Who Framed Fred and George?

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 43083

Comedy is a funny thing (funny strange and funny ha ha).  It's
strange, because one type of comedy relies on something called Danger
Averted.  With Danger Averted, you have a situation in which something
bad, painful, disastrous, or harmful could happen, but then at the
last minute it doesn't.  Or it does happen, but Nobody Gets Hurt.  You
toss baby into the air and she shrieks with laughter because the
sensation of being thrown and falling through the air causes one part
of her brain to register "Danger!" but she knows daddy will catch
her--that there really is no danger--so she laughs. 

My favorite amusement-park ride takes you up to the top of a tower,
higher than the ferris wheel. You're in one of those harnesses. Then
without warning it blasts you downward.  Even though you know it's
coming, you involuntarily scream because your brain is telling you
that you're about to die.  But before you get to the bottom,
hydraulics bounce you gently upwards a few times, then you are let
down easily.  It's that combination of a primitive reaction to falling
and the knowledge that I'm really safe that constitutes the fun.

Practical jokes also fall into the Danger Averted category.  If you
are startled by a loud noise or unexpected sight, you get the
adrenaline rush that comes from your brain's "Danger" warning, but
because there really isn't any danger, you end up laughing.  That is,
unless you actually get hurt.  Then it's not funny anymore, not for
you, and, unless you're dealing with sociopaths, not for the jokers.

Slapstick falls into that same category.  People fall but they don't
get hurt.  You get smacked in the face, but it's just a harmless pie.
 Cartoons represent the ultimate in Danger Averted comedy: you can do
anything to a Toon, and Nobody Gets Hurt.  Ever.  

Then you have "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" which deals with Danger
Averted comedy.  You drop an anvil on Roger Rabbit's head, and a big
bump lifts the anvil a foot off his head.  He shakes it off; no harm
done.  But if you drop that same anvil on Eddie Valiant's head, he
dies of massive head trauma.  Anvil On Roger Rabbit is funny; Anvil On
Eddie is not.  The difference is in whether the danger is averted.

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" is an unusual movie because the real world
and the cartoon world occupy the same space.  You can do things to
Roger that you would never do to Eddie Valiant simply because they
would be affected different ways.  It occurs to me while reading this
latest Fred And George Are Bullies thread that the HP series is in
many ways the same: some of the characters are flesh and blood and
some are Toons.  When something happens to one character it's funny
because that character isn't hurt.  Something else happens to another
character and it's tragic because the danger was never averted.

People have asserted that Fred and George aren't the most
well-developed characters in the series, and I concur.  I think they
must be Toons.  They function as Toons.  They do things because
they're funny, and for no other reason.  The Dursleys are also Toons,
as are Draco and his buddies.  (I remember an excellent post by Elkins
in which she expresses her disappointment in Draco as Harry's nemesis
for the simple fact that Draco is two-dimensional.) 

As Toons, they Don't Get Hurt.  They're merely props for JKR's own
brand of physical humor.  This is, after all, a woman whose favorite
TV show is "The Simpsons."  Most of the jokes on that show are Danger
Averted jokes; that is, if what happened on "The Simpsons" happened in
real life it would be genuinely tragic, but because it's not real and
no one gets hurt, it's a scream.  

Let's look at some of this Toon humor:

Five Hexes and Stepping Upon

Draco and Co. get hexed from five directions and get stepped on.  Then
the twins, Harry, and Ron "kicked, rolled, and pushed" them into the
corridor.  Is there potential danger?  Yes.  Was it averted?  Well, we
don't know for sure, but what's going to happen when they wake up and
find themselves covered with tentacles or that they have jelly legs? 
They'll get upset, someone will muster a countercurse, and they'll be
fine.  It's like Daffy Duck putting his beak back on when it gets
blasted onto the back of his head in "Wabbit Season/Duck Season." 
He's irritated, but no harm done, so it's funny.  Do you really think
JKR let the Trio and Twins cause real damage to Draco et al.?  Really?
 I see no indication that she did.  Danger Averted.

