Humor and Morality (WAS: Who's More Out of Line?)

[ssk7882 <skelkins@attbi.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51237

Tom asked (a great question!):

> For everyone who got so upset over Snape's treatment of Hermione: 
> were you equally upset when Crouch/Moody turned Malfoy into a 
> ferret and started bouncing him around? 

Upset?

Oh, I found the ferret bouncing incident far more *upsetting.*  The 
reason, though, had nothing to do with either the moral positioning of
the actors *or* my personal fondness for the characters involved.
Instead, it had everything to do with the *author's* perceived 
moral positioning, and how that differed from my own.

I thought Snape's comment to Hermione was ghastly.  Perfectly 
ghastly.  It was gratuitously cruel, unconscionable, a totally 
vicious thing to say to an adolescent girl (and I agree with Shaun, 
by the way, that the long silence indicated to my mind that it was 
also a most calculated and *deliberate* act of verbal cruelty).  It 
was an abuse of his power and his authority.  Not nice behavior at 
all.

But I didn't feel that the author wanted me to read it any other 
way.  It was therefore not particularly *upsetting* to me.  I thought 
that Snape had been a right bastard, I felt a bit of vicarious 
indignation on Hermione's behalf, and I winced a little imagining 
myself in Hermione's shoes.  But really, I experienced nothing too 
extreme in the way of emotional response there.  Mainly, I just read 
it as Snape being Snape.  (I am very fond of Snape, you know, but I 
would never try to argue that he is not profoundly *unkind.*)

Now, ferret bounce was ghastly as well, and also gratuitous and cruel,
and also an abuse of Crouch/Moody's power and authority.  It was not 
Okay Behavior.  Not IMO, at any rate.  And it was also, to my mind, 
rather painfully described, with all of that lashing about and 
squealing that Ferret!Draco was doing.  Yet the authorial voice gave 
the impression of moral *approval.*

This made it upsetting to me as a reader in a way that "I see no
difference" simply was not.  It is always upsetting to me when I 
feel as if my own moral compass and the author's are rather severely 
misaligned.

I don't know *why* this should be so upsetting, mind you.  Heaven 
knows that the books for which this *isn't* the case are few and 
far between!  And yet, somehow, it still always does have the power 
to annoy and upset me.


-----------


The conversation then moved on, however, to the question of which 
of the two scenes readers found more *funny.*

Hmmm.  Well, clearly (as per usual) I seem to be in the minority 
here.  I really didn't find the ferret bouncing scene at all amusing 
the first time around (although on re-read, knowing who "Moody" is, I 
do find it rather funny).  Snape's "I see no difference" line, on the 
other hand, I found quite risible.

Why?  

Well, because the types of humor on which Ferret Bounce relies are 
slapstick, physical sadism, and "comeuppance humor," none of which 
are forms of humor that usually do a whole lot for me.  What can I 
say?  That's just not my sense of humor.

"I see no difference," on the other hand, is humor based in
psychological and verbal sadism, which is a type of humor that I 
almost always find very funny indeed.

Ferret Bounce *becomes* funny for me on re-reading because once you 
know what's really going on, the humor of the scene becomes rooted in 
dark irony, which similarly is a type of humor that I almost always 
enjoy.

I would like to point out, though, that whether or not something 
strikes one as *funny* does not necessarily have any bearing at all 
on whether or not one finds it *moral.*  I didn't personally consider 
either Snape's behavior *OR* Crouch/Moody's in the slightest bit 
ethical or justified or acceptable or "good."  Not at all.  Not in 
the least.

But since when has comedy ever been *moral?*


Shaun wrote:

> It was funny. It was also totally unacceptable.

Yes!  Thank you, Shaun!

I think that's a really important distinction to keep in mind.  Humor
is notoriously subjective, and it is also quite amoral.  Most forms
of comedy involve the idea of somebody being hurt or humiliated or 
otherwise discomfited.  There are exceptions -- puns, whimsy, some 
types of wordplay -- but for the most part, comedy *is* cruel.  
Farce, black humor, ghetto humor, "comeuppance humor," insult 
humor...they're all about people either behaving badly or having bad 
things happen to them (or both), aren't they?

This issue came up a while back, actually, in regard to the Ton-Tongue
Toffee scene, when as now, people started feeling a bit defensive 
over the perceived need to justify their enjoyment of "comeuppance 
humor" on moral grounds.  Interestingly enough, "I see no difference" 
came up as an example in that discussion, too; although there it was 
being contrasted with Ton-Tongue, rather than with Ferret Bounce, the 
fundamental question -- when do people find depictions of cruel and 
abusive behavior being perpetrated on the weak by the strong a source
of humour? -- was the same.  

