Shocking revelation?

[manephelien]

J K Rowling outs Hogwarts character

Now that's going to set the cat even further among the pigeons with the fundies who hate Potter because they think the books promote witchcraft.

 

[Wiglaf]

So that was why he was so helpful to Potter.
Actually, if he was outed in the book series, it probably would have been more an issue than the witchcraft. At least that many excused as fantasy. A gay professor seeing Potter alone in his office all the time would have caused an uproar in some groups.

 

[Toraspanda]

What I don't understand is why Rowling felt moved to make this revelation at all. What does it add to the character? How is it relevant in any way? So what if Dumbledore was gay. He seems to have been entirely celibate, at least during his long career at Hogwarts. Lucius Malfoy would have outed him in a heartbeat if there'd been the slightest suspicion of any hanky-panky with students!

 

[Pyan]

What I don't understand is why Rowling felt moved to make this revelation at all. What does it add to the character? How is it relevant in any way?

Am I being cynical by wondering if this is a way of keeping HP (or JKR, more likely) in the limelight, now the book series has ended?

 

[HoopyFrood]

I was actually going to post something along those lines. Cynical minds think alike, it seems

 

[Culhwch]

Cynicism aside, I think it does serve to add another layer to the seventh book. Dumbeldore's actions in regards to his relationship with Grindelwald were of major focus, and the revelation that he may have been blinded by love does lend a new facet to the narrative. The fact that it fell to Rowling to drop this information outside of the book would seem to suggest she failed in the storytelling; if it's of such relevance, it surely should have been at least more strongly alluded to, if not flat-out thrown in our faces, in the novel.

 

[Pyan]

Or she's only just thought of it.....

Well, the books are written, she can't change them....She's said there'll be no more, apart from the possible "Guide"...so, as Toraspanda said, what does a revelation like this actually achieve, apart from putting up the backs of a huge swathe of parents, and making headlines?

"Pah", say I, cynically...

 

[the_faery_queen]

iu think it's stupid that she came out with this statement now. personally i couldn't care less, i don' tlike potter, but the fact she brought it out now seems to me that she just wants to draw more attention to herself. like she doesn't have enough

 

[Curt Chiarelli]

I was actually going to post something along those lines. Cynical minds think alike, it seems

Indeed they do!

And to hell (well, not literally anyway) with the Christian Right and their agenda.

Let's pour a little extra salt into this particular open wound, shall we? Wouldn't it be fun if a part of Dumbledore's "troubled past" was that he was a Communist who fought with the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, but fell in love with a dashing, but ruthless Fascist commander . . . .

But really, look on the bright side . . . . could you imagine Dumbledore getting it on with Severus Snape? Pre-lubed and everything . . . . how nice.

 

[dustinzgirl]

Oh no, someone wrote a book with a gay character in it! That must be totally shocking and new, since nobody was ever gay before 1950.

For the love of pete, you would think that people would have better things to bitch about with all the war, famine, disease, rape, murder, and so forth going on in the world.

 

[manephelien]

I'm not bitching at all, just a bit cynical as to her reasons for revealing it now.

 

[dustinzgirl]

I'm not bitching at all, just a bit cynical as to her reasons for revealing it now.

Not you, them. Not them that posted in here, but them as in other thems.

Does that make sense?

 

[murphy]

Oh no, someone wrote a book with a gay character in it! That must be totally shocking and new, since nobody was ever gay before 1950.

Mary Renault was writing about that in the 1930s.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Pre-lubed and everything . . . . how nice.

Curt...


Jeez.





I told a couple of my friends about this earlier and they both got confused: "What, the actor who plays Dumbledore is gay?"
"No...the character."
"Oh.......what?"
"The character!"
We're all so confused purely because it's just so random that she's chosen now to tell everyone; like Cul says, it wasn't particularly strong writing if she was trying to show it in the book.

 

[Pyan]

Mary Renault was writing about that in the 1930s.

Callisthenes of Olynthus was writing about a homosexual character in the fourth century BC, if it comes to that!

 

[dustinzgirl]

Mary Renault was writing about that in the 1930s.

Callisthenes of Olynthus was writing about a homosexual character in the fourth century BC, if it comes to that!

Don't forget Sappho, Homer, ect if we are listing the classics. And I am of firm belief that the Spartans were very homosexual--Spartan wives shaved their heads and wore male soldier outfits on their wedding night, and wives and husbands did not live together like we do. I also think that, in one of the Sparta history things my son made me read, that they had to initiate laws of marriage because people were not making babies. If the Spartan's weren't homosexual, they were at least into transvestites. Alexander the Great was gay.

