Comment to Lead Blog (Ellery)


My sister and I used to watch Home Alone together all the time, so I can definitely relate to Ellery about the nostalgia that this movie brings. I remember as a little kid how crazy and ridiculous I thought some of the scenes from this movie were. However, I feel like now I can really get a true appreciation for how absurd this movie is. Firstly, it is insane how someone was able to protect themselves and their home by conducting these elaborate stunts. Secondly, it is incredible to thing that a child at only eight years old is smart enough to come up with so many ways to stop two full grown men from robbing his home. I think that the humor in this movie comes from the fact that Kevin is only eight years old when he is plotting these tricks and that the tricks he is carrying out are so absurd. These two ideas can be connected to the superiority theory and the incongruity theory. Although, I think the relief theory could also be incorporated into this movie. At the beginning of the movie there is some tension and nervousness that the audience feels because we know that these two men are planning on robbing this house and the only one home is a little eight-year-old boy. Naturally, people will worry when they think of this type of situation because the young boy is in such a helpless situation; however, our tension is relieved when we realize just how savage Kevin is. In this moment, I see the rise and fall of relief theory and the beginning of the use of superiority theory and incongruity theory. The reason I identified the other two theories is because of how absurd and unpredictable Kevin is as he tries to stop Marv and Harry. The superiority theory shows because of how Kevin is seen as superior to two grown men which then makes the audience feel like they are also superior to Marv and Harry.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 25, 2018 at 8:12 AM

    Now that you mention it, I can definitely see an argument for the relief theory. I had almost forgotten how tense some of the scenes were in the beginning, like the one where Kevin is running from Marv and Harry in the van and ends up hiding in the nativity scene.

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  2. Shane HerronOctober 25, 2018 at 6:48 PM

    It's interesting to think about relief theory in this context. Freud argues that humor is akin to how a child imagines being an adult--it gives them a sense of protection. That's certainly what Kevin does. Freud says that humor represents adults recreating this sense of invulnerability as when children imagine themselves to be adults.

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  3. UnknownOctober 28, 2018 at 9:06 PM

    It is definitely interesting to compare the way I used to think about the movie to the way I do now. When I was younger I remember watching the scene where he creates a contraption to make cardboard figures of people move around to make it look like they're having a party and thinking it was the coolest thing ever.

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