Twins, Toons, Humor and Instinct

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 43296

First, let me preface this with some clarifications.  I wrote my
initial "Toon" analysis of the twins waaaaay back last Friday [43083].
Two hundred messages later, it seems that some people [both who agree
and disagree with me] have inadvertently misread what I was saying and
have assumed I meant things I didn't mean.  I'll take the
responsibility for that: a good essay shouldn't be so easy to misread,
and obviously I didn't craft it well enough.

So let me clarify my stance a bit:

1) I'm not saying that the twins' characters are being overanalyzed,
nor that those who say they are bullies are making much ado about
nothing, nor that they're being hypersensitive to the twins' actions.
 I only mean to say that "the twins are bullies" is not my preferred
reading.  To the extent that my words implied anything else (and going
back I can see that they did) I retract my statements and offer apologies.

2) By calling the twins "Toons" I don't mean to say that what they do
doesn't matter.  It does matter, or JKR wouldn't put them in.  We can
disagree about what their level of significance is, but I believe they
are significant nonetheless.

3) I find Elkins's arguments, especially her point-by-point analysis
of bullying behavior, very compelling.  She's got a point.  (She
always has a point, BTW.)  Her essays help me clarify my thoughts and
show me things I didn't see in the first place.

So. Back to our show...


Elkins:
One argument, if I'm understanding this correctly, is that we cannot
really deduce *anything* about a character's personality from a scene
that is written comedically -- or perhaps this is only true if the
scene is written as very *broad* comedy. Dicentra has suggested, for
example, that so long as the characters involved in a scene are
"Toons," then we are meant to read the characters' actual behavior in
that scene as in no way significant to their actual *character.*

Dicentra:
I didn't mean to argue this point this way, and again I take
responsibility for being unclear.  The core of the "Toon" argument is
not that the cartoonish scenes are somehow apart from the rest of the
text.  It is rather that the twins engage in behavior that has the
*form* of bullying, but not the *substance*.  It's mock violence
instead of real violence.  The twins themselves, however, aren't the
ones who decided to make it mock violence--JKR did.  What *should*
hurt someone doesn't, and it doesn't because JKR is using the
conventions of cartoons in some instances to Avert Danger, thereby
creating comedy. Toons cannot get hurt, nor can they land any real blows. 

For example, the Dursleys are most definitely Toons--they're
caricatures--but Harry is not.  By all rights, Harry should be a
psychiatrist's gold mine after spending his formative years with them.
 Either he should esteem himself the most worthless person in the
world (having bought into the Dursleys' opinion of him) or he should
be a vessel of rage, engaging in self-destructive behavior or ready to
go postal on them at any moment.  Or he should have spent his life in
the big Egyptian river. (It's a bad pun, trust me.)

But he's not messed up at all. He's not terribly insecure, not
socially inept, not violent or depressed or out-of-touch or anything.
 He hates the Dursleys, he regards them with utmost contempt, it
cheeses him off when they confine him or restrict him in any way, but
he doesn't seem to be *hurt* by it.  He doesn't seem to take it
personally, and he's not afraid of them.  He seems to regard the
Dursleys as Toons, too: idiot buffoons that he has to endure, but who
can't really do anything to him except annoy him.  The only time they
seem to be able to mess with him is when they insult his parents, but
Harry's upset when *anyone* insults his parents.

Some have attributed this to Wizard Toughness, and it might be the
case, but the truth is Harry *can* be hurt by ordinary things, such as
when Ron didn't believe him in GoF, or when Cho rejected him, or when
Lupin resigned. So the Dursleys' failure to damage Harry is due to
their Toonishness.  They just can't affect Harry the way real people can.

On to the twins.  Elkins's analysis shows that they engage in
bullying-like behavior.  But do they manage to actually *hurt* anyone?
 Do their actions have real consequences or do they not?  Because if
the answer is not, we have comedy, not violence. And if it isn't real
violence, it's hard for me to say that the twins are bullies.

The TTToffee episode, as Elkins acknowledges, is a Toonish episode,
done over-the-top and with all the conventions of slap-stick comedy. 
Whether Dudley is actually hurt by the episode is a matter of debate,
but I come down on the side that he can't be hurt because he's a Toon.
 He doesn't seem to have enough feelings or insight or introspection
to be *realistically* affected by the episode, except for having one
more reason to mistrust wizards.

As for Arthur and Molly's reaction to the episode, they don't see the
Dursleys as Toons. They see them as ordinary muggles, and they see the
twins' behavior as muggle-baiting, regardless of whether Dudley can be
hurt or not.  They're hypersensitized to muggle-baiting, having seen
Voldemort and his followers engage in just that kind of behavior. 
Arthur's career is based on the concept that muggle-baiting is wrong
wrong wrong.  The twins don't see it that way because they're too
young to remember Voldemort.  If they had witnessed violent and cruel
episodes of muggle-baiting, they would probably be more circumspect in
their dealings with the Dursleys, avoiding all *appearance* of
muggle-baiting (at least I would hope so).

The TTToffee episode, as far as I can tell, does not reveal the twins
as bullies. I think that Elkins' own observation is much more
compelling: it's a foreshadowing of something much more sinister. It
seems that this funny little play-within-a-play is meant to stand in
stark contrast to the events at the QWC, because *then* some real harm
is being done, whereas in the TTToffee incident it isn't. The TTToffee
incident therefore functions like the cartoon before the serious
drama--like they used to do at the movies--loosening up the audience
and giving people time to get popcorn.  Only this time the cartoon
points to the serious drama; the fake violence mimics the real
violence, making the real violence seem just that much more shocking.

Dang, that JKR is good.  I really need to study up on the comedy and
see how it relates to the drama.  Oh, to have that kind of time.

--Dicentra, who will call the twins bullies as soon as JKR has them
land real blows