Luther the Pascha Hare 1: The Uncanny Valley Between Comedy and Horror

In college, my American Literature professor taught me that humor was based on "a subject losing his/her pride" in the moment's resolution.  I internalized that theory for many years, thinking humor had the ability to save humanity from its own collective ego.  What I didn't know was this was only the second of three modern theories of humor.  What I knew was the superiority theory.  The other two being relief theory and incongruous juxtaposition theory.

I want to focus on Incongruous Juxtaposition, or as I like to call it: the sudden moment you realized that you perceived the now absurd situation very wrong.

If I had known about the last theory - all my papers in college would have centered around it.  I relate to it like it was a family member.  As I've gotten older, I see modern humor has taken the comedic juxtapositions to more and more absurd extremes, to the point where surreal humor are just older memes now.  Charlie the Unicorn.  It's humor for a world where resolutions comes from places so unexpected, it's bizarre.  Almost anything on adult swim qualifies, but the obvious example is Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

But I've also noticed how the "bizarre unexpected" can quickly swing in the wrong direction. For example, Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) hiding in the closet of Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) in the Cohen Brother's Burn After Reading.  The set-up feels like a wind-up to a slapstick scene complete with Chad's goofy look when the closet opens.  But any initial laughs are cut short by the sudden violence. Then Harry's concerns over Chad being "a spook" brings back a very nervous humor.  The audience is stuck between laughter and jump-scare fear.

A bizarre resolution can cause a reaction that doesn't make you laugh and teeters on the uncomfortable.  Seeing Pulp Fiction in the theater, I remembered some people laughing when the Gimp came out, while others started to close their eyes and cringe in their seats. There's a great video on the "creeps" by vsauce, that talks about that reaction when we approach the valley between certainty and ambiguity.

It leads me to think there's grey area between comedy and horror: the sudden moment you realize the absurd situation can go two different ways (or in the Coen Brothers case, both at once). Personally I find a use for both.  If humor can teach you to laugh at yourself, horror can prepare you to be unafraid of the unexpected.

I guess this is why I gravitate towards monsters that are more unnerving than obviously dangerous.  Sure, I hold a handful of classic tropes that frightened me as a kid (e.g., werewolves, body snatchers).  But the warped ones that sit on that cusp of "ambiguity" speak to me more.

Which brings me to Luther the Pascha Hare.  He first appeared in Wyrd Chronicles 17 in a short story that was ridiculous, unsettling, and fun.  But it was the cover that grabbed me in the same way that the original Teddy figure grabbed me: a childish figure warped into an absurd terror.  It's frightening but not in a realistic way - like disease, violence or sudden change. He's stuck in between a cartoon and a threat.

The subjectively "fun" part of the story was reading that Luther swallowed people whole, and seeing the handprints pushing from inside his belly on the cover art.  That gave me an idea for his figure...

So on the sculpt... I love the face and the pose, but there's two features that bug me.  First, Luther is wearing a top hat. It's not the character on that front cover.  The second is "the swallowed" inside Luther's belly.  You can see Luther's stomach is angular like something is bumping around inside, but you can't see a face or hands pressing outwards - probably due to the fur detail.  This is probably a compromise the sculptor had to make: the figure needs to visibly have fur but sculpting fur will obscure any impression "the swallowed" makes.

Malifaux made some inserts based on different terrains. One was an orphanage... but clearly a very haunted orphanage. One of them was a ghost coming out of a rug.  I'd already made a copy of this with Instant Mold and green stuff. I could cut out the face and hand pressing up from the rug.

My first run on applying the face of "the swallowed".  I was not going to re-sculpt fur over the face for fear of running into the same conundrum the sculptor probably ran into.  Painting some fur on would be much easier than sculpting it.

Ugh!!  The hat had to go!  The more I looked at it, the more I hated it. Too much comedy, not enough creepy.

Malifaux 2nd edition is known for it's confounding assembly schemes, where tiny important model bits can be mistaken on the sprue for flash to ignore.  So Luther is unusual in that he arrives assembled.  With the hat off I could see why they made this decision.  It looks like the pieces didn't quite line up as smoothly as other builds, and all the gaps culminated in the head piece.

Speaking of gaps, more green stuff was needed on other areas.  I was starting to worry about my face.  It was bulging out so far from the stomach that it was going to need a lot of green stuff to fill gaps and make the folds in the stretched skin look natural.

Sculpting some the scalp and adding a little fur in.

I kept adding green stuff on to make my initial bit of face bulge work.  But eventually I had to admit it wasn't working.  The piece was too thick and to make it work would mean adding so much green stuff it would take over the figure. So I made the decision to take it off and start over.  This time with a thinner piece.  It worked out much better, though sadly some leftover green stuff was stuck on the figure.

This is the only pic I took where I tried to integrate the hand pressing out.  I eventually took it off as I couldn't make the creases and fold look natural so close next to the face bulge. The end result was that area looked a touch rough from left over green stuff residue.

More on the second post...