Is Dumbledore being gay really such a great thing?
I’ll admit it. When my friend Dahlia sent me a link to the CNN article about J. K. Rowling outing her character Albus Dumbledore as gay, I squeed a little. Who wouldn’t? Seven books, hundreds (I’m guessing?) of characters, and none of them were gay? It seemed a triumph, if only a little one.
But as I read into the article, some of what she discussed about his character’s romantic history seemed a little… off-putting:
She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. “Falling in love can blind us to an extent,” Rowling said of Dumbledore’s feelings, adding that Dumbledore was “horribly, terribly let down.”
Dumbledore’s love, she observed, was his “great tragedy.”
Not only that, but in another article you see that in movie six, Dumbledore was supposed to reminisce about his past loves. According to Rowling, though, that wasn’t cool because… he’s gay?
Rowling said she had read through a script for the movie adaptation of the sixth book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and corrected a passage in which Dumbledore was reminiscing about past loves by crossing it out and scrawling “Dumbledore is gay” over it.
So yes, it’s great that she’s all about outing Dumbledore and letting the whole world know he’s a flaming ‘mo. But the question I have after all this is why his only romantic relationship had to be “tragic.” Why couldn’t she scratch out his straight memories and tell them to insert some big ol’ queer ones?
Don’t get me wrong, I give her kudos for at least adding a gay character. But haven’t we sort of moved out of the phase of literature and cinema where being a homo necessitated a lonely, tragic life?
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
The criticisms of my students would serve as a good warning to visitors of Seeworthy: she talks too fast, she's too hard on us, she assigns too much work, and you have to be a dyke to get a good grade.
In other words, I'm a big, fat, queer, feminist meanie, and I am totally out to get you. Graaagh!
In the CNN link I read, she was told that Dumbledore was specifically reminiscing about a past GIRLfriend. That’s what she corrected. I think the tragic, lonely life was a necessary part of him though. Not because he was gay.
Grindelwald was his one great love, that was horribly tragic and he never loved again, and that mirrors Snape’s one great love that was also tragic and that also led to him never loving again. Just one was gay, one hetero. I think it balances nicely
Actually, the reason she crossed it out is that the script had him reminiscing over a past female lover. Whether or not they choose to rewrite it or to ignore it entirely is up to the screenwriters; she’s an adviser, but she doesn’t actually get executive power over what goes in and what stays out.
I think Dumbledore’s tragic love life has more to do with the necessity of having him stand utterly alone - not to mention the later confrontation with Grindelwald - than it has to do with his sexuality specifically.
I probably should have noted, but I’m well aware that the past lovers they had planned for him were female. I don’t have a problem with her crossing that out, so much as that she didn’t even think (or didn’t disclose that she thought) that perhaps they should have him reminisce about past male lovers.
Aebhel, I think you make a good point about the parallel tragic endings; however, it seems somewhat unfair that with all of the other predictably heterosexual pairings-off at the end of the series, if she was going to toss in one tragically gay character, it would have at least been nice to have *one* moderately successful queer pairing. Percy and Oliver, anyone?
Well, when you think about it, the pairings at the end were all very young people (Tonks and Lupin being the oldest - the rest being teens). In the stories, you were either falling in love (young) or already married (middle-aged - the Weasleys, Malfoys). I can’t think of any older character who had a love life (ok, Snape wasn’t “older” really, he was middle aged).
The idea of Dumbledore being gay took me by surprise because I thought he was portrayed as the typical asexual elderly person. Because after a certain age, you just don’t have love interests at all apparently. (that was sarcasm
)
I would like us all to imagine what it would feel like to know that Dumbledore had had a happy relationship in his past. Gay, straight, whatever flavor. I think that, for myself, my experience of that character would be dramatically different. Or consider the other wise old men of our collective consciousness: Gandalf, Obi-Wan, Merlin. I don’t think it’s about the who (or its gender); I think it’s incumbent on characters of great power and wisdom that there is significant sacrifice of the self, including but not limited to sexual and romantic love. Having said that, wouldn’t you say that it is rather revolutionary of Ms Rowling that she chose to (albeit non-textually) proclaim a non-hetero yearning? Do you know of any major characters in youth fiction that are gay? I loves me my gay men and it came as no surprise that my favorite character had been hatched in his author’s mind as one.
Phledge,
It’s good that she hasn’t created an entirely heterosexual world. But having a single gay character who has an offscreen tragic love affair hasn’t been revolutionary in children’s literature since the 1970’s. http://www.glbtq.com/literature/young_adult_lit.html is a starting point if you want to do more research.
Sheana, I think your point about having at least one happy homosexual pairing - to ‘balance it out’, as it were - is a good one, but it seems pretty clear that JKR wasn’t really approaching sexuality with that sort of notion in mind. I really kind of suspect that Dumbledore was gay just because that’s how she happened to imagine him and not because she was trying to make any kind of point one way or another about homosexuality. Not saying it’s right, necessarily, but I don’t think it was a deliberate injustice on her part.
As for the past loves thing, I think I just read it differently. I didn’t take it as ‘he’s gay; don’t let him say anything about anyone he’s been involved with’ so much as ‘he’s gay, he wouldn’t be waxing poetic over a woman.’
Sorry, that was me, not Sheana!