In which I'm again disappointed by JKR explanations

[sistermagpie]

So here's what JKR has recently said about Dumbledore, getting more into his sexuality:

"I had always seen Dumbledore as gay, but in a sense that's not a big deal. The book wasn't about Dumbledore being gay. It was just that from the outset obviously I knew he had this big, hidden secret, and that he flirted with the idea of exactly what Voldemort goes on to do, he flirted with the idea of racial domination, that he was going to subjugate the Muggles. So that was Dumbledore's big secret.

Why did he flirt with that?" she asks. "He's an innately good man, what would make him do that. I didn’t even think it through that way, it just seemed to come to me, I thought 'I know why he did it, he fell in love.' And whether they physically consummated this infatuation or not is not the issue. The issue is love. It's not about sex. So that's what I knew about Dumbledore. And it's relevant only in so much as he fell in love and was made an utter fool of by love. He lost his moral compass completely when he fell in love and I think subsequently became very mistrusting of his own judgment in those matters so became quite asexual. He led a celibate and bookish life."

Clearly some people didn't see it that way. How does she react to those who disagree with a homosexual character in a children's novel? "So what?" she retorts immediately "It is a very interesting question because I think homophobia is a fear of people loving, more than it is of the sexual act. There seems to be an innate distaste for the love involved, which I find absolutely extraordinary. There were people who thought, well why haven't we seen Dumbledore's angst about being gay?" Rowling is clearly amused by this and rightly so. "Where was that going to come in? And then the other thing was-and I had letters saying this-that, as a gay man, he would never be safe to teach in a school."

So this is how a lot of this doesn't fit with my own interpretation. EtA: It's been pointed out to me that this line caused some confusion--I'm not disagreeing with "He is a character that just happens to be gay" or that Rowling concurs with that idea. I'm saying I had a different interpretation of why he'd be attracted to Grindelwald's ideas based on what I read in canon. So I took out the last paragraph of the quote, which wasn't really needed.

As an aside, if Dumbledore is celibate and maybe never consummated his relationship with the evil Gellert, that actually *is* the point according to many people, because as many will explain, the problem isn't having "gay feelings." The problem isn't love. The problem is you're having sex with someone of your gender. If you don't "choose to sin" by actually having sex, you're not entering into that wicked "lifestyle" they don't like. Dumbledore's done just what a gay man is supposed to do according to many anti-gay opinions. It actually is about sex: a-sexual gay men are always more acceptable than sexual ones.

But the weirdest thing here to me is in the second paragraph, where Dumbledore is apparently an "innately good man" who only flirted with essentially *being a Nazi* because he became a "fool for love." This is bizarre to me because frankly, I don't have any trouble trying to figure out why Dumbledore would have flirted with taking over Muggles. This is a guy who's constantly manipulating everyone, thinks he's smarter than everyone else, treats them as pawns that are morally inferior to himself...why on earth would it be hard to imagine him deciding to dominate Muggles "for the greater good?" Of course he would think the answer was having the right people in charge.

But it's disappointing in a familiar way, the way that once again something that seems to be an inherent flaw in a character on the good side that totally mirrors the evil they're fighting, the author wants to make it the fault of the evil characters. Dumbledore's "love" says no more about him than Harry's Voldemort sliver. It takes the blame for unacceptable behavior. Suddenly Dumbledore's real racist tendencies (unlike Snape's) don't come down to his own desires or his own personality. He's acting unlike himself because he's been vaguely "made a fool by love." And love, as we know, is just some random thing that hits you like Cupid's arrow or the author's pen. It's not even presented as something you can analyze in terms of...well, why exactly did you find Hitler so attractive? Doesn't that say something about what calls to you? (Without even getting into the fact that this most poisonous loves is the one gay one.)

The author here seems to be saying that she needed or wanted Dumbledore to have flirted with all of this, but then needn't to figure out why he would do it. Rather than looking at the character and saying, "Ah, I can totally see how this guy would be attracted to this." Instead it "just came to her" that "he fell in love." It's about someone else, something beyond his control. It's about this other person. He "lost" his moral compass because he fell in love (which was beyond his control to begin with)--his compass never truly pointed to this.

Dumbledore himself even agrees! He becomes mistrustful not of his moral compass, not of his own abilities to know right from wrong. No, he becomes asexual, deducing that the problem is that he needs to keep himself pure from others so that he can always be sure he's relying on his own "innately good" moral sense. He's got more reason to keep secrets; he doesn't decide he maybe ought to keep other people around to make sure he's not going down the bad path again. Listening to other people can only be trouble.

Well done, Dumbledore! Way to be morally superior about your own past as a wannabe Nazi!

Comments

[pauraque]

She comes off as someone who has not thought enough about the topic. Which perhaps makes sense since she's been keeping this aspect of the story private, maybe discussed it with her friends, but not had to answer public questions as she has about every other aspect. Maybe hearing the public feedback will help her think more critically, and more importantly, will help others think more critically. :)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Definitely. I have no doubt that she really does think that being gay should be no big deal. Obviously she thinks she's dismissing homophobes. She'd probably be surprised to hear that she's actually that Dumbledore conforms to what they'd want--just for totally different reasons than the ones for which she wrote him that way.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

What I'd really like someone to ask her about is the criticism leveled at the idea that the only For Certain Gay Man is dead (and apparently flirts with the idea of world domination), and the man he was in love with was the previous Ultimate Evil.

I mean, did she cherry pick that cliche, or did it just come to her?

I haven't been following the interviews - has anyone asked her that outright?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL! Now I'm picturing her saying, "I don't know where it came from. I was sitting at home one night watching "The Children's Hour" and it just came to me!

I haven't really been following interviews but saw this quoted. Somehow I don't think that question's been put to her directly.

[the-bitter-word.livejournal.com]

I agree with what you've written so much. Dumbledore was not a candidate for being severed from morality by loving the wrong person. Dumbledore was self-involved. What he loved in Grindelwald was the reflection of himself and his true ambitions. When he found disaster, he blamed the reflection without ever looking at himself, except to say, "I can't love another personally."

