Philcon Harry Potter Post Mortem Panel, or, Why I Still Love my Dead Gay Headmaster
Well, I just came back from being on the Harry Potter Post Morten Panel at PhilCon, and it was--interesting, to say the least.
One thing I still absolutely do not get is the Dumbledore-hate. And I'm not even talking about anything remotely homophobic--I mean the view of Dumbledore being an evil, Machiavellian, manipulative bastard. Most people are actually a lot more accepting of his being gay, I've found, than the other stuff. With that they take issue.
First, what a lot of people throwing the "M" term around fail to remember is that Machiavelli's The Prince was all about advice for a ruler that would allow him to stay in power, kill off all of his possible enemies (not even definite enemies--the potential ones are fair game, too) and all without letting anything like a pesky conscience get in the way; if it would keep you in power and, if possible, give you more power, it was just fine.
That does NOT describe Dumbledore AT ALL.
He was not chiefly about the personal gain and protecting himself; by the end of the series he was definitely depicted as a flawed man who occasionally succumbed to temptation (the temptation to start a fascist wizard-run society, the temptation to put on the cursed ring that would have killed him if Snape hadn't slowed it down and then finished the job at Dumbledore's own request). "Machiavellian" is a fine description of Voldemort and even someone like pre-memory-charm Lockhart (to whom scruples were a foreign concept), but certainly not Dumbledore. He was also being attacked more than a little during this panel for "letting" the Dursleys mistreat Harry since he was a baby, something I've heard many times before. (It was amazing the extent to which the discussion centered on Dumbledore, actually, with only a tiny bit given over to the epilogue and a couple of other issues.)
There are a number of things we learn about Dumbledore during the course of the series:
1. His father went to prison for attacking Muggles and presumably died there.
This sheds light on why Dumbledore was so dead against the dementors guarding Azkaban, certainly, but it also illuminates his attitude in general toward people attacking Muggles; while the lack of a combined wizard/Muggle justice system could explain his dad's motivation in pursuing vigilante justice for his daughter as well as Albus's initial enthusiasm for such a combined system (with the wizards in charge), his later going after Grindelwald and encouraging the Ministry to pass legislation that would increase penalties on those who attacked Muggles show that he decided that it was an abuse of power for wizards to lord their magical abilities over Muggles or to go after powerless Muggles, even ones who had attacked an innocent young witch like Arianna. He definitely didn't like what happened to his sister, but the result of the Muggles being punished by their father was that the three Dumbledore children were also punished by their father's absence for the rest of their lives and his father died in Azkaban after years of torture by having the dementors suck all of the happiness out of him--and perhaps even his soul, before his death.
2. Dumbledore has learned to refrain from abusing, or in some cases, using his powers at all when there is a risk that he could go too far and abuse them instead.
In the very first book Dumbledore tells McGonagall, while they are waiting for Hagrid on Privet Drive, that Voldemort had powers he never would, but McGonagall disputes this and says that he is simply "too noble" to use them, but he has them. While she is probably mostly right, it's possible that Dumbledore meant that Voldemort has the ability to not care about abusing power, about which Dumbledore cares a great deal. We also know, in the first book, that Fudge sends Dumbledore several owls a day to ask him, in essence, how to do his job. Albus may have been tempted by this sort of power in his youth but has since learned to resist its lure, although it is clearly not easy for him when he has one of the Deathly Hallows (first the Invisibility Cloak, later the Resurrection Stone) in his grasp, already possessing the third Hallow: The Elder Wand. Until we learn of Dumbledore being tempted by the Hallows, one of which indirectly leads to his death, he is the picture of forebearance throughout the series--yet he is still human and subject to temptation, and this proves his undoing, which is really one of the saddest things about his very tragic character: he fought to resist the temptation to grasp for power for so very long, failed ONCE, and as a result--dying and dead.
We learn that he also decided long ago that he was someone who should NOT be Minister for Magic, so it was also clearly just Fudge's paranoia that prompted him to accuse Dumbledore of wanting his job. If anything, having that sort of power frightened Dumbledore dreadfully; he had nothing like that kind of power as the headmaster and didn't even exert as much power as one might expect as the leader of the Order of the Phoenix. He had what might be considered a rather lassez-faire way of running things, but perhaps he felt the alternative was to be too controlling, too much at risk for abusing his considerable power, so he appeared to let a lot of things slide while he was actually mostly on top of things (apart from not realizing that Peter was the true traitor).
