Toon Talk (WAS Who Framed Fred and George?)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 43320

Cindy quoted:

> Dicentra (about the distinction between which characters' injuries 
> are funny and which are not)...

Oh, *wait!*

Wait, wait, wait.  Is *that* what this conversation is really about?  
It's about when a fictional character getting hurt is FUNNY?

Oh, but hold up, now.  Just hold up.  Surely humor is *subjective,* 
isn't it?  There are a lot of different types of humor that involve 
people getting hurt or injured, and all of them follow different 
rules.  So is this really something that we want to be *arguing* 
over?  Surely we're not saying that some types of humor are morally 
superior to others, are we?

It almost looks to me as if this is becoming a debate about whether 
or not people *ought* to find certain things funny, and I don't know 
if I'm at all comfortable with that.  Humour is pretty instinctive, 
isn't it?  And it is hardly ever "moral."

I've just gone back and read Dicey's original Toon post, and I think 
that perhaps we need to draw a distinction here between two 
*completely* different things: 

(a) when it makes sense to consider a fictional character's behavior 
a reflection of his character

(b) when it is morally acceptable to laugh at something you read in a 
book


My own answers to these two questions are as follows:

(a) always

(b) always




-- Elkins