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On "Comeuppance" humor, and brands of humor in general.
Cindy also thinks that GoF was the funniest of the books so far:
Oh, I'd agree that GoF was the funniest book by quite a bit.
I'm glad it wasn't just me.
CoS might also contend if you like Lockhart.
Lockhart didn't do it for me at all. I found him irritating, and only rarely amusing.
PoA is my favorite book overall, but I think that is because of the characterizations, not the wit.
PoA is my favorite for a number of reasons: theme, characterization, keep-you-guessing plot, and high melodrama. (I don't care that it's cheesy—I like a bit of melodrama from time to time!) Most of all, though, I think that I liked it for its oh-so-tight structure.
But I also found it pretty darned funny: it would definitely get my vote for second funniest of the books so far. It had a number of really good farce scenes, and I love farce. But more on that below...
I wrote:
I absolutely hate most varieties of "comeuppance" humor, for example—I always have, ever since very early childhood&8212;and there's a lot of that in these books.
Cindy wrote:
"Comeuppance" humor, I'm guessing, refers to things like Draco the Bouncing Ferret where we are supposed to think it is funny when a character is abused? Are there other examples you're thinking of?
A few other people chimed in to express their own dislike of slapstick, or of sadistic humor, so now I feel compelled to elaborate.
What I tend to dislike isn't so much slapstick or sadistic humor per se. Far from it—my sense of humor is actually quite sadistic.
What I don't much care for is a particular brand of sadistic humor in which the comedy is meant to derive largely from the perception that the abused character "deserved it," or that he "had it coming." I don't like "Just Desserts."
I am resolutely unamused, for example, when Dudley must take the fall over and over and over again; and when at the end of GoF the Gryffs, not content with having already hexed the Slyths into unconsciousness on the train, also feel the need to tramp all over their supine forms on their way out the door, it doesn't make me feel happy or gleeful or amused, or as if I've just been provided with a feel-good moment to lighten my mood. It makes me feel simply weary. Weary and sad, and very very old. (Part of me desperately wants to believe that, given the general emotional tenor of the end of GoF, this was indeed the intent. But the realist in me knows better.)
Pig's Tail and Tongue Toffee and Bouncing Ferret and Sylth Stomping fail to amuse me because...well, honestly, because I just don't see what's funny about them. They all seem to fall into a general category of "it's funny because he really had it coming" humor that I just don't happen to get.
But I do very much like other types of humor that derive from characters' being horribly pained or humiliated or embarrassed or abused. For me, though, in order for such scenes to work, the characters have to be active agents. It makes me laugh to see people desperately struggling to extricate themselves from impossible or embarrassing or even potentially lethal situations. I don't know quite what this is called, but I tend to think of it as the primary comedic attribute of Farce.
Both forms of humor are fairly sadistic, of course. The difference, I suppose, is that "Just Desserts" is purely sadistic—there's no particular identification with the victim involved, although there may well be a strong identification with those who witness the victim's humiliation—and it also has a tinge of righteous satisfaction: it is gratifying because it makes us feel that Justice Has Been Served.
Farce, OTOH, is more sado-masochistic. We take malicious enjoyment in the character's discomfiture (and may even take a good deal of self-righteous gratification in its "you had that coming" aspects), while simultaneously sympathizing and identifying with the victim's plight.
The latter makes me laugh; the former doesn't. Why? Who knows? I guess I must just have a taste for both sides of the whip. ;->
I enjoy farce in all its forms, from the cheesy low-brow bedroom variety ("Oh, no! It's my husband! Quick—go hide out on the balcony!") to the far more sophisticated verbal type. I'm particularly partial to those farcical scenes in which one character is desperately trying to defend an all-too-obviously indefensible statement or position to someone who just isn't buying it for a second. (The closest thing to a one-liner version of this that I can think of is: "She turned me into a newt! Well...it got better.") The more twists and turns the argument takes, the funnier I tend to find it, and of course, it always helps if the character to whom things are being explained is a bit of a sadist.
PoA had a lot of nice examples of this form of humor. I loved, for example, the scene in which Harry desperately tries to give Snape some explanation for why his head might have been spotted in Hogsmeade. Snape's own dry humor adds tremendously to the comedy, of course, as does his malice.
And then, naturally, there was Shrieking Shack.
Yes, of course I found Shrieking Shack funny! It was grim and terrible and disturbing—and also utterly hilarious. The steady degeneration of Pettigrew's attempts at self-defense—from "It wasn't me, it was Black!" to "Listen to all the clever arguments these nice thirteen-year-olds are making here, why don't you? It was Black, I'm telling you!" to "Well...okay, so it was me, but it happened in a moment of weakness, and really, what the hell else could you expect? You know what a terrible coward I've always been," to "Well...okay, so I was actually passing on information for an entire year, but Voldemort made me do it!" to finally "Oh God, just please don't kill me"—was absolutely hysterical.