3. We know that Dumbledore kept very close tabs on Harry.
How do we know this? A Howler shows up at Privet Drive almost immediately after Vernon threatens to kick Harry out of the house, risking the elimination of Harry's blood protection. It seems safe to assume that he was also monitoring Harry's general well-being and that if he were truly in any sort of life-threatening situation, he would intervene (or send someone else to intervene). Does Harry actually starve when the Dursleys lock him up? No, he is "conveniently" sent birthday cakes by his friends (which may or may not be due to Dumbledore's prompting). Is he remotely surprised that the twins and Ron have flown off to The Burrow with Harry? Not at all. Does he in fact send someone to whom he would entrust his own life, Hagrid, to fetch Harry when the Dursleys are trying to outrun the Hogwarts letters? Of course he does.
We see, in fact, that when Dumbledore himself finally returns to Privet Drive and takes Harry away during the summer between his fifth and sixth years, he is VERY terse and angry with the Dursleys; it would seem that it is only through a great show of control that he prevents himself from doing more than gently knocking them about their heads with glasses of mead. It is easy to imagine that Dumbledore would not have trusted himself to come and confront them when Harry was younger; he knew Harry's life was not in danger and kept his distance, perhaps wondering if, like his own father, he would lose his temper and break laws against interfering with Muggles that he encouraged the Ministry to pass. (I have no doubt that if he had done so he would in fact have "come quietly", whereas he didn't agree with what Fudge was doing at all when he said that was exactly what he WOULDN'T do in the fifth book.)
In other words, I don't see his "failure" to intervene on Harry's behalf as a failure at all but yet another symptom of Dumbledore's ongoing inner battle to maintain self-control and resist abusing his power; he could have abused his power very easily if he were a different sort of wizard (less "noble", as McGonagall pointed out).
4. While Dumbledore did in fact know that Harry's death would ultimately be necessary for Voldemort's permanent defeat, because it was the only way to eliminate the bit of Voldemort-soul residing in Harry, he clearly was NOT happy about it, as a Machiavellian person WOULD be.
Yes, he kept this from Harry, and also kept it from Snape for a very long time, making BOTH of them feel betrayed when they learned this would be necessary and that Harry was basically "a lamb to the slaughter". But he was clearly not pleased that this would be necessary! We know that he loved Harry like a son and was so deep in denial about Harry's fate that he did NOT want to tell him what he would have to do because of what a burden it would be for Harry. The gleam of triumph said it all: he knew that Harry wouldn't have to STAY dead once Voldemort had accidentally created something like a horcrux for Harry that wouldn't diminish him at all. He was clearly THRILLED that this boy he'd grown so fond of would have a way to conquer death!
Was Dumbledore perfect? No, he was tempted to abuse power all of his life. He largely succeeded once he decided not to back Grindelwald and it was quite admirable that he stopped someone for whom he had very deep feelings but who was power-hungry; Dumbledore knew it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, the temptation of the Deathly Hallows came back to bite him in the end. Maybe it'll help some people to think of it as karmic payback for his not treating Snape very well, or for possibly contributing to his sister's death. Whatever floats your boat. He was still someone who had very high ideals that even he couldn't hew to all of the time, but unlike Voldemort, he HAD them, he tried to live his life by those ideals, and he tried to have them enmeshed in wizarding law so that others might as well.
If there is one consistent thread throughout the entire HP series it is the contrast between abusing power versus refraining from abusing or even using power at all. Harry learns, the hard way, that there is a price to pay for the abuse of power: when he takes control of someone's volition by putting Imperius on him Harry ends up LOSING control utterly and is instead in the control of a dragon flying across the country, taking him, Ron and Hermione who-knows-where. When Harry carelessly flings a curse at Draco that could kill him (Sectumsempra) he must suffer the consequences, and he succumbs willingly to his punishment. He abuses power the most in the last two books and runs the risk of becoming so much like Voldemort that Ron starts to find it rather scary how well Harry understands him; however, like Dumbledore and markedly UNlike Voldemort, Harry puts his wand away and walks into the forest, to Voldemort, and does not want to be tempted to fight.
