Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman
Horror
movies often include a humorous scene or two, ostensibly as a means
of relieving the tension that results from sustained, intensifying
suspense. Frequently of the black humor type, such visual jokes are
intended, perhaps, to refocus both the teller and the listener on the
normal, the customary or traditional, the everyday, rather than on
the abnormal, the non-traditional, or the extraordinary.
Alfred
Hitchcock presents Psycho's
audience with a humorous scene after Norman Bates kills Marion Crane.
He has loaded her corpse and meager possessions into her car and
pushed it into a lake to dispose of the evidence of his crime. As
Norman looks on, the car begins to sink. It continues to slip deeper
and deeper into the water, but, then, abruptly, it stops, only partly
submerged, and Norman's expression, partly anticipation, partly glee,
up to this point also suddenly changes, to one of not only worry but
also panic.
Unless
the car fully sinks, he himself (and his “mother”) will sink, as
his charade is exposed and he is confined to a mental asylum or a
prison for his “mother's” dastardly deed. At the last moment, the
car does, in fact, completely submerge, and Norman looks relieved. He
has gotten away with murder, after all, it seems. The television
series Dirty Little Liars
provides its audience with plenty of black humor, much of it through
its allusions to such Hitchcock films as Psycho,
Vertigo, Rear
Window, and others.
Finding
the humor amid horror is a difficult task. If done clumsily, the use
of humor to alleviate tension can backfire on the author. In times of
hyper-sensitivity and political correctness, it is especially
important not to offend readers' sensibilities, even in horror
fiction. However, looking to cartoonists whose work involves the
macabre can offer some pointers for effective use of black humor,
although writers should use them at their own risk.
One
such cartoonist is Gahan Wilson, many of whose works appeared in
Playboy magazine over
a period of years. Most of them include a gruesome twist. For
example, most of us do not fear optometrists. We go to them
voluntarily, trusting ourselves to their care, believing them, as men
and women of medicine, to have our welfare at heart and in mind. It
is the violation of this trust by a mad doctor that underlies the
ghoulish humor of this cartoon:
In
reading the eye chart, we assume the role of the patient; we are
trusting, unaware, and helpless as we read of the optometrist's
intention to kill us. As we read the chart, the letters tend to blur,
reminding those of us whose vision isn't perfect (many of us, alas,
who are of the patient's age), suggesting the additional horror that,
even with our fate spelled out for us, unable to read the writing on
the wall, we are in danger of being killed where we sit, unaware of
our fate until it is too late.
This
cartoon offers us a technique widely used in horror movies (and, less
often, in novels): have the viewer (or the reader) assume (or, more
often, identify with) the role of the helpless victim.
In
this cartoon, Wilson shows the absurdity of a popular pastime, a
supposed “sport” in which armed men kill animals that have no
chance against their killers. In the cartoon, the hunter's hubris has
led him to kill every animal he and his friend have encountered, as
the presence of blood-splattered snow and the friend's ironic comment
suggest: “Congratulations, Baer—I think you've wiped out the
species!”
Naming
the shooter Baer doubles the cartoon's irony, since the name sounds
like “bear.” Like a bear, Baer is a predator. Unlike a bear,
however, Baer kills for “sport,” not survival, killing every
animal he encounters. His smug, slightly crazed look suggests that he
is insane, which, in turn, suggests that hunting, at least the way he
practices it, is also insane.
This
cartoon's technique is to exaggerate a commonplace activity to reveal
the absurdity of the pastime and those who participate in it.
Many
horror movie plots, novels, and short stories take place in isolated
settings. This cartoon is also set in such a locale. A small eatery
in the middle of nowhere, near a two-lane blacktop next to bare
mountains possibly in Alaska or the Yukon, judging by the aurora
borealis seen in the night sky, bears bright signs on its rooftop and
exterior walls: “EAT.” As a gigantic monster of vague,
gelatin-like form, crawls over a ridge, toward the roadside cafe, one
employee, the cook, possibly, says to another, the waiter, perhaps,
“My God—do you suppose it can read?”
This
cartoon turns the tables on humanity. It's all right to be a
carnivore, Wilson seems to suggest, as long as we are the carnivores.
To be the eater rather than the eaten is all well and good, but if
the roles are reversed, the horror of the eat-or-be-eaten world is
exposed. With apologies to Socrates, in some cases, it seems, the
unexamined life may be worth living.
Role
reversal is another way that cartoonists like Wilson reveal the
horror inherent in everyday practices that we take for granted.
A
study of other Wilson cartoons reveals other techniques for showing
the horror in everyday situations and practices, but, in our next
post, let's take a look at the work of Charles Addams, another artist
known for disclosing the humorous within the horrific.