The reverse is Snape, who, while losing his love through his racism and search for power, later clung to the memory of that love like a lifeline to good. Snape acknowledged his errors and tried to change at least some aspect of his beliefs. But he shut himself off from others, as well, and never received love from anyone, especially not Dumbledore -- far from it. That's why Dumbledore's tears at seeing Snape's Patronus and his "Poor Severus" comment stick in my craw so much. What a hypocrite. At least Snape had the courage to love and not reject it as a weakness.

And you are right: why is the solution to a mistake in love closing yourself off to love forever? It does read like a punishment for being transgressive, for both superior Dumbledore, who dared to love the wrong man, and inferior Snape, who dared to love a supposed saint.

As others have said, "the stupid, it burns."

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's just so...what a weird juxtaposition with those two. I guess because JKR considers it a good quality to be able to love someone, but I don't know what to make of the reversals, because she it's so clear who the "inherently good" people are here. Lily, obviously. If Snape had just become more a fool for love there he might have saved himself because he'd have thrown away his moral compass and taken her own. Instead he bizarrely thinks being a DE will win her love. Dumbledore the good one could only lower himself and learn never to do that again. Well, actually both of them decide never to do that again. Since they'd both already graduated high school I guess they knew Lily and Gellert had to be their one true loves.

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

Well, people have already mentioned that JKR only picked DD as her gay character because he's old, single, dead and pretty much asexual. But it's still sad to see it confirmed by her. Also, if DD and GG didn't have sex, GG might not even be gay himself. And DD not having another relationship in his life means that Elphias Dodge probably isn't gay either. I also couldn't get over her comment when asked if Charlie is gay because he didn't marry. She said: "No, Dumbledore is gay." not simply "No, he's just not interested in getting married and starting a family." What does DD being gay have to do with Charlie potentially being gay? Nothing, except for her there can only be one gay person at a time and that person is definitely not sexual in any way.

And there is something else that I noticed and already mentioned at FAP. I thought love was this big power, the power the Dark Lord knows not and what made Harry so special. But you also get the feeling that the characters in HP are only allowed to fall in love once in their lives (crushes not counted here) and if they happen to pick the wrong person for that, well, they never get another chance at love and have to stay single forever. (Maybe that was why Ginny and Hermione were so insistent on snagging Harry and Ron. They knew it was either being with them or ending up as lonely spinsters.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL! I didn't hear that--"No, Dumbledore is gay?" It would be one thing if she thought the person was confusing the characters--like if somebody said, "Is it true you outed Charlie Weasley?" and she said "No, it was Dumbledore." But that's a very telling answer. Only room for one gay person in a cast of hundreds. Only room for one old, dead, a-sexual gay character.

Ginny and Hermione both did seem to get that it was Harry and Ron or nothing, didn't they? They started scheming early. More than that, they're both kind of characterized as knowing this is what's supposed to happen and they just have to wait for the guy to come around. There's frustration, but no real fear that maybe the guy will fall in love with somebody else. I mean, Ginny and Hermone are both "hilariously" jealous whenever another girl looks at their man, but there just doesn't seem to be any real vulnerability (once Ginny changes her personality) that any other girl could be "the one" for him.

[jollityfarm.livejournal.com]

He's a very old single man. You have to ask: why is it so interesting?

If that's what it is, why bother? Why make a character gay if it's not going to come up in the books, and why act like you're the ultimate in gay-straight relations when what you've done is actually pretty cowardly, with the "gay men must be asexual to be acceptable" thing, and "well, you couldn't mention it in the books, because there wouldn't be any room for the EIGHT BILLION BILLION BILLION MENTIONS OF STRAIGHT PEOPLE WHO FANCY THE OPPOSITE SEX AND DID I MENTION THAT TWO OTHER OPPOSITE GENDERED PEOPLE GOT TOGETHER NOT THAT THEY WERE RELEVANT TO THE STORY, BUT WHO GIVES A FUCK, TRUE LOVE IS WONDERFUL, BUT GAY SEX IS UNIMPORTANT, THEREFORE WE DO NOT MENTION IT EVER...sorry, I think I had a moment there. Anyway, fuck her.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Why's is so important? Certainly not so important as how Neville and Hannah got married, and Luna married somebody else, and Draco *didn't* marry Pansy but he married this other chick...and Sirius and Charlie were both confirmed bachelors but in both cases it was because they had some other non-sexual thing they were more interested in. Married or nothing, you know.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

It is a very interesting question because I think homophobia is a fear of people loving, more than it is of the sexual act. There seems to be an innate distaste for the love involved, which I find absolutely extraordinary.

Okay, this just makes me laugh. What planet is she on? Homophobia is almost entirely about fear of anal sex and of men being penetrated and taking on the "female" role in the sexual act.

And yeah, the whole "oh, he became a Nazi because he fell in luurrvvv" is incredibly silly and pointless. Silly because it's unconvincing to me psychologically (love is hardly the only reason, or even the most common reason, why decent people are drawn to hateful ideologies!), and pointless because it makes Dumbledore's anti-Muggle past have nothing to do with his true character--it's all because he was brainwashed by love, because his love made him not himself any more, almost as if he was drunk the whole time. IMO that view of it makes that story less powerful.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

Homophobia is almost entirely about fear of anal sex and of men being penetrated and taking on the "female" role in the sexual act.

Anti-gay male homophobia, I mean, which is what's relevant to Dumbledore. It's 99.9% about the yuck factor and the power dynamics, not about the love--many people don't even acknowledge that the love really exists.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

My take on this:

I think it's yet another manifestation of JK Rowling's own life becoming The Way Things Are in her books. After all, didn't she change her life completely during her first marriage by leaving Briton and following him overseas? And didn't it end badly when he turned out not to be what she'd thought, and she was left alone with no money and a child to raise?