Harry's signature move is--the Disarming Charm. Not a move that risks the spell-caster abusing his own power but something designed to PREVENT his opponent from abusing power. It is a remarkably passive spell but an effective one--and one that Snape taught Harry, although it is certainly in the spirit of Dumbledore. Oddly enough, Snape rarely resisted the temptation to abuse the power he had over his charges at the school, and perhaps it is this that caused Dumbledore to see him as less than an equal. (He never did tell Snape that Harry wouldn't have to stay dead after he died.) Clearly the way that Dumbledore treated Snape is another bit of evidence that he wasn't perfect, but, as he showed at the Dursleys, he finds it difficult to like people who have abused their power over the powerless. Snape is a hero, yes, but he also behaved, as a teacher, like a complete ass and one who abused his power over the students on a regular basis.
There is a fine line between abusing power (as Dumbledore's father did) and sharing power (since he was doing it on his daughter's behalf after the Muggles had abused THEIR power over HER). Harry is rewarded for sharing his power with Neville when he gets his Remembrall back even though he could also be seen as abusing power--motive counts for a lot, though, since his only thought was to help Neville and no one was technically hurt by his doing so, not even Draco, who should have been expelled, technically, for flying just after he was told not to AND doing it because he had stolen another student's property and was playing Keep Away with it. Does anyone tell on Draco? Clearly not. There are other times throughout the series when someone is breaking a rule of some sort--such as the Trio going to protect the Philosopher's Stone or Ron and Harry going into the Chamber to try to rescue Ginny--by sharing their power but they could be perceived to be abusing power as well. The difference is that they are not using their powers frivolously, for their own selfish ends, and they are not intentionally hurting someone to achieve their goals, as Dumbledore's father was and as Snape was when he lorded his power over his students.
Rowling has presented a very complex--and therefore realistic--moral system in her books, but the books ARE highly moral, regardless of what people say who claim that Harry is never punished for breaking rules and that Dumbledore was relentlessly Machiavellian. Rowling's rules say that the rules MAY be broken IF certain criteria are satisfied, such as selflessly sharing your power with someone else who has been denied their own power or who is the victim of someone else who is abusing power, and if you are not irreparably hurting the person you are stopping from abusing power or seeking to further empower yourself.
Disarm, not kill. Laughter, love and self-sacrifice. The weapons wielded by Dumbledore and Harry against their opponents are usually these, and when they don't manage to resist the abuse of power, they do not escape punishment or think they deserve to. Those are some fine role-models and I shall continue to defend them until I'm blue in the face. ;)
One thing I still absolutely do not get is the Dumbledore-hate. And I'm not even talking about anything remotely homophobic--I mean the view of Dumbledore being an evil, Machiavellian, manipulative bastard. Most people are actually a lot more accepting of his being gay, I've found, than the other stuff. With that they take issue.
First, what a lot of people throwing the "M" term around fail to remember is that Machiavelli's The Prince was all about advice for a ruler that would allow him to stay in power, kill off all of his possible enemies (not even definite enemies--the potential ones are fair game, too) and all without letting anything like a pesky conscience get in the way; if it would keep you in power and, if possible, give you more power, it was just fine.
That does NOT describe Dumbledore AT ALL.
He was not chiefly about the personal gain and protecting himself; by the end of the series he was definitely depicted as a flawed man who occasionally succumbed to temptation (the temptation to start a fascist wizard-run society, the temptation to put on the cursed ring that would have killed him if Snape hadn't slowed it down and then finished the job at Dumbledore's own request). "Machiavellian" is a fine description of Voldemort and even someone like pre-memory-charm Lockhart (to whom scruples were a foreign concept), but certainly not Dumbledore. He was also being attacked more than a little during this panel for "letting" the Dursleys mistreat Harry since he was a baby, something I've heard many times before. (It was amazing the extent to which the discussion centered on Dumbledore, actually, with only a tiny bit given over to the epilogue and a couple of other issues.)
There are a number of things we learn about Dumbledore during the course of the series:
1. His father went to prison for attacking Muggles and presumably died there.
This sheds light on why Dumbledore was so dead against the dementors guarding Azkaban, certainly, but it also illuminates his attitude in general toward people attacking Muggles; while the lack of a combined wizard/Muggle justice system could explain his dad's motivation in pursuing vigilante justice for his daughter as well as Albus's initial enthusiasm for such a combined system (with the wizards in charge), his later going after Grindelwald and encouraging the Ministry to pass legislation that would increase penalties on those who attacked Muggles show that he decided that it was an abuse of power for wizards to lord their magical abilities over Muggles or to go after powerless Muggles, even ones who had attacked an innocent young witch like Arianna. He definitely didn't like what happened to his sister, but the result of the Muggles being punished by their father was that the three Dumbledore children were also punished by their father's absence for the rest of their lives and his father died in Azkaban after years of torture by having the dementors suck all of the happiness out of him--and perhaps even his soul, before his death.