Back then, I wrote:

--------------

<excerpted from message #43422>


Yet this whole humour issue really seems to be upsetting people, and 
I'm still trying to understand the reasons for that. Let me try this 
as a proposal, just to see if it resonates with people.

Dicey has identified a type of slapstick which takes as its operative 
principle: "Only if the victim isn't realistically enough depicted 
for us to take his pain too seriously is it funny."

Could it be, perhaps, that there is a related form of humour, one 
which takes as its operative principle: "Only if the aggressor is 
morally *clean* is it funny?"

In other words, is it true that for some people the morality or 
ethics of the characters really *does* have direct bearing on whether 
or not they find a scene that involves violence amusing? Is THAT why 
people were conflating the issues of whether the twins are funny and 
whether their behavior is bullying?

I hadn't realized that there were people who held that view of 
humour. In my conception of comedy, the moral positioning of the 
actors doesn't really have very much to do with whether or not 
something is funny (although the moral positioning of the author 
sometimes can: a dark comedy about the Klan, for example, I really 
*would* consider funny or not in large part based on what I perceived 
the author's attitude on the subject to be).

Immoral actions can be (and very often are) portrayed in a humorous 
light. Very many forms of comedy involve some form of harm or 
discomfiture. Nor is "Danger Averted" comedy the only type of humour 
out there. Sometimes things are funny not because *no* harm is done, 
but because in fact a great *deal* of harm is being done. 

So I think that we might want to be careful about saying that it's 
not okay to laugh at certain things when we see them depicted in 
fiction. If we were to declare all forms of comedy which involve 
people being unkind each other or people getting hurt off-limits, 
then that really wouldn't leave us with very much to laugh at, would 
it? 

But surely the question of humour is a different one from the 
question of characterization, isn't it? That Voldemort's actions are 
occasionally played for very dark humour doesn't make him any less of 
a sadist. That Snape's verbal abuse is often quite funny doesn't 
make him any less of a bully. That the Dursleys' locking Harry in 
the cupboard beneath the stairs or feeding him on nothing but
watery soup is a comedic depiction of child abuse doesn't make the 
Dursleys admirable models of good parenting. 

What the characters' behavior reveals about them is a completely 
different issue than that of whether or not we find them *funny.*

<excerpt ends>

------------------

Sorry to quote myself like this, but it was either that or write it
all over again, and I'm lazy.  ;-)

Part of the reason, I think, that I always feel such a need to 
emphasize this distinction is because I myself have a really really 
*sick* sense of humor.  So you can imagine that I'm not altogether 
comfortable with the idea that finding something humorous implies 
moral approval!  If I were to do that, then there would really be 
just no hope for me.

You see, I thought the funniest scene in GoF was Graveyard.

So when Alla asks:

> Am I allowed to be amused and at the same time very bothered by 
> that accident? 

My instinctive response is: "Good lord.  I certainly *hope* so!"  

Another reason I feel the need to draw the distinction gets back to 
what I was saying last week, about the perils of assuming things 
about how people might treat others in real life based on their
emotional reactions to the text.

John Wall touched on that when he wrote:

> I'll confess my guilty pleasure right now - I don't want to see
> Malfoy redeemed in any way, shape, or form. I want to see him lose. 
> A bit immature on my part? Probably, but again, these books are 
> works of fiction - probably the most entertaining works of fiction 
> I've ever read. So I allow myself the guilty pleasure of the double 
> standard - it's ok when Crouch/Moody does this to Malfoy, but it's 
> not ok when Snape does it to Hermione.

Yup.  It tends not to bother us nearly so much when bad things happen 
to characters we don't like.  What a shocker there, eh?  ;-)

I don't think that anyone needs to feel *guilty* about this, though.  
Really, don't we all sometimes take a bit of vindictive satisfaction 
in seeing characters we really dislike have bad things happen to 
them?  It doesn't make anyone a vindictive or mean-spirited person in 
real life.  I believe that fiction exists, in large part, to serve as 
an outlet for just that sort of emotion.  I don't consider it at all 
immature, myself.   I think that it's just...well, *normal.*

When discussing the behavior of characters on *moral* grounds, I do 
try not to let favoritism sway my judgement too much, although 
perhaps this is a losing battle.  I do, at least, genuinely try to 
recognize and acknowledge my biases.  But trying to look at least 
somewhat dispassionately at the characters' *ethics* doesn't mean 
that I feel the same *emotion* in regard to their behavior, or in 
regard to the victims of their misdeeds.  (It's really hard for me to 
feel much of *anything* for a character like Dudley Dursley, for 
example.  YMMV.)  It just means that I'm trying to evaluate the 
question on the basis of different criteria than I would be if the 
question were one of reader sympathy, engagement, identification or 
affection.


Elkins