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Humor and horror
Feb. 27th, 2011 09:00 amHumor and Horror
At the risk of some ironic Greek-themed retribution to hubris here, I've long considered that I have a real talent in writing in two areas: humor and horror. Glimmers of it showed up in some of my earliest teenage scrawlings, and I like to think I've improved my skills over time.
Why those two areas specifically? On pondering the nature of writing and human beings (two closely related fields of study,) I think it's because humor and horror are innately related: they are two different sides of the same coin. Both of them, at their base, rely on the principle of subverted expectations.
Overanalyzing humor, of course, takes all the funny out of it. But I think it is important to have some fundamental sense of what humor is and why we, as human beings, react the way we do to it. At its most fundamental level, humor is the way that the human brain reacts to something that is wrong or out of place. We human beings, as part of our self-awareness, live in a universe that is largely created within our heads; the real world, however, is not always so obliging. Humor is a coping mechanism for absurdity, a way to deal with things that are not as we think they should be.
( Humor... )
That's humor. Then it comes to the flip side of the coin: horror.
( Horror... )
The trigger point between a subtle wrongness and a blatant wrongness can backfire. Something that is too abnormal and bizarre, without the proper context to shade it into subtlety, simply comes across as absurd -- and hilarious. Many shows can leverage horrific things into dark or gallows humor simply by exaggerating them so much that the 'appropriate' reactions of dismay, sympathy, fear, and disgust no longer apply, and it simply becomes funny.
In both cases, it's imperative to have a sensitive reading of your audience. Because the threshold can be different for many people, it can be difficult to present either a humorous work OR a horrific one that appeals broadly and has the desired effect for all audiences. But if you know what the audience knows, and you know what the audience expects, then the path is open to subvert those expectations into hilarity -- or horror.
At the risk of some ironic Greek-themed retribution to hubris here, I've long considered that I have a real talent in writing in two areas: humor and horror. Glimmers of it showed up in some of my earliest teenage scrawlings, and I like to think I've improved my skills over time.
Why those two areas specifically? On pondering the nature of writing and human beings (two closely related fields of study,) I think it's because humor and horror are innately related: they are two different sides of the same coin. Both of them, at their base, rely on the principle of subverted expectations.
Overanalyzing humor, of course, takes all the funny out of it. But I think it is important to have some fundamental sense of what humor is and why we, as human beings, react the way we do to it. At its most fundamental level, humor is the way that the human brain reacts to something that is wrong or out of place. We human beings, as part of our self-awareness, live in a universe that is largely created within our heads; the real world, however, is not always so obliging. Humor is a coping mechanism for absurdity, a way to deal with things that are not as we think they should be.
( Humor... )
That's humor. Then it comes to the flip side of the coin: horror.
( Horror... )
The trigger point between a subtle wrongness and a blatant wrongness can backfire. Something that is too abnormal and bizarre, without the proper context to shade it into subtlety, simply comes across as absurd -- and hilarious. Many shows can leverage horrific things into dark or gallows humor simply by exaggerating them so much that the 'appropriate' reactions of dismay, sympathy, fear, and disgust no longer apply, and it simply becomes funny.
In both cases, it's imperative to have a sensitive reading of your audience. Because the threshold can be different for many people, it can be difficult to present either a humorous work OR a horrific one that appeals broadly and has the desired effect for all audiences. But if you know what the audience knows, and you know what the audience expects, then the path is open to subvert those expectations into hilarity -- or horror.
