Horror-Comedy Structural Proximity
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#01
Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy · Todd McGowan · p.91
Tragedy and Pathos > Excessive Otherness
Theoretical move: Comedy and horror share the same structural pairing of lack and excess, but differ in whether that coincidence is internal (comedy: the lacking subject IS the excessive being) or external (horror: the lacking subject CONFRONTS excess in an alien other); comedy goes further than horror by revealing that the monster is identical with the victimized subject, thereby genuinely threatening the subject rather than letting it off the hook.
The link between horror and comedy is structural in a way that the link between the western or the disaster film and comedy is not. One satirizes the western from the outside, while the satirical horror film requires only a slight shift of perspective.