"HAVE YOU GONE MAD!" Ron bellowed. "IS DUMBLEDORE GAY OR WHAT?"
I've been giving the whole Gay Dumbledore issue a lot more thought than I am personally proud of, mostly going back and forth trying to figure out whether I believe JKR or not. I mean, no, there is no evidence in any of the books that APWBD is into the ladies, there's no ret-conning of that order. No, a children's book that's fundamentally about (in my opinion) what it means to be a parent and what it means to love and rear a child doesn't need to get into potentially messy issues of sexuality, no, I don't feel excluded as a queer person by the apparently seamless heteronormative nature of the books.
HERE IS WHAT BOTHERS ME, THOUGH. Much as I agree that explicitly introducing the topic of Dumbledore's homosexuality would have been awkward at best, I just don't see how a major feature of DH is this book called The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore that discusses how it's odd that he never became Minister of Magic and it's odd that he never discussed his childhood friendship with Grindelwald and what exactly was going on with his mom and his sister and his goat-fucking brother but doesn't seem to contain even a single aside like, "Though he was an enthusiastic champion of the power of love, it struck others as odd that he not only never married, but never even had a serious girlfriend." I mean, the wizarding world is not so overwhelmingly cool with homosexuality that the topic isn't worthy of notice--we literally are never introduced to a single textual homosexual anywhere in the books. And do you seriously want me to believe that Rita Skeeter wouldn't mention that Dumbledore is into dudes? That's the sort of subject matter she lives for!
It just seems to me there was plenty of opportunity to mention Dumbledore's orientation in DH, is all. To at least hint at it in a way ("He was a confirmed bachelor") that let the moderately sophisticated reader understand what was going on even if she didn't want it to become a major plot point. That she doesn't mention it until after the fact really does make it seem afterthought-y and token-y.
On the one hand, I am delighted by JKR's extemporaneous interview comments (Ron's an Auror! No, wait, he's running the joke shop! Luna married some other person we never meet! But maybe it's Dean! It could be Neville!). On the other, I feel strongly that authors don't have any particular authority when it comes to determining what their works mean (my favorite example is Gogol insisting that all of his works were Christian allegories). And so I kind of resent her efforts to bend my interpretation to her will.
That said, just to be on the safe side, I am going to go ahead and assume that any character whom she doesn't specifically mention is married or dating or shouting I'M THE MINISTER OF MAGIC at pretty girls or hanging 70s pinups on their bedroom walls is homosexual. This means you, Colin Creevey. You are totally gay.
P.S. I am not a Red Sox fan, so someone will have to tell me. Is Jonathan Papelbon clinically retarded? Or, as my favorite *NSYNC story would have it, "an insult to clinically retarded people"?
HERE IS WHAT BOTHERS ME, THOUGH. Much as I agree that explicitly introducing the topic of Dumbledore's homosexuality would have been awkward at best, I just don't see how a major feature of DH is this book called The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore that discusses how it's odd that he never became Minister of Magic and it's odd that he never discussed his childhood friendship with Grindelwald and what exactly was going on with his mom and his sister and his goat-fucking brother but doesn't seem to contain even a single aside like, "Though he was an enthusiastic champion of the power of love, it struck others as odd that he not only never married, but never even had a serious girlfriend." I mean, the wizarding world is not so overwhelmingly cool with homosexuality that the topic isn't worthy of notice--we literally are never introduced to a single textual homosexual anywhere in the books. And do you seriously want me to believe that Rita Skeeter wouldn't mention that Dumbledore is into dudes? That's the sort of subject matter she lives for!
It just seems to me there was plenty of opportunity to mention Dumbledore's orientation in DH, is all. To at least hint at it in a way ("He was a confirmed bachelor") that let the moderately sophisticated reader understand what was going on even if she didn't want it to become a major plot point. That she doesn't mention it until after the fact really does make it seem afterthought-y and token-y.
On the one hand, I am delighted by JKR's extemporaneous interview comments (Ron's an Auror! No, wait, he's running the joke shop! Luna married some other person we never meet! But maybe it's Dean! It could be Neville!). On the other, I feel strongly that authors don't have any particular authority when it comes to determining what their works mean (my favorite example is Gogol insisting that all of his works were Christian allegories). And so I kind of resent her efforts to bend my interpretation to her will.
That said, just to be on the safe side, I am going to go ahead and assume that any character whom she doesn't specifically mention is married or dating or shouting I'M THE MINISTER OF MAGIC at pretty girls or hanging 70s pinups on their bedroom walls is homosexual. This means you, Colin Creevey. You are totally gay.
P.S. I am not a Red Sox fan, so someone will have to tell me. Is Jonathan Papelbon clinically retarded? Or, as my favorite *NSYNC story would have it, "an insult to clinically retarded people"?