2. Dumbledore has learned to refrain from abusing, or in some cases, using his powers at all when there is a risk that he could go too far and abuse them instead.
In the very first book Dumbledore tells McGonagall, while they are waiting for Hagrid on Privet Drive, that Voldemort had powers he never would, but McGonagall disputes this and says that he is simply "too noble" to use them, but he has them. While she is probably mostly right, it's possible that Dumbledore meant that Voldemort has the ability to not care about abusing power, about which Dumbledore cares a great deal. We also know, in the first book, that Fudge sends Dumbledore several owls a day to ask him, in essence, how to do his job. Albus may have been tempted by this sort of power in his youth but has since learned to resist its lure, although it is clearly not easy for him when he has one of the Deathly Hallows (first the Invisibility Cloak, later the Resurrection Stone) in his grasp, already possessing the third Hallow: The Elder Wand. Until we learn of Dumbledore being tempted by the Hallows, one of which indirectly leads to his death, he is the picture of forebearance throughout the series--yet he is still human and subject to temptation, and this proves his undoing, which is really one of the saddest things about his very tragic character: he fought to resist the temptation to grasp for power for so very long, failed ONCE, and as a result--dying and dead.
We learn that he also decided long ago that he was someone who should NOT be Minister for Magic, so it was also clearly just Fudge's paranoia that prompted him to accuse Dumbledore of wanting his job. If anything, having that sort of power frightened Dumbledore dreadfully; he had nothing like that kind of power as the headmaster and didn't even exert as much power as one might expect as the leader of the Order of the Phoenix. He had what might be considered a rather lassez-faire way of running things, but perhaps he felt the alternative was to be too controlling, too much at risk for abusing his considerable power, so he appeared to let a lot of things slide while he was actually mostly on top of things (apart from not realizing that Peter was the true traitor).
3. We know that Dumbledore kept very close tabs on Harry.
How do we know this? A Howler shows up at Privet Drive almost immediately after Vernon threatens to kick Harry out of the house, risking the elimination of Harry's blood protection. It seems safe to assume that he was also monitoring Harry's general well-being and that if he were truly in any sort of life-threatening situation, he would intervene (or send someone else to intervene). Does Harry actually starve when the Dursleys lock him up? No, he is "conveniently" sent birthday cakes by his friends (which may or may not be due to Dumbledore's prompting). Is he remotely surprised that the twins and Ron have flown off to The Burrow with Harry? Not at all. Does he in fact send someone to whom he would entrust his own life, Hagrid, to fetch Harry when the Dursleys are trying to outrun the Hogwarts letters? Of course he does.
We see, in fact, that when Dumbledore himself finally returns to Privet Drive and takes Harry away during the summer between his fifth and sixth years, he is VERY terse and angry with the Dursleys; it would seem that it is only through a great show of control that he prevents himself from doing more than gently knocking them about their heads with glasses of mead. It is easy to imagine that Dumbledore would not have trusted himself to come and confront them when Harry was younger; he knew Harry's life was not in danger and kept his distance, perhaps wondering if, like his own father, he would lose his temper and break laws against interfering with Muggles that he encouraged the Ministry to pass. (I have no doubt that if he had done so he would in fact have "come quietly", whereas he didn't agree with what Fudge was doing at all when he said that was exactly what he WOULDN'T do in the fifth book.)
In other words, I don't see his "failure" to intervene on Harry's behalf as a failure at all but yet another symptom of Dumbledore's ongoing inner battle to maintain self-control and resist abusing his power; he could have abused his power very easily if he were a different sort of wizard (less "noble", as McGonagall pointed out).
4. While Dumbledore did in fact know that Harry's death would ultimately be necessary for Voldemort's permanent defeat, because it was the only way to eliminate the bit of Voldemort-soul residing in Harry, he clearly was NOT happy about it, as a Machiavellian person WOULD be.
