that both fear and humour are the result of suppressed unconscious feelings, and also states that “the ideal object for eliciting feelings of uncanniness is the automaton that closely approximates animate or human life;” of course, Bergson also famously claims that the biggest source of humour is “something mechanical encrusted on the living”; drawing on both theorists, it can be suggested that both horror and humour can arise from the perception of oddly human-like machines. Carroll also states that monsters, a necessary feature of the horror genre, are “beings whose existence science denies” while still being realistic enough for the viewer to genuinely believe them to be harmful. Monsters must also be “interstitial, categorically contradictory, incomplete, or formless”: the exact characteristics that define comic incongruity.
The 2022 horror comedy film M3GAN encapsulates these concepts. The titular M3GAN is a humanoid android – meant to look like a little girl – who’s been programmed to act as a friend to a young girl who’s lost her parents. Of course, in true horror movie fashion, she quickly disregards her programming and begins murdering everyone in sight. M3GAN’s appearance rests decidedly in the uncanny valley; her CGI-ed facial features are humanoid, but just “off” enough to be disturbing. Also, as she’s played by a real human actress, M3GAN’s movements are not entirely robotic — they’re creepily human-like. These factors contribute to both the comedy and the horror of the film; M3GAN’s appearance and movements are creepy, but also – as was demonstrated by people’s reaction to the famous dancing scene – kind of funny. The fact that she is an automaton imitating human life is at once scary and ridiculous, especially when she’s robotically-yet-weirdly-humanly dancing immediately before murdering a man with a knife.
Additionally, M3GAN is certainly “a being whose existence science denies”, given that we don’t yet have the capability to create a completely self-aware, indestructible, impossibly human-like robot with unlimited intelligence; however, given the increasing public concerns about AI in recent years, the idea of something like M3GAN existing doesn’t seem entirely outside the realm of possibility, and it taps into existing fears about the capabilities of artificial intelligence – certainly making its harmfulness believable to the audience. Also, while not necessarily incomplete or formless, as a humanoid android, M3GAN is inherently interstitial and contradictory – both characteristics of a monster and features of incongruous comedy. Her incongruously occupying identities as both a robot and a little girl makes her simultaneously scary and silly.
Carroll, Noel. “Horror and Humour.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57, no. 2 (1999): 145–60. https://doi.org/https://doi-org.ezproxy.st-andrews.ac.uk/10.2307/432309.
Johnstone, Gerard, dir. 2022. M3GAN. Los Angeles: Universal Pictures.
This movie is a great example of the uncanny valley effect and how it can evoke horror and humor. It is interesting that Megan thinks she is doing the right thing by protecting the young girl but ends up on a killing spree — her outlandish and overblown reactions to ordinary problems are ridiculous and unfathomable to us, because we know we would not act that way we find it funny.
I really like this – robots really toe the line between the uncanny valley and Bergson’s mechanical concept of comedy, and M3GAN has a lot of fun exploring those two territories. It’s also kind of played as an in-joke referencing things like TikTok dances (which I’m too geriatric to be able to say more about confidently) and the haunted doll trope (like in Child’s Play or any variety of haunted house-style films).
I thought about doing this as my example but yours is a far more interesting take as I hadn’t even thought about the link to Bergson and your link the the uncanny was so well done.
I loved your blogpost! I think there’s also a lot to say about how M3GAN was co-opted by the internet, recontextualized into a meme object—which would later affect the marketing campaign of the film, itself.
Bringing in Bergson here really strengthens the point that horror and humor genres can blend. The cultural anxieties about AI intensifies the effectiveness of M3GAN as a scary concept, but her child-like characteristics and exaggerated movements contribute to the humor that softens the impact of AI anxieties.