I don’t get all the hubbub over this. Of course there aren’t any cites in the book for Dumbledore being gay. You’re not likely to find a passage where Dumbledore leers at one of the male students or teachers, or accidentally makes a freudian slip with a reference to gay sex. If someone were to point to a passage that might imply homosexuality anyone else could easily wave it away as having no meaning.
This revelation of course has absolutely no impact on the story. This is why revealing it now, outside of the book, is no big deal. Some people are very attached to these characters, and want to know more about them. If she has more information about them and people want to hear it then what’s wrong with that? People already complain that the stories have way too much information, can you imagine how long the books would be if she included every bit of backstory she came up with? The Potter-fanatics would love it of course, so she gives the bits and pieces of it at these Q&A sessions, then everybody wins. It’s kind of nice that she didn’t feel she had to shoe-horn it into the stories somehow, since it doesn’t have any impact one way or the other.
It’s not like revealing Deckard is a replicant, because that completely changes the whole story of Blade Runner.
This is my point actually. There are no cites (I strongly suspect) and so if someone says they knew it all along, they are claiming knowledge they can’t have had. They might have suspected it, but their suspicions were not based in the text.
To be honest, I think there’s a very positive spin that can be put on what Rowling’s done. It highlights the fact that in very many very important respects, gay people are “just like me.” You can’t really tell the difference. Someone can be gay, and you might never know it. And this is as it should be IMO.
So when people go looking for “clues” in the text, I tend to think they’re missing the point. To say someone could have known it all along is to presume that there is something to being gay other than being attracted to members of the same sex. It is to presume, for example, that not dating is a sign of homosexuality, or that close friendships with other males is a sign of homosexuality, or whatever. But that’ wrong. Having deep intimate friendships with other men, and never dating, are perfectly compatible with heterosexuality (or asexuality–there is such a thing you know!) and so if Rowling’s texts affirm these things about Dumbledore, they do not thereby indicate, or even hint, that he is gay.
I’m really gobsmacked by the reaction this is getting. Authors have backstory and motivations for their characters that is not explicitly spelled out in the books. Rowling, when writing Dumbledore, had in her head, as part of his backstory, that he was gay, and had been in love with another guy way back when. It’s not explicitly in the books. If you read the books, and Dumbledore comes across as straight, that’s fine. Use the interpretation that gives you the most enjoyment from the work. But getting all huffy because Rowling revealed a bit of backstory that never made it into the books is fucking bizarre. I mean, this:
…doesn’t make any damned sense at all. An author can’t talk about anything except what’s already been printed in their books? They can’t talk about ideas they had, but decided not to use? They can’t talk about the reasoning they had for writing characters the way they did, unless that reasoning is completely transparent within in the text? Hey, if she is going to publish Dumbledore: Nights of Passion, can she say what’s going to be in it ahead of time, or is she an attention whore for talking about something she hasn’t written yet?
Honestly, I’m having a lot of trouble believing that this isn’t specifically about him being gay, and not about how she revealed it. I can’t see any other nugget of backstory getting this reaction. In fact, I’m not seeing any other nugget of backstory getting this reaction, because in that article she talks a lot about other things that didn’t get into the book, and there’s not a two (and counting!) page long thread condemning her for any of those revelations.
I love that readers, not just on this message board, are telling the character’s creator that she’s wrong. Rather like saying “Oh, nah-ah Ms. Mitchell, Scarlett WAS TOO beautiful!”
This isn’t so suprising in itself. There are a lot of people who argue explicitly that the author has no special authority over the interpretation of her text.
:rolleyes: It must be bigotry. Not like the thread is about the revelation right? Oh wait, I just reread the OP. You want to start another thread about the other stuff? Go ahead. Oh course it can’t be because in every website cover page it had something like “Guess who is gay in Harry Potter books”. How dare anyone take exception to this meaningless relevation in a thread about this meaningless relevation.
This is precisely it-- if it’s not in the books, it’s not canonical, IMO, and it’s annoying to hear it later when I wanted to read it in the text. And I don’t say that because I’m pissed that Dumbledore is gay. To the contrary, I love it that he’s gay and I wish she’d put it in the books, rather than semi-smugly revealing it months after the series wrapped up. Would have been much braver of her to actually include his homosexuality in the story rather than withhold it and drop it later… seemingly to stimulate continuing titillation and interest in a completed series. Maybe she’s gearing up for a prequel, which would be cool, and which would include Dumbledore’s backstory as a gay wizard.
I’m one of those people. I don’t have a problem with the idea of ignoring authorial intent when assessing a particular work, and that’s usually how I approach art myself. But it seems that people in this thread are somehow offended by the idea that the author can intend things that aren’t expressly stated in their work, and that there’s something wrong with authors talking about backstory that they didn’t end up using. Which is frankly bizarre. I hope these people never check the extras on any DVDs they watch, because I can’t imagine how they’d react to the concept of a commentary track.
I wouldn’t call it bigotry, but the idea that Dumbledore is gay seems to have made a lot of people very uncomfortable. If Rowling had revealed that Dumbledore’s favorite color was blue, do you think people would be saying things like, “If it’s not in the books, it didn’t happen!” or calling her an attention whore for bringing it up?
Loach, sorry, but I don’t understand your post at all.
Whats not to understand? You say you have a problem believing that this isn’t specifically about him being gay instead of the method of the revelation or whatever. This thread is about the gay thing, it’s right there in the OP. If there were any othe revelations from the author that were not in the book I would have the same reaction. Not in the book, didn’t happen. Everyone is commenting on the character being gay because that is what the thread is about. The thread came about most likely because the subject has been on every news homepage in the last couple of days. There are probably people out there (strike that, there are) that have the attitude, “Dumbledore a fag? No Way!!!” I have seen none of that here.
I’m not afraid to admit that the fact that she has announced that he is gay has made me uncomfortable. It’s not because I’m uncomfortable with homosexuality, it’s because I didn’t want to think of Dumbledore in a sexual way. I didn’t want to be presented with or think about his sexuality, what ever it be, in any way whatsoever. I wish I could articulate it better, but it just seems wrong to be talking about it. He’s such a parental figure in the books, that a discussion of it seems like a non sequitur.
(And incidentally, I’ve avoided Harry Potter fan fic for very similar reasons!)
Exactly. I didn’t see any of this indignation when she talked about the kids’ future careers, or that Hermione eventually removed the memory-switching spell from her parents.
Don’t you see a qualitative difference between telling about a character’s future, which one really couldn’t know from the text already written, and redefining an existing character? Being gay is part of who you are your whole life, so it does subtly change what we’ve already read about Dumbledore. Like I said, I think it’s fine and only wished she’d had the chutzpah to include it in the canonical books where relevant, ie., when we learn about his past, since he’s obviously single in the first few books and it wouldn’t really have come up. An adult authority/parental figure’s sexuality isn’t something that would be well-covered territory to the Hogwarts kids, but there were times when it could have been mentioned in context. That would have been cool, IMO.