Yes, he kept this from Harry, and also kept it from Snape for a very long time, making BOTH of them feel betrayed when they learned this would be necessary and that Harry was basically "a lamb to the slaughter". But he was clearly not pleased that this would be necessary! We know that he loved Harry like a son and was so deep in denial about Harry's fate that he did NOT want to tell him what he would have to do because of what a burden it would be for Harry. The gleam of triumph said it all: he knew that Harry wouldn't have to STAY dead once Voldemort had accidentally created something like a horcrux for Harry that wouldn't diminish him at all. He was clearly THRILLED that this boy he'd grown so fond of would have a way to conquer death!
Was Dumbledore perfect? No, he was tempted to abuse power all of his life. He largely succeeded once he decided not to back Grindelwald and it was quite admirable that he stopped someone for whom he had very deep feelings but who was power-hungry; Dumbledore knew it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, the temptation of the Deathly Hallows came back to bite him in the end. Maybe it'll help some people to think of it as karmic payback for his not treating Snape very well, or for possibly contributing to his sister's death. Whatever floats your boat. He was still someone who had very high ideals that even he couldn't hew to all of the time, but unlike Voldemort, he HAD them, he tried to live his life by those ideals, and he tried to have them enmeshed in wizarding law so that others might as well.
If there is one consistent thread throughout the entire HP series it is the contrast between abusing power versus refraining from abusing or even using power at all. Harry learns, the hard way, that there is a price to pay for the abuse of power: when he takes control of someone's volition by putting Imperius on him Harry ends up LOSING control utterly and is instead in the control of a dragon flying across the country, taking him, Ron and Hermione who-knows-where. When Harry carelessly flings a curse at Draco that could kill him (Sectumsempra) he must suffer the consequences, and he succumbs willingly to his punishment. He abuses power the most in the last two books and runs the risk of becoming so much like Voldemort that Ron starts to find it rather scary how well Harry understands him; however, like Dumbledore and markedly UNlike Voldemort, Harry puts his wand away and walks into the forest, to Voldemort, and does not want to be tempted to fight.
Harry's signature move is--the Disarming Charm. Not a move that risks the spell-caster abusing his own power but something designed to PREVENT his opponent from abusing power. It is a remarkably passive spell but an effective one--and one that Snape taught Harry, although it is certainly in the spirit of Dumbledore. Oddly enough, Snape rarely resisted the temptation to abuse the power he had over his charges at the school, and perhaps it is this that caused Dumbledore to see him as less than an equal. (He never did tell Snape that Harry wouldn't have to stay dead after he died.) Clearly the way that Dumbledore treated Snape is another bit of evidence that he wasn't perfect, but, as he showed at the Dursleys, he finds it difficult to like people who have abused their power over the powerless. Snape is a hero, yes, but he also behaved, as a teacher, like a complete ass and one who abused his power over the students on a regular basis.
There is a fine line between abusing power (as Dumbledore's father did) and sharing power (since he was doing it on his daughter's behalf after the Muggles had abused THEIR power over HER). Harry is rewarded for sharing his power with Neville when he gets his Remembrall back even though he could also be seen as abusing power--motive counts for a lot, though, since his only thought was to help Neville and no one was technically hurt by his doing so, not even Draco, who should have been expelled, technically, for flying just after he was told not to AND doing it because he had stolen another student's property and was playing Keep Away with it. Does anyone tell on Draco? Clearly not. There are other times throughout the series when someone is breaking a rule of some sort--such as the Trio going to protect the Philosopher's Stone or Ron and Harry going into the Chamber to try to rescue Ginny--by sharing their power but they could be perceived to be abusing power as well. The difference is that they are not using their powers frivolously, for their own selfish ends, and they are not intentionally hurting someone to achieve their goals, as Dumbledore's father was and as Snape was when he lorded his power over his students.
Rowling has presented a very complex--and therefore realistic--moral system in her books, but the books ARE highly moral, regardless of what people say who claim that Harry is never punished for breaking rules and that Dumbledore was relentlessly Machiavellian. Rowling's rules say that the rules MAY be broken IF certain criteria are satisfied, such as selflessly sharing your power with someone else who has been denied their own power or who is the victim of someone else who is abusing power, and if you are not irreparably hurting the person you are stopping from abusing power or seeking to further empower yourself.
Disarm, not kill. Laughter, love and self-sacrifice. The weapons wielded by Dumbledore and Harry against their opponents are usually these, and when they don't manage to resist the abuse of power, they do not escape punishment or think they deserve to. Those are some fine role-models and I shall continue to defend them until I'm blue in the face. ;)