Humor in HP

[jkoney65]

No: HPFGUIDX 186506

Carol posted this on OT, but I thought it also fits here.

Carol
Anyone care to comment on JKR's sense of humor and why a particular example is
(or isn't) funny in your view? I'm not talking about crude juvenile humor like
Ron's "Uranus" puns, which are obviously geared to preadolescent or early
adolescent boys. I'm talking about humor that appeals to adult readers like
us--not just the sexual innuendos or the puns, but anything that isn't broad,
slapstick, obvious humor.

I realize that humor is subjective and that not everyone shares JKR's sense of
humor, but some lines are laugh-out-loud funny. (One that I remember offhand is
Fred in GoF addressing Percy as "Weatherby." I don't know why I found that
funny. Maybe it was the element of surprise. It seems to me that many of JKR's
funniest lines hit the reader with something unexpected at the end. Quite
possibly, they're not funny out of context (like the one about the Prime
Minister "naturally" thinking that he'd gone mad. And I'm not sure that they
qualify as understated humor, which (as I understand it) takes something dire
or drastic or disastrous (like real madness) and treats it in a trivial way. Or
maybe I have the concept all wrong.

Carol, suspecting that her own sense of humor is idiosyncratic and inexplicable


jkoney:
I found the books to be quite funny. It's probably one of the reasons I enjoyed them, especially during the first reading of each book.

I thought she incorporated a lot of different types of humor in the books. There is the teenage boy (some call it crude) humor like Ron's Uranus jokes that are like a smack in the face.

There is put down humor like Fred using Weatherby to refer to Percy. Or the references to the cauldron bottoms, big head boy on the prefects badge, etc. Those are used quite well to deflate Percy's big head. (kind of like channeling a nice Don Rickles)

There is the observational humor of looking at how the wizards are dressed in the GoF when they try to pass as muggles, or how disorganized the Weasley's are when it's time to head to the train each year. (sort of like Jerry Seinfeld)

There is complete mocking of the situation when the twins are saying all those things about Harry in CoS. They don't think Harry is to blame and are using an overt amount of sarcasm to get their point across.

Then there is slapstick. All the pranks would be a vaudville performers dream come true. During all of those scenes (twins or Marauders) I had the feeling that the Three Stooges, Abbot & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, or the Marx Brothers would have had a field day with the things they could have done.

I realize the slapstick pranks are not appreciated by everyone. I think part of the reason is that we are thinking like muggles. The wizarding world has joke shops that sell these items, so a large portion of society must just consider them harmless. If you have the ability to undo the prank with little effort then it really is harmless. 

I also think that part of the reason people don't like the pranks is because they (personally) don't like that type of humor. That is fine with me, but I think a majority of the wizarding world (the young wizards and witches) do like it. Neither the twins or the Marauders were ostricized by any large segment of the school (not counting house rivalries) because of it.

Can a joke go to far? Yes, I believe it can. Unfortunately, most of the time you don't know you've gone too far until afterwards.

jkoney, who kind of went on a tangent from Carol's original question.