Committee Chair

Guy, Matthew Wayne

Committee Member

Whightsel, Oren; Hampton, Bryan

Department

Dept. of English

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

This thesis explores the line between comedy and horror in an increasingly postmodern world through the cinema of John Landis and Woody Allen. Chapter One explores the theoretical and historical material that link Landis and Allen, namely in their dealing with (1) Edgar Allan Poe’s effect, (2) Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler’s abject, (3) Sigmund Freud’s “uncanny,” and (4) Mikhail Baktin’s carnivalesque. The chapter will conclude with John Landis’ portions of The Twilight Zone: The Movie, as a linked history that welcomes exploration of Landis alongside Allen. Chapter Two conducts a comparative study of two horror-comedies: John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London (1981) and Woody Allen’s Shadows and Fog (1991). Chapter Three explores Allen’s Alice (1990) and Deconstructing Harry (1997) to posit a potential method for future creations of horror-comedies. Keywords: existentialism, religious anxiety, the abject, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, Woody Allen, John Landis, Freud and the uncanny, carnivalesque

Acknowledgments

This author would like to thank her husband, Grant Douglas Bromley, the best copy editor a girl could ask for. She would also like to thank her child Remi Ruth Bromley, an excellent speller, although she is just three years old. I would also like to thank my parents, Kymberly and Michael McCormick for their unwavering support in my education, and my twin sister, Analise Farnham for always answering my frantic calls and listening to my borderline crises. I would also like to thank the wonderful faculty of the UTC English Department, with especial focus on Dr. Matthew Guy, Dr. Bryan Hampton, and Dr. Oren Whightsel for their invaluable assistance as my committee chair and members respectively

Degree

M. A.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts.

Date

8-2026

Subject

Existentialism; Postmodernism--Religious aspects; Abjection in motion pictures; Uncanny, The (Psychoanalysis), in literature

Keyword

existentialism, religious anxiety, the abject, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, Woody Allen, John Landis, Freud and the uncanny

Document Type

Masters theses

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

ix, 67 leaves

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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