My problem is not with who people have sex with. My problem is that the media thinks that who people have sex with is media worthy, even if its a made up person and made up sex.

 

[dwndrgn]

While I don't give a hoot whether Dumbledore was gay or not, I was inclined to agree with those assuming the announcement was from a 'need to be noticed' author despondent after not having more of the series to keep her in the spotlight. However, after reading the article, it seems that it originally came out while working with the scriptwriters on the sixth film. She was correcting the assumption of the scriptwriters that Dumbledore was heterosexual. Then, she honestly answered a question from an audience about his true love. It doesn't seem to me like she was specifically looking to gain more attention from it. In fact it seemed that it was the journalist who was looking for a sensational angle for a basic report on an author's speech and found one to exploit.

In any case, it is only truly of value to those out there who write and/or read fan fiction since the series itself is done.

 

[Lith]

Yeah, and all their hopes are now crushed because it wasn't Sirius.

Actually, this is the first thing she's done as a writer that's irritated me. Not even the introduction of Divination in book 3 (though I wasn't comfortable with that either until I realized it was a joke). I'll be honest, it's partly the revelation, and partly the way in was revealed that bothered me. I don't know if she intended to make a splash with it or not, but it wasn't in the book, wasn't hinted at in the book, and for her to reveal it now feels a bit like a slap in the face, like "Ha! Now that I have your money, and you can't suddenly stop buying my books, oh, by the way, Dumbledore's gay. Well, I'm certainly glad I didn't write that into the book, then I'd have really given them something to hate me for!" Championing a cause you believe in is one thing, but this doesn't feel like that at all. More like hiding in the shadows until the storm has passed. And at this point, it really adds nothing to the books.

Curt- you forgot to put Dumbledore's beard into that picture. And there's a certain irony, since Dumbledore is shown to have had leanings toward the wizarding world's equivalent of fascism in his early years.

Anyway, to further step in it, there's a sort of roundabout implication in it all that because he was single all his life he must have been gay. There seems, even among progressives, a tendency to divide everyone into simplistic gay/straight channels.

And as a Christian (a conservative one, if you couldn't already tell), I do feel a little jipped, after spending the last five years trying to convince my fellows that they wouldn't find anything objectionable in them. And in a few days time I might re-evaluate whether it bothers me more than her killing my favorite character off.

 

[PTeppic]

Two things I noticed:

a) She was answering a direct question from the audience at an interview. Under those conditions it doesn't seem unreasonable to expand on what's perhaps hinted at in the book.

b) She also said she'd seen drafts of the script for movie-6 which mentioned a former (female) love interest for Dumbledore. She felt she had to quash that to keep "her" version of the character true; the director of 6 therefore also knew.

To me, as with many above, frankly who cares whether he was gay or not. A cardinal came out last week, so what? I've just watched Robert de Niro play a gay (or at least media-gay) pirate in "Stardust", so what? There's an urban myth (or not) that one in ten is gay, so what? If it adds to the story I don't see why she couldn't have written what she wanted. She needed to have Dumbledore smitten by Grindlewald, a boy of his own age (and therefore not the fawning of a superior that she might have used had there been an age gap), for the plot to work - she found the solution in first love. It happened to be with another boy. It needed to be love to drive the intensity of Dumbledore's side of the relationship to make the betrayal hard enough to keep him celibate the rest of his life.

Finally, isn't she also making a point? In the BBC version of the this story, JKR is quoted as saying the books are a "prolonged argument for tolerance". Although it would perhaps have been more demonstrably tolerant if we've known since maybe 4 or 5, she has obviously known for a while to avoid having ex girlfriends appear by the finale of 7 where you would expect to find such people gathering round to help in the fight. A celibate gay man in a high-powered job involving children. It shouldn't make any difference, but this story is likely to generate more debate than the wizarding aspects of the books. Ironically, you can bet that if she'd produced Dumbledore's boyfriend in the plot somewhere around the middle of the series she'd have been hounded for simply being politically correct in having a "token" gay: she couldn't win!

 

[PTeppic]

My problem is not with who people have sex with. My problem is that the media thinks that who people have sex with is media worthy, even if its a made up person and made up sex.

If we could outlaw the gutter press from reporting who was doing what with whom and concentrate on real news the world would be, IMHO, a slightly better place. Put dozens of Z-listers back into real jobs, as a side-effect. Might even make the lives of said people (and other famous types) safer as they won't be hiding from paparazzi, being chased by them etc. Unfortunately it's probably unworkable as it hinders "free speech" which is a fine line not to cross...