And what do we have in Harry Potter but a succession of people who change their lives, either for good or ill, by falling in love? Dumbledore the quasi-Nazi...Snape the weepy virgin heroic spy...Tonks the blithering eratomaniac tragic mother...James the inexplicably changed idiot loving father and husband...the list goes on and on. For JK Rowling, the Power of Love is inextricably bound up in One True Love Who Changes Your Life, usually when you're a teenager.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Heh! I love all the characters so much more the way you describe them--the weepy virgin, blithering eratomaniac and inexplicably changed (though it's not visible to the naked eye) idiot. Though I don't think her people really change, it's just if it's good love (with a Gryffindor) it shows you the good person you really are, while the bad love might make you stray from the path before you throw it off like Dumbledore. Or something. But yeah, it does seem like however it happens, it's going to be based on the author's experience.

[grubby-tap.livejournal.com]

The way I see it is Dumbledore was once a teenager like all of us were (are, in my case) and of course at this age all anyone wants is some glory. I know it's what I want. If some handsome thing comes along and offers to take over the world with me, fuck yeah I'd say yes. When you're my age you don't think about the reality of death. You think you're immortal. Death is just a whisper, not a presence. And you want people to know your name, to love you even if they don't know you.

Dumbledore just had a rock-star-wannabe complex (with a little less music and a little more fascism), in my opinion. No one thinks they're gonna end up being an accountant or teaching at a school when they're young. Who wouldn't wanna be seduced by the dark side at this age?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Which is good because it gets into what Dumbledore wanted. As you say, who wouldn't *wanna* be seduced to the dark side at this age? It's not like he fell in love and it was all just Gellert leading him astray--presumably Gellert was being led astray as well. I mean, even if he stuck with it, presumably the two of them were caught up in it together then. If Dumbledore's sister hadn't died he might have stuck with it too.

[static-pixie.livejournal.com]

I thought she'd stopped speaking. Why has she NOT STOPPED SPEAKING?! Or at least choked on her cake? :P

You're completely right, this answer is totally frustrating and absurd. And not only because of what you point out about how it's totally in character for Dumbledore to have gone that way, love or no love (especially as a young man), but because JKR herself has pointed out THE SAME THING. Didn't she say he was a very Machiavellian character? How is 'The Greater Good' at all at odds with that?

The thing is, it wouldn't actually be at all annoying if she weren't glorified everywhere for every answer she gives to every question but the limelight coddles her like she some sort of pre-schooler and it's just sickening at this point. I wish someone other than that one reviewer would write an article against her citing every hypocrisy, every statement that makes no sense, everything that, in short, makes her undeserving of all of the honors that keep getting heaped up on her when she apparently has an IQ approx. 2 points higher than Britney Spears.

...perhaps an exaggeration, but my God I'm tired of the way everyone seems to lose higher brain function every time JKR speaks.

Even worse about the whole sexual thing is the rank hypocrisy of it when compared with, I don't know, ALL of her statements about how empowering Ginny Weasley's supposed to be as a character for being so openly sexual. It's ok if you're a woman, but not if you're gay? Dumbledore's homosexuality shouldn't be important to his character because he's renounced it and become an asexual old man? We should ignore it like he (somehow) does? I mean, the statement itself doesn't even make sense; this love is the only reason a man like Dumbledore succumbed to evil urges (a problem in itself but nevermind), buuuuuuut...we shouldn't be interested in it? The details of it shouldn't be important? It should just be quietly shoved to the side like it's nothing when she's pretty much saying here that it was everything as far as Dumbledore and LOVE (the thing that drove the series) was concerned? WHAT? Like Snape and Lily's story wasn't important?

And that in itself makes no sense either. So it was pure love (with no dirty 'chest' monsters to taint it) that drove Dumbledore in the situation and he renounces it and...becomes asexual? Why does he lose all sexual urges just because he becomes jaded where love is concerned? If anything, it tends to go the opposite way in RL, or if not in RL, then in fiction certainly. And where are the ramifications in his personality from becoming so jaded where love is concerned? They should be there if the series is about how important it is to LET LOVE IN. Romantic love can't be important and have a huge impact on your personality unless you're straight (and Slytherin)? It makes no sense.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I've never gotten the position that this has nothing to do with the story so it's not in there (unlike every random het romance) when the whole point of it really does seem to be to explain his flirtation with the dark. This "love story" actually is part of the plot...or at least is related to stuff in there. Why would so much of DH be focused on GG/DD without that coming out? Meanwhile the Grey Lady can't talk for two minutes without explaining her tragic love story? Yeah, don't get taht.

It's also sort of funny when you think...the thing is, you can't really become a-sexual, can you? That is, if he's naturally got this sex drive and loves men, what you mean is that he's repressing it or just not acting on it. Which doesn't really sound like a good thing. Unless you see it as something like alcoholism!

[sydpad.livejournal.com]

*presses hands into temples* Oh, yay, JKR talking about people being 'innately good'. And love. And gayness. This is going to be a peach.

I just don't understand what JKR means by 'love'. Not just in this instance, in ANY instance in the whole series. So it turns out in the Dept. of Mysteries they study Love by.. drinking love potions, which as we see are a purely chemical mind-control device that's just creepy and soulless and has nothing to do with the psychology of either party, or connecting to another person, or finding mutual understanding and reassurance. Or any of that spiritual stuff in my innocence I was looking for when she kept saying the series was about Love. It's just a chemical, without any inherent moral component.

Dumbledore is 'innately good' so this external love thing just took over his brain; Snape, ditto in reverse, innately bad but he has a Manchurian Candidate trigger that brainwashes him to Do Good. Harry has a chest monster that appeared roughly around the same time as Ginny grew breasts, and Tonks looses her powers like she's caught some kind of virus. Love as a sickness or as brainwashing is an old trope and its not without some truth, but wow, I just can't square this bleak, cynical concept (which would be quite cool in a bleak, cynical book), with this hearts-and-flowers Harry-is-Jesus ending. In terms of anything approaching Christian love, or even what I'd consider base-level healthy relationship love.. I just don't see it in series ANYWHERE.

