Humor and Horror

My favorite moment in the film Hotel Rwanda is a brief moment of respite. In the middle of some awful violence and fighting, the main character Paul Rusesabagina, is on top of his hotel, talking with his wife. As gunshots are firing around them, they have an incredibly romantic and humorous exchange. Everyone in the theatre chuckled and laughed, because, you had to. As tension builds and in the most awful of circumstances, humor is sometimes to the only way to momentarily release your emotions so you can face whatever is coming next.
Humor and tragedy are bound together intimately. If you can't make the audience laugh, and warm up to characters, you'll never compel them to care about whatever tragedy might befall them.
In the real world, humor is sometimes the only way to begin to understand something awful that has happened. I remember a few weeks after September 11th, the humorous newspaper The Onion released what was perhaps their most powerful and funny issue. It found the perfect balance, by making fun not of the tragedy, but of our inability to know how to react to the tragedy. Even that small bit of humor allowed us to grapple with the sadness and fear we were feeling. Finding any bit of humanity, of laughter and of love within an awful event is one of the few ways we can get through these awful events. Take them when you can.