At fisrt I was thrilled to hear that Dumbledore is gay. That's sure to upset the bible-thumping fundies who think Harry Potter is a gateway drug to hell.
Now that the news has settled in I'm a bit angry at JKR over it. If she was really interested in promoting tolerance she had every opportunity to do it. If the wizarding community is anything like human populations all over the world, then %10 of wizards are gay. Show me a Hogwarts staff lounge with 20 professors sitting around in armchairs and 2 of them are almost certainly homosexuals. If Slytherin house has 200 sutdents, 20 of them are likely to be gay, whether they have come to terms with it or not. A number of the students on the hogwarts express were seen off at platform 9 3/4 by two mommies or two daddies or two mommies and a dad. The black family tree very likely has a few unmarried, homosexual dead ends.
If JKR really had wanted her books to model tolerance she could have shown us old Aunt Muriel Weasley arriving at Bill and Fleur's wedding with her lifelong companion Esmerelda. She could have shown Madame Hooch and Minerva McGonnagal holding hands and dabbing away one another's tears at Professor Dumbledore's funeral. In other words, she could have shown us ordinary gay couples doing the same things that heterosexual couples do.
Instead of giving us little glimpses of this particular flavor of otherness, JKR has chosen as her solitary homosexual the one character in the series who is as far removed as possible from the act of sex. He's past his prime. He's cerebral. He's grandfatherly. He's so clean that you can eat off of him. In his position of power and responsibility at a school full of young children his behavior is always circumspect. Nothing about Dumbledore says "sex" of any flavor.
Instead of showing us happy, loving, fulfilled, stable gay partnerships or families JKR chooses to hand us an elderly, closeted, celibate, male. More to the point, that elderly, closeted, celibate male's one great love was both unrequited and tragic. In JKR's wizarding universe homosexuality equals tragedy, solitude, sterility and sorrow.
How do we even know that Dumbledore is gay? We know because Jo told us in an interview. Very few of us came up with Gay!Dumbledore from the JKR's text. You noticed some subtext, but it wasn't very obvious. I didn't notice it at all. It's a problem that the one gay character in the Harry Potter books is gay only because the author told us so in an interview.
Look, Jo, if you want to put something in your work, put it in your work. Don't just prattle on about it in interviews. You should be able to show us, so you don't have to tell us.
Thanks JKR, for outing Dumbledore. That will really do a lot to help gay youths come to terms with their identity. That will really promote tolerance amoung your readers for generations to come. Yup, you bet it will.
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winterfish
no subject
Date: Monday, 22 October 2007 03:48 pm (UTC)Now that the news has settled in I'm a bit angry at JKR over it. If she was really interested in promoting tolerance she had every opportunity to do it. If the wizarding community is anything like human populations all over the world, then %10 of wizards are gay. Show me a Hogwarts staff lounge with 20 professors sitting around in armchairs and 2 of them are almost certainly homosexuals. If Slytherin house has 200 sutdents, 20 of them are likely to be gay, whether they have come to terms with it or not. A number of the students on the hogwarts express were seen off at platform 9 3/4 by two mommies or two daddies or two mommies and a dad. The black family tree very likely has a few unmarried, homosexual dead ends.
If JKR really had wanted her books to model tolerance she could have shown us old Aunt Muriel Weasley arriving at Bill and Fleur's wedding with her lifelong companion Esmerelda. She could have shown Madame Hooch and Minerva McGonnagal holding hands and dabbing away one another's tears at Professor Dumbledore's funeral. In other words, she could have shown us ordinary gay couples doing the same things that heterosexual couples do.
Instead of giving us little glimpses of this particular flavor of otherness, JKR has chosen as her solitary homosexual the one character in the series who is as far removed as possible from the act of sex. He's past his prime. He's cerebral. He's grandfatherly. He's so clean that you can eat off of him. In his position of power and responsibility at a school full of young children his behavior is always circumspect. Nothing about Dumbledore says "sex" of any flavor.
Instead of showing us happy, loving, fulfilled, stable gay partnerships or families JKR chooses to hand us an elderly, closeted, celibate, male. More to the point, that elderly, closeted, celibate male's one great love was both unrequited and tragic. In JKR's wizarding universe homosexuality equals tragedy, solitude, sterility and sorrow.
How do we even know that Dumbledore is gay? We know because Jo told us in an interview. Very few of us came up with Gay!Dumbledore from the JKR's text. You noticed some subtext, but it wasn't very obvious. I didn't notice it at all. It's a problem that the one gay character in the Harry Potter books is gay only because the author told us so in an interview.
Look, Jo, if you want to put something in your work, put it in your work. Don't just prattle on about it in interviews. You should be able to show us, so you don't have to tell us.
Thanks JKR, for outing Dumbledore. That will really do a lot to help gay youths come to terms with their identity. That will really promote tolerance amoung your readers for generations to come. Yup, you bet it will.