What's bizarre is that.. there's no question that Rowling has a preternatural genius for creating characters, and the story as it stands-- Dumbledore, the self-deluding, self-adoring megalomaniac, would of course fall in love with someone so similar to himself, who could express these characteristics that maybe he was a bit ashamed of. It only falls down where there's JKR's superego or whatever it making her say these things, trying to impose this thing where Dumbledore is "innately good". And love is a brain disease or a virus or something that INFECTS YOUR BODILY FLUIDS!!

Guh. So creepy.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Her amazing ability to create characters is like the one thing saving this. Because when you listen to her talk about this guy it almost sounds like she just doesn't see the obvious...but of course she created him so on some level it seems like she must see it. In the interview it's almost like she just shares his same blindspots--he himself would say that he was just led astray by love and it was all Gellert's fault and nothing to do with innately good him. Yet somehow she managed to write it so it was obvious they're both deluding themselves.

And yeah, love. This series has the weirdest view of love and yet it's supposed to be the basis of it. Yet the only kind of love that can sustain this sort of thing is not what we usually see--lots of people noticed that the book that was all about love (HBP) with the shipping was the one where everybody was the most hateful!

It explains a bit why the Malfoy story ultimately was just odd to me too. On one hand it seems like their love for each other is a redeeming characteristic, but again it's really not. They're still pretty much innately bad, but they have a trigger about love for each other, just as Snape has for Lily. In HBP I thought part of the point with Draco was that because he loved and was loved he wasn't a killer, and that made him a better person. Now it seems like he just lacked the guts and also was programmed to act on behalf of his family's wishes because of whatever his love potion smelled like. (Presumably it already smelled like Astoria back in HBP?)

[savagedamsel10.livejournal.com]

I remember reading this somewhere and banging my head against the monitor. Way to go on completely verifying naysayers' cynical views there, JKR!
And the whole thing about homophobia fearing love is just NOT true. I'm pretty sure that it's more the whole sex factor and gender role factor that gets homophobes all nervous in general. Many (homoophobes) never even considered whether homosexual love could exist, especially healthy, mutual and fulfilling love (Something that Dumbledore's romance clearly isn't).
And of course the whole romance and plot relevance hypocrisy absolutely pisses me off. It seems that all het mentions are perfectly fine but the sole token gay one cannot be mentioned? And Dumbledore's off-canon UNREQUITED romance (I remember that being mentioned) has to be something that shuts him off from love? Doesn't that screw with the whole love theme? (Although that is already gloriously ruined by JKR's het romances anyway).
I just hope that she doesn't think that she should be awarded a GLAAD media award for her "trailblazing". Or even worse, that others think she deserves it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's one of the funniest things, the way that the books are so stock full of these random ships all over the place, and whenever one of them has to do with anything happening in the story it gets mentioned. Yet this big motivation for Dumbledore's "big secret" somehow just isn't there at all. But it's not a big deal? Sure seems like a big deal. It ruined his life.

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

Dumbledore himself even agrees! He becomes mistrustful not of his moral compass, not of his own abilities to know right from wrong. No, he becomes asexual, deducing that the problem is that he needs to keep himself pure from others so that he can always be sure he's relying on his own "innately good" moral sense.

See, I can see this kind of character arc as a brilliant character portrayal of someone who is horribly deluded and sad. There could be some psychological acuity to showing someone so terrified of his sexuality that he withdraws into his shell for decades and loses track of every other aspect of his moral life. Except that kind of fundamentally flawed character portrayal isn't what Rowling is after -- she sees D's sexual withdrawal as a normative response to an imperfect situation. Which, ack. Is hard to wrap your mind around.

What comes across most to me in this interview is that Rowling seems to think love is petrifying. Given the tremendous and mostly destructive power she attributes to love, it's no wonder she couldn't quite get her act together to show Harry truly caring for Ginny (as opposed to telling us that he cares, as she so often does). In this withdrawal from sexuality as in so many other things, Harry really does turn out to be Dumbledore's man, poor kid. :(

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's so bizarre the way she creates brilliant character arcs that turn out to be illusions--Dumbledore, Draco, Snape--I totally overshot what she was doing with all of them at one time or another. I shouldn't be surprised that they were all supporting characters that we didn't always see. I should have noticed that the Trio never had anything really interesting going on, and they were the ones she was concentrating on.

[purple-ladybug1.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of HW to do, so I'm just going to make a fast comment, rather than a well-thought-out comment.

I thought JKR's revelation that Dumbledore was gay came about because someone asked if he had ever found love? Or some question that innately assumed he was straight, and she just answered honestly, that no, actually, he was gay. And since then, everything has snowballed into this big debate.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Her original answer, iirc, was that somebody asked if Dumbledore had ever been in love and she said she always thought of him as gay, and he was in love with Grindelwald. And she said if she knew it would make the audience so happy (since they were cheering) she'd have told them sooner--though I don't know if that meant she'd have put it in the book or not. (It seems like as much a part of DH as anything else and from a story perspective I see no reason not to include it.)

Of course once she said he was gay even outside of canon a lot of people thought that was terrible, that he shouldn't be a teacher etc. So now she's getting more questions on that.

[roisindubh211.livejournal.com]

Dumbledore having his enormous boy-crush on Grindelwald seemed obvious to me, it was well implied (I thought). Didn't assume he was actually gay- it seemed halfway between a crush and hero-worship, like teenagers have sometimes. It fit better with Dumbledore as he was portrayed for the first six books (see icon) than the Machiavellian character that loomed out of nowhere in the last one. I agree that it was fascinating to have someone react like that, but she should have added another gay character- someone with a nice happy/content and possibly boring life (though Charlie, everybody's favourite candidate, hardly has a chance at a boring life).

She really does need to shut up, though. Let us speculate on everybody's future life, imagine that Draco has some exotic foreign pureblood (though maybe she's from Queens? American wizards might just be really tacky...) Imagine that Neville and Luna do something crazy together, like hunting for weird creatures that nobody can see?

For the record, I have hopes for Harry and Ginny, and Ron and Hermione. Ron is smarter than he's given credit for, and Harry will change from not having to fight ultimate evil anymore. And Ginny- SOOO going back to Quidditch as soon as the kids are on bottles.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I was seeing DD/GG in the last book too--though I saw him as Machiavellian for several books now.