Well...to me, at any rate. Like I said, I've got kind of a black sense of humor.
But then, I'm particularly partial to what one might call "black farce," farce in which the penalty for failure is monstrously severe—death or enslavement or torment, for example, rather than social embarrassment or unemployment or plain old humiliation. The darker it gets, the funnier I tend to find it.
No-win situations also always tickle me. There is a subset of black farce (often known as "ghetto humor") in which the humor derives from the understanding that the character actually has no chance of extricating himself from his terrible predicament—he's utterly powerless, and the situation completely hopeless; he simply can't win. The best short example of this type I can think of right now is that bit in Monty Python's Life of Brian, when the Centurion tells the crucified prisoners, already hanging bound and nailed to their crosses: "Right, then. All those who don't want to be crucified, raise your hands."
JKR's never gone quite that dark, but she starts edging there in a couple of places in GoF. Voldie and the DEs in the graveyard, for example, was the scene that I've found the funniest in all the books so far. Particularly the brief exchange with Nott ("Yes. That will do" was the GoF laugh-out-loud line for me.) Again, it's black farce and while the humor there can be explained, I suppose, there's probably little point in doing so. If it's not the sort of thing that happens to strike your comedic fancy, then it just isn't.
Mainly, though, GoF's humor for me lies in the re-reading. Just about every Crouch/Moody scene in the book strikes me as funny, because I always enjoy humor that derives from the reader's being in on the joke. I like con artistry; I enjoy deceit. And I particularly love to be in on the joke when it comes to statements with hidden secondary meanings—especially if the motives of the character making the statements are malicious, or even downright wicked. (Richard III, Iago) I'm not quite sure why this form of humor should work so much better for me when the double-edged statements come from someone with ill-intentions, but I suspect that it may have something to do with the fact that I actively enjoy feeling strong conflicting sympathies. Laughing along with the villain, while simultaneously getting to sympathize with the innocent dupe, is just far more satisfying somehow than laughing along with the hero at the innocent dupe can ever be.
It's only on re-reading that you find the really black humor in GoF, but some of that is very black indeed. The scene in the anteroom off of the main hall right after Harry's name has come out of the Goblet of Fire, for example, is the thing that has definitely made me laugh the hardest in all the books to date—but it's definitely sadistic humor, and it's only evident on second reading. It made me giggle madly the second time through because, knowing the plot, Crouch Sr.'s position there is just so absolutely horrific that I found it funny.
I mean, there the poor bastard is, he's all Imperio'ed, and he's trapped in a very small room with Karkaroff, and with Snape, and with Ludo Bagman (who may or may not really be a Baddie, but I'd be willing to bet that at that point, Crouch was convinced that he was)—from his perspective, he's fallen into a pit of vipers, he really has—and then, as if that weren't bad enough, in stomps his polyjuiced son, pretending to be Moody, and starts just torturing the poor man, going on about "gee, maybe someone confunded the Goblet, wonder who could have done that?" and "I'll bet this is all part of someone's plan to murder Harry Potter, wonder who that can be?"
And poor Crouch can't do a thing. He can't warn anyone, he can't tell Dumbledore what's going on. All he can do is stand there, looking sicker and sicker by the minute (Harry notices how ill Crouch looks not just once, but twice in the course of that scene), and recite his designated lines whenever he's called upon to do so. Even when Dumbledore, who is obviously quite concerned that something may be up with him, invites him to stay for tea (his chance! his one chance!) the poor guy can't even manage to throw the curse off long enough to so much as accept the invitation. And I'm absolutely certain that Crouch interpreted Ludo Bagman's cheerful prodding ("Oh, come on, Barty—do say yes") as deliberate cruelty.
It's terrible, but it's also very funny in a black, black way: the second time I read GoF, I found myself giggling out loud all the way through that scene.
Then, I have quite a few rather serious...er, parental issues. (Why, yes! As a matter of fact, I did identify with young Barty Crouch. Why do you ask?) So I'm willing to acknowledge the possibility that my appreciation for the comedy inherent in that scene might well have been edging into the domain of the purely sadistic.
Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, JKR is going in the right direction as far as the humor element of the books goes. But then, I like my funnies dark.
—Elkins, who is willing to cut Crouch Sr. some slack, but only because he suffered horribly before he died
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on February 1, 2002 4:18 PM
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