Toon Talk (WAS Who Framed Fred and George?)

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 43313

Cindy said:

Hmmm. This is a pretty novel theory -- one I've never seen raised on
the list before. I'm not sure I fully understand it, but I'd like to
try. As best I can sort this out, it sounds like the Toon theory views
certain characters as Toons based on three factors:

1. Whether anyone gets hurt.
2. Whether the character inflicting harm or pain is important or
fleshed out as a character.
3. Whether the victim of the act in question is important or fleshed
out as a character.

You look to the story to separate the Toons from the non-Toons. OK,
I'm with you so far, Dicentra.

Dicentra replies:

Uh, not so with me, so much.  I'd revise the list to read thus:

1. Whether the character is able to respond *realistically* to events
in the story at a given moment.

The importance or fleshed-outness of a character isn't central to
their Toonishness. The Dursleys and Malfoy are somewhat
two-dimensional, but they're plenty important to the story.  What
makes the Dursleys Toons is that they can't land any real blows on
Harry (or anyone else), nor do they seem to feel pain or anything else
in a realistic manner.  Malfoy is a little different: he's not as
exaggerated as the Dursleys, but he doesn't seem to be able to do any
real harm. (Buckbeak would disagree.)  Likewise the twins: I wouldn't
say that they are absolutely all the time Toons, but they do function
as Toons very frequently.  They just don't seem to be able to land
*real* blows on the victims of their pranks.

Dicentra had said before:

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.

Cindy responds:

This is a rather interesting idea. If I understand, the idea is that
we all know that these are just fictional characters anyway, not real
life. These fictional characters can't be hurt, so why not laugh at
their plight or their misbehavior? I mean, that's what Saturday
morning cartoons are all about, right?

I have to admit to some confusion. First, *all* of the characters in
the books are fictional. A great many of them have their comedic
moments, and only a few are really important and get a lot of "screen
time," if you will. So when are we supposed to be aghast, horrified,
bothered and disturbed, and when are we supposed to be highly amused?

Dicentra responds:

What the Toon theory posits is that not all fictional characters are
created equal. Some of them react realistically, others don't.  You
can't hurt Quirrell, but you can hurt Lupin and Sirius.  The screen
time is also irrellevant: Cedric's parents barely show their faces,
but they obviously can be hurt. How do you know how to react?  It ends
up being a combination of textual cues and reader experience.  That's
why some things are funny to some people and to others they aren't.

Cindy says:

See, I don't think it is fair to say that the sole purpose of the
twins is comedic. 

Dicentra:

Neither do I.  They function as Toons frequently, but not always. They
were hurt when Bagman cheated them, and I think they feel it when
their siblings are suffering.  Those times they try to cheer up Ginny
in CoS and Ron in PoA are clumsy, but I really do think it bothered
them that they were hurting, and they reacted the only way they knew
how. (If I had a dollar for every time a well-meaning person dealt
with *my* pain in an ineffective way [including my own mother] I could
pay off the house.)

Cindy:

Moreover, if we identify these three different forms of "Danger
Averted" comedy, don't almost all of the instances in which one
character harms another fall into the category of Danger Averted?
Neither Wormtail nor Voldemort is well-fleshed out, so does that mean
it is amusing for Voldemort to torture Wormtail? I'm having
trouble seeing the link between whether a character is fleshed out and
our willingness to look the other way when they do something wrong or
mean-spirited or whether the pain they suffer ought to trouble us.

Dicentra:

I wouldn't call Peter a Toon.  He can feel pain and react
realistically to events.  He's pathetic in the Shrieking Shack, but
that's not a Toonish moment at all.  Voldemort isn't well fleshed-out
because he's had so little screen time, but I wouldn't call him a Toon
either.  The torture of Wormtail isn't funny in the least: no danger
is averted--Voldemort's Crucios are real enough in the context of the
fictional universe.  And there are no textual cues telling us we ought
to think it's funny, either: no snide remarks from the narrator, no
exaggerated characterizations.

Cindy:

Take Professor Trelawney, for instance.

If I understand the Toon theory, Professor Trelawney is a Toon. She is
a caricature if I ever saw one, and it works brilliantly for me. I
enjoy all of her scenes a great deal in the sense that I think they
are well-written and she "works" as a character. She is a bit player
in two of four books. Most of the time, she is written for laughs,
just like the twins.