Quirrell and the Snowballs

I have yet to see an in-depth discussion on this board of why Quirrell
defected to the dark side, or about his past, or whether he was
kissing Florence behind the greenhouses.  I think it's safe to say
that he's a Toon.  I mean, the nervousness, the silly turban... he's a
caricature.  Is there a danger of his being hurt by the snowballs? 
Yes, but only if he is a real person and not a Toon.  (As Elkins
pointed out, he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown continually, but
his nervousness isn't real, because he's a Toon.)  Is that danger
averted?  It appears to be.  JKR doesn't indicate that the snowballs
aggravated his condition or that they did anything beyond perplex him.
 Of course, we now know that Voldemort was under the turban, so really
it was Voldemort getting hit in the face.  Did he vow revenge on the
Twins?  No, the incident is mentioned once and dropped.  Danger Averted.

Ton-Tongue Toffee

Dudley, the Toon whose primary characteristic is gluttony and being a
spoiled brat.  He's not three-dimensional either, despite his rotund
body.  Give him a pig's tail, he's terribly upset by it, but he goes
to the hospital and has it removed.  No harm done.  No, really.  We
don't have an account of Dudley's psychology being affected by the
incident beyond being skittish around wizards.  He doesn't grow from
it, or gain new insight, or spend weeks in a deep dark depression, or
become a different person because of it.  He's a Toon.  And then
scarfing up the TTToffee like the glutton he is makes his tongue
swell, and it scares him, but he's not in any real danger.  His mother
goes apoplectic with panic and his father throws a vase at Arthur
Weasley.  This is not Dudley Is Going To Die From Suffocation And
Arthur Weasley Saves The Day.  No, it's just a prank.  In fact, Harry
says he hesitates to get into the fireplace because he doesn't want to
miss the fun.  Unless JKR is a sadist, this is Toon humor--no one gets
hurt.  Danger Averted.

Canary Cremes

Again, these little pranks never put anyone in any kind of danger, and
the imagery is very cartoonish. JKR introduces it with "Just then,
Neville caused a slight diversion by turning into a large canary," a
cue that this is actually funny (read: not harmful).  Danger Averted.

And there are more examples, but I'll move on.

The point is that those who are aghast at the Twins' behavior are
reading them as if they were real people instead of Toons, thinking
that if the Twins did something like that to them or their kids, they
would be calling Molly and giving her a piece of their minds. 
Granted, if many of these incidents happened in real life, they
*would* be painful and tragic and harmful.  But you can't hurt Dudley
or Draco or Quirrell because they're Toons.  Things don't affect them
the same way they affect other characters.  If you bounced snowballs
off Lupin's head, he wouldn't give you the satisfaction of a laugh:
he'd either blast them with his wand or send them back to torment YOU,
for example.  And it's worthy of note that the Twins' inner circle,
those whom they don't pick on, are primarily three-dimensional
characters, while those at the periphery are Toons.

On the other hand, there *is* real tragedy in the series--kill off the
Potters and Harry ends up an orphan and their absence affects him
deeply.  Sirius ends up in Azkaban, guilt-ridden and barely able to
hang onto his sanity.  He bears the marks of his captivity.  Lupin is
going gray at a young age from the stress of being a werewolf.  Crouch
Sr. pays for his mistakes with his life.  Crouch Jr. loses his soul. 
None of this is funny because the danger is not averted; real damage
is done. 

So you see, I'm not arguing that "it's OK because it's just a story."
 I'm arguing that it's OK because the story is populated with two
kinds of characters, Toons and people, and the story itself is
defining who's who.  You don't laugh when the people get hurt because
they actually get hurt.  You do laugh at the Toons.

I think that reading HP without taking into account that some
characters are Toons ends up distorting the story.  For one thing, you
don't enjoy the jokes.  For another, it adds dimension to characters
where none exists--mostly negative dimensions--so you don't enjoy the
characters.  And last, it gives rise to heated discussions like these
between people who see the Toons as Toons and people who interpret
them as real.  It's hard to find common ground in that case.

--Dicentra, who wishes Heather Happy Birthday