I do like to picture Astoria as being from Queens with big hair...now I'm picturing her on Ugly Betty. I think she's actually supposed to be the sister of a girl in his class in Slytherin, but I prefer her being from Queens.

Here from d_s (1/2)

[raisin-gal.livejournal.com]

Wonderfully put! Forgive me for commenting without reading the other comments.

The situation about HP and JKR's public comments is fascinating to me, in an extremely morbid kind of way. Because I constantly find myself going into the story and finding messages -- excellent messages -- that I think are buried there, in plain sight for all of her readers to work hard and find. And then the author sends out interview statements that contradict my assumption that it had been the author's *intention* to send those messages. Dumbledore described as "innately good" from her lips is one breathtaking example.

After all, the series has always had an aspect of morality-related mystery and hidden truths buried all over it, which readers were sometimes made to guess at for a long time before the next book came out to give answers. And the constant theme has been: You can never tell if somebody is good or evil, because appearances can be deceiving -- Snape vs. Quirrel [PS/SS], Tom Jr. vs. Hagrid [CoS], Sirius vs. Peter [PoA], the true nature of "Moody" [GoF], the true nature of the James vs. Snape interactions and James' characteristics [OotP], the moral nature of Snape [HBP-DH], and finally, for the grand finale, the true moral personality (and, less importantly, criminal history) of the patriarchal symbol of omniscience, Albus Dumbledore [DH] ...Or so I thought. I felt that final Dumbledore reveal was done spectacularly well, actually, with Snape's POV memories revealing down-right cruel (and utterly unnecessarily so in cases like the Yule Ball scene) sides of Dumbledore that were news to us who assumed Dumbledore was supposed to be unquestionably "good." Those scenes made us realize suddenly that the same character traits have been hidden right there in plain sight all along. Such as Dumbledore leaving Harry on his deceased mother's sister's doorsteps without even bothering to knock, or him telling Harry a straight-forward lie about why Snape was protecting him in PS/SS, of a type that was completely uncalled for even to keep his promise of secrecy, and served to make Harry under-appreciate and mistrust the man Dumbledore *knew* to be willing to live and die for the boy.

Which I thought was marvelous. Way to shift the paradigm, and ruthlessly, daringly send us a message saying: "Hey, even people you are led to believe are *impossible* to doubt can be extremely different inside from what they project themselves to be! In fact you have to be *especially* careful about trusting exactly *those* people!" So I thought JKR was sending a wonderful message by making Dumbledore out to be such a despicable person who just *happened* to end up saving the world out of sheer luck (or fated destiny or whatever it was). I thought we were finally given a crucial piece of the puzzle that shows us Dumbledore's words cannot always be trusted, especially where they concern love and morality. He's right about a lot of things but wrong about some -- as you point out, he's disastrously wrong about close attachment and romantic love for him being destructive.

Yet, just as soon as I think that I have finally solved JKR's grand mystery -- which I found it marvelous that we still *had* mysteries to solve post-DH -- she turns around to us, smiles, and *agrees* with the bad side of Dumbledore. And I'm head-desking like mad and my brain hurts. Because it's not like the text of the books suddenly changes; the wonderful messages I found are still *there*, it's not like they disappear, but suddenly they're not the Authorial Message. Or is it? Is she just teasing us? But does she think it's a good idea to *tease* there, have all the children who read her books believing Dumbledore's newly-revealed characteristics are actually in any shape or form "good" until they grow up and (if they still have passion in HP) figure out for themselves?

Re: Here from d_s (1/2)

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Every once in a while I hear people arguing that this is her authorial intent. That she is being deliberately existential. Or that this is all in order to get us to question our assumptions about good and evil. Which I could believe.... except. Except it doesn't really seem to be. And, if that's the case, then she's really not doing a good job for the younger readers, because all that questioning stuff is going to go right over their heads.

You know, all they are really going to get is a contempt for authority in general--teachers, government workers, etc. I guess this is good, but it's what kids get from all truly popular culture. That's just what everyone thinks kids like. So, whether it's the Bad News Bears (or whatever film is currently ripping it off), or Ratatouille, or rap songs, kids are always getting the message that grown-ups are stupid, and so are the rules they come up with.

Rarely are there stories which ask the reader to confront their own prejudices. If that was what JKR was really doing, I think she needed to have Harry actually do that. Instead of instinctively getting to the point where he got the benefit of re-evaluating his positions without having to do so. Or... maybe it's just that he never needed to re-evaluate anyone who was actually alive. He didn't have to examine the relationship between goblins and humans, he just took advantage of the goblin in front of him, and, subsequently had the WW's bad opinion of goblins reinforced when Griphook ran off with the sword. He re-evaluated Dumbledore (that was his main angst-object) and Snape--after both of them were dead. He didn't have to change his views on Narcissa, like Griphook, she presented an opportunity for him to take advantage of her concern for Draco--without them having to relate on any kind of a personal level.

I'm rambling. But I'd love to believe that JKR had this big ulterior motive. If she'd never given these interviews, I might believe it. But everything she says leads me to think that she did view her story in a very simple, straightforward way and that the wonderful, quirky, complex, infuriating moral messaging is accidental.

(2/2)

[raisin-gal.livejournal.com]

The homophobia comment boggles my mind too. Because she says, in the very same interview (http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2008/3/8/new-j-k-rowling-interview-confirms-working-on-scottish-book-reflects-on-dumbledore-homophobia-fundamentalism-future-writing-projects-and-more), presumably in *criticism* of homophobic people:

"I think homophobia is a fear of people loving, more than it is of the sexual act. There seems to be an innate distaste for the love involved, which I find absolutely extraordinary." (underline mine)

And yet in the very same interview she expresses bewilderment about why people (homophobic and LGBT-conscious people alike) care about Dumbledore's gayness:

"[W]hy is it so interesting? People have to examine their own attitudes. It's a shade of character. Is it the most important thing about him? No[.]"

