A friend just sent me a link to an article about a comment that J.K. Rowling made stating that her character from the Harry Potter series, Albus Dumbledore, is gay.
Keeping in mind that he is a fictional character, I'm trying to think about how he is being constructed and how what it means to be gay is being constructed in her comments, the text, audience comments, and the media. I'll post on this later after I've had some time to mull it over.
Read the article and let me know what you think!
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12 comments:
Interesting . . . I wonder why she is outing him now, rather than in one of the books. It seems like Dumbledore has been passing for straight - although that could just be because I subconsciously assume that people are straight until told otherwise, a practice I should probably not continue.
Hmm, just because he is not seen directly interacting with women in a flirtatious way leaves speculation that he is gay? Is there a need to know sexuality in all cases. Does this just show the underlying drive in humanity in general for sexualizing everything? It seems as if this were an arbitrary decision that J.K. has pushed into the media in order to keep herself in the limelight. Because this is based on character nuances and the reasoning behind small pauses, as well as things not talked about the story, it can be read differently depending on your views. It was just kind of limiting to define a sexuality. Sweet, she tried to make it more diverse after the fact? It just seems like something is amiss.
For anyone who knows the books better than I do, do any of the teachers have histories of relationships in the books? This might get into how teachers are represented--were they all "single"? Did any have relationships, families, etc.?
I wonder how much back story she's developed on the different characters. Maybe she has imagined the teachers with backgrounds that include families and relationships that she didn't incorporate into the texts.
Or, as Mike wrote, maybe she's developing this after-the-fact for political or publicity purposes.
What truly saddens me as a Harry Potter fan is the amount of backlash I am seeing on HP message boards in the past 24 hours. Perhaps I am letting my emotional attachment to this series interfere with my level of objectivity but it stuns me to see the number of people who feel that they now “have to pack the books in the attic and wait for the next great series that is not promoting the Gay Agenda”. I wonder who will be deterred from reading these books because of an announcement that seemed to me a spontaneous afterthought on the part of JKR.
The fear that I associate with labeling a book like this part of a "Gay Agenda" saddens and concerns me as well. (The term is something we might unpack in class.)
I also think there's a flip side to your last comment: will anyone be encouraged to read the book because of it? Either because there's "buzz", something new to look for, or because they find value in reading a text with a gay character? (Even if the sexual orientation isn't developed as part of the character in the text.)
To borrow Sims-Bishop's framework, this book is never going to count as a "culturally conscious" representation of a gay character. (I'm still wondering if his orientation exists more in the conversation around the book than in the HP texts themselves.)
I do think this whole conversation connects to our class because it raises questions about what counts as mcLit., who the audiences for it are, under what circumstances it becomes controversial, and what stands we take in light of those understandings.
I found this at yahoonews.com:
"Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason."
Rowling has gotten so much flak from this series already (as stated above). I think she may have just decided to make Dumbledoor gay to test the critics even further....I think she enjoys pushing their buttons; which I'm all about!
I don't know how I feel about this announcement on Dumbledore. I somewhat agree with Mike, that this was a call for publicity. But I thought that Valerie brought up a good point as well, that maybe JKR had more developed plans for the characters that she didn't get to in her books.
I'm not the most intense fan of Harry Potter, but to my knowledge none of the families of the other teachers were mentioned - at least in great detail. Dumbldore's family was the only one that she went into detail with, and that was not until the end of the series.
Overall, I think the fact that this could be a "controversy" (Dumbledore's sexual preference) is a sad situation. He's not even a real person and people are getting incredibly worked up about it. And, I don't think his sexuality matters, it doesn't add anything to the story line or make a difference now that the series is over. Going back to what Mike said, why did she release this information after she was done writing the series? What kind of personal/profession gain is she looking for?
Here's a cite for anyone who is interested how literary theory can be used to explore this type of issue:
Pugh, T. and D. Wallace. (2006) "Heteronormative Heroism and Queering the School Story in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. pp.260-281.
The article is available through the MSU electronic resources.
The first half of the article is fairly theoretical and the second half focuses more on analyzing the text. I'm reading the article myself and am happy to talk about it!
Just an FYI. I was sitting in on a TE 348 class this morning and they had a GREAT conversation around Dumbledore. I sent them the address to our blog so that they could join in on the conversation.
TE 348 students: Welcome! We look forward to hearing your ideas!
Here's a transcript of what Rowling actually said:
http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/20/j-k-rowling-at-carnegie-hall-reveals-dumbledore-is-gay-neville-marries-hannah-abbott-and-scores-more
Oh, JKR. It did seem a little odd, didn't it? The timing that is.
I agree with what everyone has been saying. I question if it was more of a JKR decision to make this press conference [because why do it now, after so much time has passed after the books? if she wanted to have it deepen the plot, wouldn't she have announced it before the last book came out as a big idea of "hype"?] it just seemed so random and odd that she would announce it just like that. I think a lot of people would have felt like any sort of announcement at this point about any of our beloved characters would seem a bit out of place...I just wonder WHY she made any announcement at this point? Also, I think it seems a bit odd because, as people have stated, no other instructor characters really have a love life mentioned in the books, so it just seems like an afterthought, or out of place, or that she is going to do an offshoot or something...I agree with Tara that she likes to push buttons, and as a Christian person I think it is ridiculous that other Christians have buttons to be pushed [tolerance/equality/acceptance/freedoms, anyone?] but that is a whoooole different can of worms. I just think it was almost unprofessional of JKR to do it, and it just left me with an awkward feeling after reading the articles...
Here's a link to an article about "outing" characters:
http://www.slate.com/id/2176432/gt1=10538
To add to the list: Ernie and Bert.
For me, what is interesting is how "what it means to be gay" is constructed!
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