Coming Soon: Enjoying Horror

Horror and Humor

Noel Carrol’s “Horror and Humor” explains the subgenre of the horror comedy that has become just as prominent today as regular horror features. Think of movie like Beetlejuice, Death Becomes Her, and the Adams Family, these are the fusion of humor and horror that I vividly remember watching as a child and loving. These films are not scary but there are dark elements to them. Carrol says that the fundamentals of horror are represented in the horror comedy. Carrol quickly points out that they are opposite mental states and that being horrified seems as though it should preclude amusement.
Two psychological feelings associated with this genre (typically)
• With humor, there is a sense of release and sensations of lightness and expansion.
• With horror, there are feelings of pressure, heaviness, and claustrophobia.

The article entails just how odd it seems that the horror genre has become successful from past to present; there is “an intimate relation of affinity between the two.”
I can relate the “Why Horror” article’s reasoning of why a person seems to enjoy horror similarly to the horror comedy through Hume’s “subordinate passion”. The idea is also similar to what the author says about the horror story, it’s “driven by curiosity. It engages its audience by being involved in process of disclosure, discovery, proof, explanation, hypothesis, and confirmation.” The horror story is just as engaging if not more than a comedy. The mixture of the two I know… have been some of the most memorable and best stories I know I’ve read or seen. It seems to steadily allow us to enjoy horror even if only minuscule, you’re still allowed some enjoyment in the genre.

"Why Horror"

"Why Horror" is an interesting reading piece I found by author Graham Masterton. As a horror novelist the writer takes in the question as to why he enjoys writing horror and also where does his inspiration come from. The article was surprising because the writer has been studying tales of horror that date back centuries. I believe the author truly enjoys the writing challenge of horror because he put so much into the research and little aspects like the favorite drink called King's Death. Masterton writes, "Most of the time you can dispense with whole reams of description if you catch one vivid image; catching those images requires thought and research."
I relation between our class readings, what is horror without vivid imagery? The author takes the image of horror and writes in description. I find it very interesting to relate the article to Carol's interpretations about horror for enjoyment, "It engages its audience by being involved in process of disclosure, discovery, proof..." In the article is a first hand encounter of what the writer aims to do with his creativity process. Somehow I would be excited more to read horror than to watch new horror, I recently saw 28 Weeks Later and I felt that tension of clusterphobia and entrapment that I read about from Horror and Humor. Hopefully horror writings don't create so much intensity.


Works cited:
Carroll, Noël. (Spring 1999). Horror and Humor. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. The American Society for Aesthetics. Philadephia, Penn.


Masterton, Graham.(Jul94) "Why Horror". Writer. (Vol. 107 Issue 7, p7, 3p, 1bw). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9406107820&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live