We *care*, Ms. Rowling, because you have *painted* a descriptive picture of exactly why we should *fear* a man romantically *loving* another man, the very thing you just said is at the base of the society's deep-seated homophobia. Never mind the sex thing, we (most of us) never cared about whether Dumbledore had sex with anyone anyway, because that is *beside the point*. But *love* is not beside the point. The HP text clearly says that love is a powerful source of destruction as well as of salvation. That axiom does not define which type of love is good and which is bad. And it shouldn't have.

That Dumbledore loved Grindelwald genuinely, and that this (possibly rare) experience was tragically linked with a lapse of moral judgment in his personal history are written right there in the text for everybody to see, and that was enough. We did *not* need to be told that that love was not friendship but rather gay romantic love, *nor* that this incident is supposed to be interpreted as a "lapse in judgment" of an "innately good" man instead of as a tragic combination of circumstances that made him mistrust certain types of love for the rest of his long, lonely life.

It's fine if somebody wrote fanfiction claiming that you could read the HP world this way. That's nice, because there can be millions of interpretations, non of them above the others. But what should we think when the author herself tells us that a certain message in the HP story is *hers* and therefore *true*? Should I stop loving the story? But it sends a different, wonderful message to *me*...

My mind keeps boggling and I feel like I have stepped into a bizarre wonderland...

Re: (2/2)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, on both of these issues it's like...as somebody else said, her instinct just runs on ahead of her intellect. Because Dumbledore totally works as a character who's tempted by *power.* In fact, if I were just looking at canon and trying to work out what he said about love--since I can't really make head or tail of what love is really supposed to mean in this universe--I'd say this is a person who *always* chose power over love. Like, even with Grindelwald the great love that he felt was bound up with power. They were both seeking to take over the world together. And in the end, bizarrely, Grindelwald almost seems to be the one who learns his lesson more than Albus does!

But then she's just very clear in interviews that she doesn't really seem comfortable with that at all. It's just like with the authority stuff--there's a lot of stuff about mistrusting authority, but in the end the books are very pro-authority. They really kind of long for the same kind of philosopher king as Tolkien and others set up in their fantasies. Harry should listen to the right guide: Dumbledore. As Montavilla says, there's plenty of children's stuff that says that adults are stupid, but this series is even odder that way because first, the adults really are stupid. I mean, they are all stunted and never grow beyond their high school lives. We're pretty much told that Harry's generation--the members of it close to Harry--are far better and can fix the world, yet they never even have their moment where they surprise the adults by thinking for themselves. Hermione, for instance, seems to be the best model of what they're supposed to be. She thinks independently all the time, but only so far as she's following the person she knows is the right authority figure: Dumbledore.

Re: the homophobia...yeah, I think that she really doesn't think being gay should be a big deal. But she's not exactly analyzing what she's saying here. Since Dumbledore is the only gay person in the series it's very easy to make a homophobic interpretation no matter what she intended. First she herself decides to leave it out of the book, as if it's the one kind of love that can't speak its name. Then she actually binds it up with a temptation to evil. It's funny because one could say Bellatrix LeStrange is similar in that she's in love with Voldemort, only with Bellatrix clearly she has those beliefs outside of Voldemort and that's why she finds him attractive.

[discordiana.livejournal.com]

So, it isn't about sex, his gay love made his innately good self evil, and there was no place in the story for it except there was place for all the inane straight romantic entanglements.

Bottom line then: he isn't a gay character; he's a character that just happens to be gay.

"I don't see you as a gay person, I see you only as a person"?

[raisin-gal.livejournal.com]

Uh-uh.

"I don't see you as a gay person, I see you as a person who is a fine man as long as you're not feeling any love for another man."

If you ask me that's *way* more disturbing than "It's about sex: as long as you don't *act* on your urges physically, your homosexual *love* won't condemn you to eternal hell" -- which seems to be the chosen rhetoric of some homophobic Christian fundamentalists.

[leia-naberrie.livejournal.com]

Great to see you posting HP meta again. :D

*bangs head against keyboard*

Dumbledore's anti-Muggle attitudes sprung up from his little sister being attacked to the point of insanity by 3 Muggle boys; his father going to Azkaban for avenging her; his family being forced to hide said sister's insanity or risk her certification; and his mother being murdered by said sister.



The plans for Muggle dominations were not just Grindelwald's crazy ideas, they were also ideas that Dumbledore's horrible life had caused him to have.


What I'm trying to say is that Dumbledore already had intrinsic reasons to hate Muggles and wish for Muggle-domination. Grindelwald shared his ideas, he did not inspire them. And - (and this is where I see red) - in the context of the story, Dumbledore never says that his Great Love for Grindelwald caused him to almost turn evil.



Or in other words: Dear Rowling, have you actually read your own book?

[raisin-gal.livejournal.com]

Or in other words: Dear Rowling, have you actually read your own book?

That made me spurt out my tea. *g* Word.

It does sometimes seem like there are two JKRs, the one that writes the books and the one that goes out and tries to sabotage it, doesn't it? And sometimes those two JKRs seem to switch mid-sentence. Weird...

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

You are putting some of my own reservations and reactions about the above statement into words here. Thanks for doing that.

I pretty much agree with you point by point. To me it seemed like a logical progression that Dumbledore, once thinking the answer to the Wizarding World's problems was supremacy, rethinks after he sees what happens when Grindelwald puts it into effect. He then redirects his efforts into another greater good.
Why else manipulate Harry and Snape the way he does? And these are people he respectively confesses to "care about, perhaps too much" and "trust explicitly". Still, they become pawns in this new greater good. It's not that different. It's the large-scale goal that's different, not the day-to-day ethics when interacting with people.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes--it actually works very nicely. Dumbledore is the twinkly leader of the good guys but he's got the same temptations as he did when he was a teenager. Temptations that make perfect sense given his background--not only regarding what happened to his sister, but the way he was apparently hailed as a genius his whole life. It seems more like Grindelwald just gave him permission to act on things he was already thinking.

