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

Wandering freely away from the topic at hand

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

Which is odd, because somehow, when Unforgivable curses were first demonstrated to us in book 4, I really didn't get the impression that they were *easy*. But then, that was before Harry showed that he could do complex Imperius curses with no practice, or that the true hatred and rage to sustain a Cruciatus curse, which couldn't quite be found for the woman who murdered his friend and father figure, was easy to bring up for someone who was, you know, kind of nasty and rude to a teacher he'd liked but never particularly cared about.

I know a lot of people have a problem w/McGonagall's "gallant" response. I had assumed she was being slightly sarcastic -- like she wasn't going to really object or deal with it due to the impending battle, but she was going to subtly let him know that she *didn't* approve, or she thought it an overreaction. For one thing, the slight sarcasm seems more in line with her character than calling a student "gallant", no matter *what* action she was talking about. The other possibility is that I totally projected that response because she's one of the few characters I still really liked at that point of the series. Did anyone else see it the way I did?

Re: Wandering freely away from the topic at hand

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

I did see McG's response as an impending battle response, but not as sarcasm. In another circumstance, I thought she might have given Harry a lecture, but with the whole Facing Death etc. in front of him, she gave him a break.

Of course, that's NOT McGonagall. That's some ringer author insertion, which I had begun to see more and more of during the course of DH. No character moved from what they had grown into in the previous books to something logical in DH. That was one reason I thought portions of DH, not just the epilogue, were written well in advance of all the subtleties, growth, life arcs, etc. that happened between PS/SS and DH. The characters all seemed to revert to tentative frameworks instead of fleshed-out personalities. The McG who called Harry "gallant" was, to me, more akin to the McG who said Dumbledore was too noble to use certain methods back in chapter one of PS/SS than to the McG who fought Aurors in OotP and Death Eaters in HBP.

Did anyone else think parts of DH were pre-written early on and not edited to conform to the new realities of the series?

Re: Wandering freely away from the topic at hand

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I could definitely imagine her being sarcastic about it, myself, but even if she is being sarcastic she's shut down anyway--as often happens with McGonagall. Because she says it's gallant but is really going on to say that it was bad because it was stupid. I forget what she says exactly, but it's something like "Do you realize..." and he says "Yeah, I do." And that shuts the woman up. Hero saving the world here, don't presume to teach him anything about ethics or good battle strategy. (Even though McGonagall's not the one who's been sitting on her butt for 9 months.)

I think what you're saying about UVs is true--I wasn't so bothered by Harry's Crucio, but I think peoples' objections to it are totally true--it's more like I just gave up by that point. It's another instance of magic just changing to suit whatever storyline's going on. If Harry had never used a UV I've no doubt that would be considered proof of his goodness. It's just that when he uses it it has to be reimagined as something that's cool. That's why I always find JKR's "he's never been a saint" funny, because she *is* setting him up as a saint--or as a Christ figure, at least. Usually saints have to live up to the title. (That is, when the title is being used the way it is here--I'm sure at least some actual saints could be jerks when they got impatient with people for not listening to God's word, but that's a different thing.)