Keep 'Em Laughing As You Go...

Schadenfreude has a long and hilarious history.  As long as comedy has been around, "black comedy" has been around.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that comedy started the minute the first caveman slipped on a carelessly tossed Mammoth knuckle and fell over a cliff.  Because we find things funny that shouldn't be funny but they're funny because they aren't happening to US.

It's a defense mechanism.

Jim Jones jokes are always appreciated.

In any case, as has been outlined in a number of my posts previously, comedy and horror go together like the proverbial peas in a pod.  Like vodka and orange juice.  Like hatchets and faces.  The very BEST horror is tempered with humor to both ease the audience and lull them into a false sense of security.  Because the very best horror directors are complete bastards.

Black comedy isn't always specifically horror-related, of course.  Black comedy is simply comedy or satire where serious topics (murder, genocide, the plague, insanity, rape, terrorism, etc) are treated in a humorous manner while still respecting (mostly) that these things are tragedies.  And we LOVE it because, like any good case of schadenfreude, it draws out the dark and makes us a little less afraid.

YAY, Cyanide and Happiness!

Now, I'm not talking about a spoof, here.  A spoof is taking horror-comedy beyond the pale and usually, as in the Scary Movie series, crossing the line directly into toilet humor territory.  Granted, there may be some toilet humor in a black comedy but it's not usually extensive. 

Black humor also tends not to be vulgar.  In fact, a lot of the black humor I've been witness to, such as Arsenic and Old Lace, is quite urbane and prim, even.  Beyond that, some black humor rests on the fact that it's SO audacious that no one would dare question it.

 Thank you, Peter Jackson.

Dead Alive, for example, is considered a classic of horror-comedy because it's HILARIOUS but deals with some incredibly dark subject matter.  Zombies.  Dead babies.  Disease.  Allusions to dementia.  Mommy issues.  Lawnmowers.  It's all there and Jackson was NOT subtle about it.  It's all horrific but presented in such a way as to make it one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.

Now, there are dark movies that have funny parts, like Full Metal Jacket, but these don't count as black comedy because the tragedy itself is not being presented humorously.  The humor in black comedy has to specifically deal with the negative aspects of life in order for it to count.  The Addams Family is the perfect example.  They LIVE for murder, mayhem and death but to them it's all just day-to-day business. The goings on in Beetlejuice count, too, since... y'know... more than half of the cast is dead.

Teenage necrophilia is so not cool.

Now, as I said before, black humor doesn't always involve the macabre although 99% of Vincent Price movies would have you believe otherwise.  Sometimes it's about failure.  Sometimes it's about self-image.  Sometimes it's about politics.  It's ALWAYS grim, though.  See, for example, Dr. Strangelove.

Another aspect of black comedy is that it's usually unexpected and it's not normally a delivered line.  It's situational as in Family Guy where Peter is in a barbershop quartet singing the news to a man that he's got AIDS.  It's so wrong but SOOOOOO right.  Jhonen Vasquez' work is BRIMMING with it and that is why Invader Zim (my favoritist cartoon, EVER) should never have been on Nickelodeon.

You maaaaaaah bitch, now.  Bleat for me.

So, as much as we want to stifle the giggles, movies like Black Sheep and Jennifer's Body exist solely to make us laugh at the dark side.  To point a finger and giggle at the wrongness of the world.  To, perhaps paradoxically, address our fears and realize that there's nothing to be afraid of.

So, go ahead and laugh.  It's good for you.

It's probably just easier to laugh at Megan Fox's career, though.