Humor in HP

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186507

Carol (moved from OT by jkoney):
> 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. <snip> 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 <snip> 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. <snip>

jkoney responded::
> 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 <snip>
> 
> There is put down humor <snip>
> 
> There is the observational humor <snip>
> 
> There is complete mocking of the situation <snip>
> 
> Then there is slapstick. <snip>
 
> 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.

Carol again:
Thanks for retrieving my lost post, which I'd forgotten about. The reason I posted it on OT was that I was hoping for someone British to help me with the famous concept of understated British humor. I don't think that JKR's sense of humor quite qualifies most of the time. The puns might: "griffin door knocker" (Gryffindor knocker) is so subtle that it probably goes right over the heads of most readers. But the examples you mention, especially the teenage boy humor (so crude that it strikes me as preteen) and the slapstick are anything but understated. JKR has a penchant for hyperbole, especially in dealing (sorry to say) with fat people. Slughorn, for example, takes up a quarter of the shop when he encounters the Trio at Honeydukes. Dudley at age thirteen or so (I forgot which book) has finally succeeded in becoming as broad as he is tall.

The examples I like best are different. For example, two things make Harry nearly laugh out loud at, of all occasions, Dumbledore's funeral. One is Dumbledore's (to me endearing) idea of a few words: Nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak. The other is Grawp (whom I don't even like) gently patting Hagrid on the head so that Hagrid's chair legs sink into the ground. I'm not sure why the first one is funny. I suppose it's because the words themselves are so odd and the idea of a seemingly dignified old professor taking "a few words" absolutely literally is so eccentric and so unexpected that you can't help chuckling at the mental image. The second conjures a somewhat comical mental image, but what I like about it is that it takes the hyperbole usually applied to Hagrid when he pats the Trio on the head or the shoulder and transfers it to Grawp, in a way standing it on its head.

Anyway, I don't mind at all that you've gone off on a bit of a tangent from my original post. I do that all the time myself, using someone else's post to stimulate my own thoughts on a topic rather than answering their points directly.

I think your categories are a good start, but I think there are others as well, wordplay being the most obvious (the authors of the Hogwarts textbooks, for example). The footnotes in Quidditch through the Ages seem to spoof academic treatises, IIRC.
 
It's obvious what makes, say, the description of Bob Ogden in the first Gaunt memory or old Archie at the QWC humorous--incongruity. Both are innocently wearing completely inappropriate clothing with no idea how absurd they look. And I have a feeling that incongruity is the key to the more subtle examples as well--that or the element of surprise. I'll be crying over Neville's visit to his parents in St. Mungo's, surely one of the most touching moments in the books, and then laugh out loud at Gilderoy Lockhart (whom I don't even like) protesting, "I didn't learn joined-up writing for nothing, you know!"

That last example doesn't seem funny now as I look back at it, but I'm sure that I laughed in shock the first time through, and I'm pretty sure that JKR, who could easily have left it out, is deliberately contrasting the tragedy of Neville's parents with the dark comedy of Lockhart.

Someone once defined comedy as tragedy with a happy ending (or something like that). Potentially terrible things (like being fed a Ton-tongue Toffee and choking on your enlarged tongue) become funny (to some people) if the consequences aren't fatal or lasting. It's the rationale behind slapstick humor. But I don't think that definition explains the examples I've referred to, or even Lockhart's ironic "This is just like magic!" in CoS.

I keep trying to figure out her secret. *Why* is this passage (any passage that makes me laugh) funny? And I can't seem to find a satisfactory answer. Maybe I'm being too analytical. :-)

Carol, who was once told that laughter is a sign of embarrassment but doesn't think that's the answer, either