[alias-iii.livejournal.com]

Here via DS.

I agree with most of the comments here. I was rather irritated to discover that JKR had outed DD the way that she did, as she obviously didn't have the courage to write it into her very moral books. But I think the thing that gets me the most is that DD keeps talking about what's right and what's easy, and he has that lovely little speech about how it's our choices that make us who we are. And then she goes and totally contradicts all of that. DD was temporarily labotomized by GG. Snape was bullied as a kid, so it's only understandable (and not a choice on his part) that he bullies his students. There's a prophecy, so Harry's got no choice but to be a hero. And Voldemort is the worst case. He didn't have loving parents growing up, so he *couldn't* know love. So basically, he had no choice but to be a psychopathic murderer, which means that love is the anti-choice. As was said above, that'd be a great and interesting theme for a very dark book, but it's just painful in what's meant to be a moral and optimistic series.

I also agree that what she writes and the lens that she tries to force her stories through are two very different things. Her ideas seem to be fine until she tries to rationalize them, codify, quantify, and explain them based on a moral structure that, when you actually think about it *at all* doesn't make sense. She's just swinging with the times right now. Homosexuality is a hot issue, so it's grafted onto the series--but it's not important. Girls and women are allowed more freedom to express their sexuatlity--but if they have more than a couple partners *ever*, they're sluts. She's become a walking daytime talk show from the States, I swear.

[serriadh.livejournal.com]

And Voldemort is the worst case. He didn't have loving parents growing up, so he *couldn't* know love

Unlike Harry, of course, who had a loving home environment where he was locked in a cupboard and starved. Yeah. Right.

[saylee.livejournal.com]

But the weirdest thing here to me is in the second paragraph, where Dumbledore is apparently an "innately good man" who only flirted with essentially *being a Nazi* because he became a "fool for love." This is bizarre to me because frankly, I don't have any trouble trying to figure out why Dumbledore would have flirted with taking over Muggles. This is a guy who's constantly manipulating everyone, thinks he's smarter than everyone else, treats them as pawns that are morally inferior to himself...why on earth would it be hard to imagine him deciding to dominate Muggles "for the greater good?" Of course he would think the answer was having the right people in charge.

I don't know how she does it, I really don't. Dumbledore's past, like so many things in her books has the potential to be really *brilliant*, if only she would explore it for what it is, rather than trying to fit it into the warped worldview of her books, and she completely screws it up. I can't even count how often she's dropped the ball on something that could be great and made it into something terrible. I think all the wasted potential in her writing frustrates me even more than the gawdawful morality, and that's saying something.

As for her stupid little speech on homophobes being afraid of love, I don't know where to start. Does she have any idea how downright offensive it is to make ridiculous statements like that, with no actual knowledge to back her up? Sorry JKR, I know you like to think you're open-minded and all, but you're actually coming off pretty heterosexist, at the very least. I suspect she doesn't even realize that homophobia comes in more subtle forms than gay-bashing and hate-speech.

I had more, but it's completely gone out of my head to be replaced with frustration and rage that Rowling just won't *shut up, already*.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

As I think I said above, it sounds sweet to say they're really afraid of love, but they're not. As someone else mentioned, often homophobia goes right along with a worship of same-sex love--as long as it's platonic. A real man loves his buddies maybe even more than his wife--and don't anybody dare suggest they're queers.

It's almost just funny at this point because you'd think an author talking about their work would make it more interesting or add more layers. I love listening to commentary tracks on DVDs because they add more to it (granted commentators don't tell you what's supposed to happen to everybody after the movie's over!). But she always seems to make it less for me rather than more.

[serriadh.livejournal.com]

She just boggles me every time she opens her mouth. Why can't she just stop? I was pleased to see she finally admitted she hasn't re-read her own books, though. That explains a great deal.

Her understanding of people is SO bleak (particularly, as has been said, in a book that's supposedly about choice) You're born good or evil, and that's it. You could be seduced away from it, but basically that's not your fault, because you're still innately good. (I might have a larger problem with this, not only because it's not what I believe she wrote, but because I have a hard time believing in 'innately good' and 'innately' bad. And I'm a Christian, and this reflects my beliefs, but not the tripped-out Calvinist type of Christianity JKR seems to espouse)

Her view of love is just terrifying, as well. It's some outside (chemical?) force that you have no control over and that completely takes over your will and thoughts and overrides any morality you might have grown up with? Bloody hell. No wonder it's the most powerful force in her world. But when she said that, I always assumed she thought it was a good force, basically, not an amoral all-powerful all-consuming force that robbed you of your individuality completely.

I always read DD's relationship with Grindlewald as that sort of incredibly intense teenage crush, where you can't really tell if you want to be with someone or just be them. So while I could read it as 'gay DD', I didn't think that was necessarily the case.

And I really, really, don't see how the motivation for one of the most important characters in the series, a motivation that shaped the wizarding world (all those who died under Grindlewald, anyone?) for at least 50 years, wasn't relevant to the story? WTF JKR?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what's crazy about this revelation is that it's not just a random "Oh, this character's gay but I never found a place to mention it naturally." I'm sure that happens a lot and while it would still drive homophobes crazy it wouldn't be as much of a big deal.

But instead it's kind of a weird maelstrom of strange ideas--that it's not in the story despite being the Key to Everything about this character's actions, yet it's not mentioned in the story along with every other love story that drives the plot, that the one gay relationship unfortunately winds up being about a loss of moral sense and leaves the character needing to be celibate forever, that it makes all these things the character does somebody else's fault when it's supposed to be about choice--and at the same time in a story where everybody's just revealing their innate natures, somehow Dumbledore gets a pass few others get because what he does under the influence of love doesn't say anything about his real character.

[gwendolyngrace.livejournal.com]

Here via daily_snitch.

So many good comments! It's bothered me for a long time that so much of what presented early on as brilliance and originality has become more and more pat and unsupported the more we find out from Ms. Rowling about her creative process.

