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So here's what JKR has recently said about Dumbledore, getting more into his sexuality:
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!
"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!
Tags:
- dh,
- dumbledore,
- hp,
- meta
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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?
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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.
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Ooh, actually, I think a lot of people get that free pass. Hermione turns into a complete bitch for love, and goes against her moral compass (canary-attack, confunding that Quidditch guy), but apparently that's fine. Ginny whores herself around Hogwarts (according to Ron) because she's in Love with Harry and she's just dealing with it badly. Harry has a MONSTER living in his chest, but apparently that's fine, too.
But those are different to DD, beacuse their love isn't DOOMED, even though it makes them do bad things. Perhaps that's because their love is heterosexual , eh? ;)
Afair, Ron's the only one who behaves semi-normally when in 'love'.
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Going on a religious tangent, I can't speak for all Calvinist churches, but in mine, we don't really speak of predestination or the elect. What comes across (and this, not often), is that people don't really choose, and definitely don't earn, their own salvation, but that it's purely due to the mercy of God. Yes, this brings up a wide variety of questions (some of which I'm currently struggling with). Yes, this suggests that some people will go to heaven and some won't -- the elect, so to speak. Or, apparently, Gryffindors. This does *not* mean that they're better people, or more moral, much less "innately good". They rather specifically *not* better people. In more bleak terms, they suck just as badly as everyone else does, and they aren't worthy of salvation (no one is). Somehow, after the Sorting Hat has served as God, here, it's an indication that they really are better, more worthy, and more good.
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That's the actual doctrine, not Calvinism. In Antinomianism (Wikipedia article - missing citations and footnotes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinomianism), the Elect don't have to obey laws meant for lesser people. Since they are Elect and therefore predestined to go to Heaven, they have carte blanche to do as they please. This can be conflated with a Calvin tenet, wherein someone is predetermined to be saved. However, the writings of Jonathan Edwards (difficult to get through, his religious ecstasy is so voluable!) show that a person who is predestined toward salvation actually wants to do what's right.
This doctrine can also be applied to political rather than religious causes: breaking the law for the "greater good", as in releasing other people's animals, trespassing to chain oneself to trees, etc. Even a revolution could be seen as in a way being Antinomian, in that the revolutionaries are definitely and deliberately breaking the laws of their country in order to change the regime and/or current laws.
In HP, this comes across when Harry uses Unforgivables without any repercussions of either conscience or law, and when he continually breaks school rules with little to no punishment and the apparent encouragement by authority when Dumbledore gives him the method of sneaking around undetected. This is the Elect breaking rules because they're Elect anyway and already guaranteed the goodies at the end, not a true Calvinist approach to humility and duty and self-examination.
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Part I, because I am verbose
Yeah, I can see that. Of course, if you take the same Calvinist, predestination starting point, you can apply it the other way, too. The elect are going to heaven, no matter what, so they have carte blanche to do whatever they want. Obvious corollary: the non-elect are not going to heaven, no matter what, so they may as well do whatever they want. Good idea.
I can see it going with the political causes, too, though then you get into the difficult question of where you draw the line between peaceful civil disobedience to take a stand for equal human rights, and breaking into labs to "save" all the cute little animals (and doing thousands of dollars worth of damage, frequently harming the animals they're saving, etc) or calling death threats on abortion doctors.
I remember reading an HP-fic several books ago where Snape commented on his strict no-exception policy to the rules, and his hatred of exceptions being made for Harry, for exactly this reason. If we say it's okay for one student to break the rules, even for good reasons, then any student can decide that he, too, is above the rules, or knows better than the rules. And then why have rules?
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In the later books, the divorce from (or perceived unreasonableness of) consequences gets worse and worse. I *despised* Umbridge -- she was by far JKR's best-written villain, and seriously made me want to throw the book across the room. That said, if I were head of a school where, at the end of an intramural sports match, two members of (the winning) team responded to childish taunts by together beating the shit out of one of their opponents, only stopping when physically forced to, I'd have expelled them both. If that weren't possible, I'd have seen to it that they never played another Quidditch match or were involved in any other extra-curricular activity as long as they were at the school, their team would have forfeited the match (and possibly had their season halted), and their house points would have dropped to 0. Yet the Quidditch ban *alone* was considered OMG so unfair!!
It got even worse the next year, when Harry nearly *murdered* one of his classmates. For about 30 seconds there, Harry actually showed some terror at his own actions and remorse, and I truly thought that was it, we were finally going to see some real moral development in this kid. Yeah, right. As soon as Snape shows up, all that disappears (which is also part of another rant). He just cares about protecting his precious book, and once-a-week detentions, near the end of the school year, are considered just outrageous punishment, because it means he also has to miss a Quidditch match. (Add to rant accompanying, even worse, Ginny-Hermione scene.)
I wonder if any of this separation of Harry's actions from his presented morality has anything to do with the early Fundamentalist reaction to the HP books. From the start, the Fundies were against it on ridiculous charges that they were turning kids to witchcraft (which are still going on in some circles, BTW), but that clearly wasn't convincing enough people who are, you know, sane, so they started pulling in all this other crap about the morality of the series. In one top anti-HP book, the author only analyzed book 1; among his charges were that the books presented a stance that there is no right or wrong, only power (IOW, presenting the major villain's words as a moral of the story) and teaching kids to lie, because of the bit in the same scene where Harry resolves to lie to Quirrellmort about what he sees, in order to directly prevent him from becoming immortal and taking over the world. Ludicrous charges -- at the time. But I wonder if JKR's reaction to that was to determinedly insist that Harry was the *good* guy, fighting for *right*, so what he did was okay and moral -- and then subconsciously take that much farther than she otherwise might have.
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