If you had told me that the guy wearing a purple dress with high heeled buckled shoes was gay, in most cases, I wouldn't be surprised. Or if you told me the guy who's really smart, has a great job and seems to understand everyone perfectly with his amazingly sensitive intuition was gay, in most cases, I wouldn't be surprised. But when you tell me that Dumbledore is gay, I am surprised.
Hogwarts' beloved headmaster (ewwww) is gay. And I don't care. It doesn't bother me that Dumbledore is gay. It bothers me that JKR is making this pronouncement after the fact. Some may argue with me, but I've studied the Potter cannon pretty closely, and it's just not there. Sure, Dumbledore is isolated and without any visible romantic attachment to a woman. He has a troubled - and somewhat secretive - past. But these things do not make a man gay. And if it was so formative, why wasn't it in the books?
Perhaps I simply feel about this character trait as I did about numerous things revealed in Deathly Hallows. It's an ace in the sleeve - a trump card. I don't think in any way that JKR is doing this for publicity, and I feel confident that she really did create and envision the character as gay. She's far too dedicated to the story as she imagined it to out Dumbledore for sensationalist reasons. But the course of Deathly Hallows reveals a Dumbledore far different than the wise and knowing gentle-mannered Dumbledore that we all wept to see Avada Kedavra'ed by Snape. And to take that one twist further to reveal that he's gay - and in love with Gellert Grindelwald to boot - almost made me laugh. It seemed as out of context as finding out that Professor Flitwick has a foot fetish and Professor McGonagall is a KISS fan.
For some reason, it seems outside of the realm of Potterdom, and even though I've read a couple of articles in which she explains how Dumbledore's love was his great tragedy, I didn't feel that in the book. I read it, thinking he lost a friend and a sister. And now I feel like she's imposing a different context on it. One I would've accepted had it been there to begin with, but one I resist in getting in the aftermath. Was it necessary? And does it enhance the story? Or change it? Should it have been there earlier? I think she didn't want to commit to it fully, didn't want to make the Dumbledore/Grindelwald relationship too controversial. But now - the truth is out.
You may now commence with jokes about how Dumbledore stole Grindelwald's wand.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Queer Eye for the Wizarding Guy
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7 cat calls:
ugh yah seriously. what the fuck is she doing! i don't get it. she plummeted off my 'can admire her for...' scale... it's the same problem i had with her summing up the novel with that addendum and a bow. just makes her seem like a pedestrian and foolish writer.
it's-just-not-there. it's not. asexual yes. old and wizened yes. if anyone had cause to be gay it was snape. sort of cheapens the fact that men and or women can deeply love one another without sexual attachment... BOO.
I was dying to talk to you about this the second I heard. I posted about it, too. I think we're of one mind on the subject.
P.S. He didn't even steal the wand!He conquered Grindelwald and became it's master!
I totally, totally agree. Throwing this out there after the face just feels wrong. Dumbledore's sexuality just isn't the POINT, you know? I mean, unless there was an important, historically-based backstory (i.e. Snape and Harry's mom), I don't really see how the romantic/sexual history of characters was even important. It detracts from the story, in a way -- as Mendacious said, it derails from the point about loving deeply w/out sexual attachment.
...Which, isn't the value of deep, abiding, not-sexually-based love a major plot line in the series, anyway?
(and I meant, "after the fact." oops.)
Meg, you said it better than I did. It definitely changes all the motivation of his interaction with Grindelwald in a way that inherently affects the story. After we've all read and absorbed the story.
I just think...if she felt it was that formative...it should've been in the book - not in the closet.
THANK YOU. And AMEN. Am in total agreement as well.
I was also waiting for you to post about this, and am so glad you did. Seriously, though, if it wasn't for publicity, controversy, or whatever--why DID JKR choose now to reveal this fact. Theories?
I agree with everyone that if it was important to the story, it would have been IN the story. I read today that she's saying now it was an "infatuation."
And I think you can read that in, insomuch as we are all sort of infatuated with our friends at first. And that there was a match of power and intelligence between them. And I think, in the story, we were supposed to read it as an infatuation with power. Dude, I know we were.
So now, yeah, it just feels confusing and contradictory. I can't imagine why she did it; I agree that she doesn't need the publicity, so I don't see that as a great motivator. Do you think she was trying to balance her earlier statements that Harry Potter is Christian based story? (At least that's already present in the novel).
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