Funny thing, though. People don't *like* Professor Trelawney much. On
the rare occasions I have tried to defend her, people say she is a
fraud, a charlatan. They don't like how she upsets Harry, how she
wishes to treat him like a lab rat after his dream in GoF. They don't
embrace her. I have never seen anyone cut her a break because she is a
Toon. No, Professor Trelawney is a Fraud, plain and simple, and that
is the beginning and end of it for many people on this list -- even
though there are plenty of hints that she is not a total fraud. And as
Elkins mentioned, Lockhart -- a major character in CoS -- is played
almost entirely for laughs for most of that book, yet no one forgives
him for his evil actions.

Dicentra:

Being a Toon has nothing to do with being liked or being forgiven. 
Lockhart's evil actions aren't played for laughs: his vanity is.  That
vanity is annoying in the extreme, including to the characters in the
novel, but it isn't *harmful*.  His little "gems of advice" he gives
Harry make Harry want to flee the scene, but Harry's not *hurt* by
them.  It's only when Lockhart tries to blast away his memory and
whatnot that he emerges out of Toon territory and becomes dangerous. 
Quirrell does the same thing at the end of PS/SS, when he reveals his
true colors.  Though neither character acquires much dimension in
these scenes, they stop functioning as Toons because they become
harmful for real.

As for Trelawney, she can't seem to land blows on Harry either. 
"Divination was his least favorite subject, apart from Potions. 
Professor Trelawney kept predicting Harry's death, which he found
extremely annoying." (GoF 193)  Harry isn't a nervous wreck because of
those predictions; she can't do anything to him. Snape and McGonagall,
OTOH, can.  To the extent that Trelawney acquires the ability to
really hurt someone she emerges from Toon status and becomes real.  Or
more real, at least.

Cindy:

I'm still noodling through this whole issue of slapstick and
come-uppance humor, but I think the bright line that separates whether
something is potentially amusing or is sickening is the extent to
which the victim is harmed, either on-screen or off-screen, including
the extent to which the offending act itself is portrayed in a
realistic light. In assessing whether the extent of the off-screen
harm, it is quite reasonable for readers and viewers to rely on their
own knowledge of the world and extrapolate what is hurtful and what is
painful.

Dicentra:

Except with Toons you can't rely on your own experience.  If I fell
off a 6,000-foot cliff and landed face down in the rock, I'd become a
puddle of skin, bones, and blood, and I'd be dead dead dead.  It would
not be funny at all.  Wile E. Coyote, however, falls off cliffs all
episode long.  He's not harmed because he's a Toon.  And it's hysterical.

Cindy:

Let's say we have a work of fiction. In it, one of the characters is a
black servant. Let's then assume that all of the characters except for
our black servant are white, and the black servant works for all the
white characters. ... OK. Now let's assume that the white characters
play practical jokes on our black servant. They burn crosses in places
where he can see them. They turn up in Klan outfits. They tell racist
jokes to the black character. Oh, the white characters don't mean any
harm, though. They never lay a hand on our black servant character,
and they adore him like a member of the family, they really do. It's
not intended to be malicious, and it is not motivated by hatred. It's
all in good fun, see? ... Would anyone find this work of fiction funny? 

Dicentra:

I wouldn't.  Even a mock representation of Klan violence, in which the
black character doesn't get hurt (he would just laugh it off), would
not strike me as funny.  And the reason I wouldn't find it funny is
that it's Too Close To The Truth.  I know too much about what the Klan
did, about the lynchings and the beatings and the murders and the
terror.  The only people who might find a slapstick Klan piece funny
are people who aren't familiar with the history behind black/white
relations in the U.S. and who don't know about the Klan.  Someone on
another planet, maybe.

And that's what's behind the schism on the list, I believe.  For some
list members, even the Toonish representations of bullying are Too
Close To The Truth to be funny.  Even if no one gets hurt in the
story, the pain of real-life experiences nullifies the comedic aspect.
 The danger may be averted in the story, but it wasn't in real life,
and real life trumps fiction.

So it doesn't matter whether the motives of the twins are malicious,
whether the twins like their victims, whether they go for weaker or
stronger victims.  It matters if the incident is written as a joke (no
one is hurt) or as a serious thing (someone is hurt).  And then
ultimately it matters whether the reader has been hurt by real-life
pranks (or "pranks").

--Dicentra, who was too invisible at school to be picked on