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

[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.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

I think it's yet another manifestation of JK Rowling's own life becoming The Way Things Are in her books.

I never realized this was going on until I read Dan Hemmens's review of DH and got to the part where he rants about the portrayal of death in the book, and suggests that the flaws in that portrayal relate to Rowling's attempts to deal with her own experiences with loss. I think he and you are probably right, which makes me sympathetic to her, but does not make the flaws any less severe.

[savagedamsel10.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there someone who said that the way JKR handles certain themes and ideas in the HP would have been more interesting and relevant for a psychiatrist than a general reader? I always found that line rather funny.

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

That sounds interesting; do you remember where it is?

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

I think this is the relevant part: http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-148.html

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[marionros.livejournal.com]

Oh. Dear. Gawd!

I've read it before (and snickering all the way), but it just hit me:

quote:
"So then Harry goes and talks to the Goblin they rescued from the Malfoys (did I mention the goblin? There was a goblin). The Goblin is all "you totally rock Harry Potter, because you sometimes treat other races with the barest minimum possible level of decency when you remember to." You see, it's because Harry understands love.

So Harry goes and talks to Ollivander about his broken wand. I mean seriously, it's not even worth doing jokes about, is it.

Having got his penis-metaphor out of the way, Harry then talks some more about Wand-Lore with Ollivander. Here we learn that it is the wand that chooses the wizard, not the other way around, and that if you take somebody's wand by force, that wand will work better for you than one you just picked up somewhere.

In particular, the discussion goes like this:

"I took this wand from Draco Malfoy by force," said Harry. "Can I use it safely?"
"I think so, subtle laws govern wand ownership, but the conquered wand will usually bend its will to its new master."

end quote

It just struck me; the wand chooses the wizard. If you take the wand by force from the wizard, the wand will like the forcible wizard better. Substitute 'witch' for 'wand' and you'll understand why I find this whole wandbusiness so unsavory. Apparantly, wands are like those fickle women. They'll say they'll love you, they're your *bestest friend*, but when some forceful bully beats you in a fight, she'll find that bully so *totally* sexy that she'll drop you for him in a second.

No wonder she'll insist that Lily is a Very Nice Girl; if she thinks that the whole wand business makes sense, she'll think Lily is a saint.

*gack* *spew*

When they baked that woman's head, they were out of brains and they used a cauliflower instead.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Apparantly, wands are like those fickle women. They'll say they'll love you, they're your *bestest friend*, but when some forceful bully beats you in a fight, she'll find that bully so *totally* sexy that she'll drop you for him in a second.

So, sort-of like Lily, when James hangs bestest friend Sev by his ankle?

[marionros.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I just saw the connection.

I mean, in JKR's world, 'love' means something else than you'd think. She tells us the Room of Love in the Ministry contains a vat of Love Potion. Now she tells us that Dumbledore became a nazi and had desires to rule the world (pardon, to Rule The World AhhahhHAHH!TM) because he 'fell in love'. She also tells us that Harry is a paragon of love as is his sainted mother Lily. But what she shows us is a very shallow, selfobsessed little twerp who only thinks about the worth of people (if he thinks about this at all) after they are dead, ie, when he thinks about how much *he* will miss them. She shows Lily as a self-righteous traitorous c*nt who will string a lonely boy along but will heartlessly flirt with the rich, handsome schoolbully whilst he is torturing said lonely boy and then berate the boy for being angry with her. Truly, I wish a psychologist would analyse Lily. I'm no expert, but I would say 'narcissism' here.
Dumbledore! Don't start me about Dumbledore. Others have said it better than I have.
And then there was the fickle wand thing which, in JKR little world of her own making, apparantly made Total Sense. And it all clicked. In her little world, Might *is* Right. 'Love' *is* something that is *outside* you. People will be assigned 'good' or 'bad' not for anything they'll *do* or for the love or hate they *feel*, but for the way she, the author, *feels* about them.

In short, in JKR's head, 'love' is something 'outside' which you can 'catch' like a virus. Again, I'm no psychologist, and it would be wrong on many levels to psychoanalyse somebody from their writing and their interviews, but I get more and more the distinct impression that there is something very *wrong* with Miss Rowling...

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

You know, I think you just nailed it there... Love in your teen years define you for ever and you can never escape it! Ha!

I suddenly feel sorry for her.

[tesseract-5.livejournal.com]

ellid, you've hit the nail on the head. Totally agree with this summary.

[eir-de-scania.livejournal.com]

I think it's a case of How Jo Wishes Life To Be. You meet your OTL early in life, and then you live a happily married life. With children.

(BTW,She didn't follow her first husband overseas, btw. She met him in his native Portugal when she was working there as an English teacher.)