Virtually all of her storylines, I thought, were nowhere near as effective as they *could* have been, and largely because of the failing that you and many of the commenters here have cited: the characters' *choices* all turn out to be shoehorned into the plot, either for reasons known only to JKR ("because it just came to me! Because it had to be that way!") or because something within the narrative predestined the characters to behave as they did. The progression of any given character from point A to point B (and even point C) never gets a lot of thought.

This is why I just pay no attention to her interviews. The books were disappointing enough; to see her reinforce the extent to which she doesn't get it, doesn't understand her own characters, and moreover refuses to see the potential, rather than forcing them back into the structure of the story.... It just frustrates me so much.

I also want to add that the thing about women's "liberation" vs. Dumbledore's self-repression is OMG so true. One of the things that I hated from the moment it was clear Hermione harbored an interest in Ron (which was, like, what... Book One, Chapter 8?), was the clear indication that she was grooming him to become her ideal man. And the reason I *hated* that possibility in the text was that it struck me as such a perpetual problem. Intelligent women do sublimate themselves to less intellectual men all the time--I don't quite understand it, but it's such a common mistake for women to make--and they do it while honestly believing that the man they change will grow and reward them for helping them to become a "better person".... Um. No. That way leads to resentment and competitiveness and ugh, just BAD ROMANCE.

I like Ron, I've always appreciated that of the trio, he's the most realistic, the one who consistently behaves like whatever age they are, and I was rooting for him to come into his own strength in the series. And I'm glad he did. But I didn't want to see him do it at the expense of Hermione becoming even more insufferable and domineering, only to finally melt into his arms in a classic, "My Hero!" Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy pose.

As for Ginny, again, I always believed that there was a spunky, scrappy, strong female in there, but I liked her best when she seemed to have finally gotten over Harry (both as the icon and the boy) and moved the hell on to boys who liked her and didn't see her as a surrogate sister. To throw that strength away and shunt her back into the protective, supportive girlfriend role, content to wait while the hero braved his fate, was...well, it was a backslide every bit as damaging to young women readers as Hermione's character arc.

But back to Dumbledore (and Snape).... I said around the time of OotP that I thought the Wizarding World was outstripping JKR's ability to wrap her arms around it, and I still think I'm right. I think that she backed off what might have been a very interesting backstory and made it a footnote in the heteronormative Judeo-Christocentric monogamarchy(TM). Even if DD had been so shaken by being "led astray" that he pledged himself back to the "right," that's still a nod to the way homosexual characters have been marginalized for a long time in literature and film.

As for Snape, well, I still don't like Snape-->Lily. It could have been a lot worse, but I still don't like that his "love" for her was the only thing that convinced him to change sides, the only thing that kept him working for Dumbledore and against Voldemort. The whole thing leaves me very "Eh," I'm afraid... except that trying to figure out the why's and analysing the inconsistencies will give us things to talk about for a long, long time.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

The last book still amazes me because I was so waiting for all these *choices* to be important. I honestly never doubted that we'd have to see all these examples where characters who lived on the edge chose one way or the other. And I know that these were characters I liked so one could just accuse me of wanting her to write the story to my tastes, but it honestly just seemed like the obvious dramatic set up.

But in the end all choices were avoided so very resolutely it really seemed like she was making a strong statement. Nobody came across as free to choose anything. In fact, scenes where people were given choices mostly came across like bad jokes on the person played by the manipulators in the series. Like in the final Harry/Voldemort convo where he's all "Here's your last chance! Show some remorse!" It's not a chance, it's a taunt--Voldemort can't feel remorse. It's beyond his ability. Harry's just waiting for him to do the only thing he's able to do, just as Dumbledore watched everybody on his side live within their limits. He makes little superior remarks about "hoping" they might do something else but really nothing is a surprise.

Also word on the shipping.

[eir-de-scania.livejournal.com]

Jo has created some wonderful, real-life characters. Unfortunately, they often have to act like total morons so not to ruin The Plot. Obviously, the magic doesn't only take over the parts of the brain Muggle use for common sense, they leave you socially inept as well. DDs early life, the Snape/James school feud, you name it, being a secret in a society of a few thousand, many related, who goes to the same school and in many cases work at the same place? Oh well, you can expect anything from a society that lets the ever-revolting goblins be in charge for its economy.

While Jo's characters wouldn't be out of place in an adult novel her world-building is only fit for a children's book, however. Not to mention those parts that are only there for comic relief, like the wizards way of "dressing muggle".

Jo is a talented story teller, too. I'm not the only one to rush through the books to find out what happens. But I'm not the only one to go WTF!?! when thinking about it afterwards.

Her interviews makes me go WTF as well...but I don't want her to shut up. I'd love an interview where all the things bothering fans would be addressed though.

One of the problems is. I think, her editor(s) not doing their job. Now, I don't agree with the kind of editor wanting to be a co-author and the manuscript re-written to be more in their style than the actual authors. But every work needs to be read with fresh eyes. There are always inconsistencies and things that are clear to the author but a reader doesn't get. And if you do a seven-book series with clues from one book getting their answer three books later you need to discuss the whole series.

But Jo has been allowed to keep everyone, even her publishers, in the dark. As far as I know, it's unheard of, and I can only think it's because the HP books have become such a phenomenon. It's a shame, however. Some outside views would not have changed the story much, I'm certain, but it would have made a lot of things clearer for the readers.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I can't even imagine what an editor would do with the series--I mean, because it's so successful. I know Arthur Levine is a great editor, but I wonder what one would do in that situation, with that successful and author. I guess you'd just ask for clarification, maybe, but probably not say something like a fan would--like wtf? What do you mean ending the story in this crappy way?

The interviews are just so weird to me. I know for years people have said they're geared to children, but that doesn't really seem like what the deal is. Especially when speaking about stuff that's obviously not a child question.

[zerdevi.livejournal.com]

Word to that. All authors need editors. There's a reason why 70-year-old prize-winning authors with 40 books under their belt still thank their editors in their forewords. I wish JKR understood that.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to think about how that relationship works for her, given the success of this series. She's even got two, right? On both sides of the Atlantic.