Dumbledore is Gay - hilarious coverage MSNBC

alafairnadia

pitu

Is Dumbledore played by Sir Ian McKellan in the films?
Rowling and her gay agenda...hilarious! Thx Alaf!

yavel

Sir Ian played Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. Richard Harris played Dumbledore in the first few films, but when he died the role was picked up by Michael Gambon.

alafairnadia

pitu wrote: Is Dumbledore played by Sir Ian McKellan in the films?
Rowling and her gay agenda...hilarious! Thx Alaf!

he was played by Richard Harris in the first two films and is now played by Michael Gambon.

MOD

quijibo

[quote=Mamacita]
:shock:
:P

armchair_warrior

my fav hehe.



so so t shirt.

hehe both from http://www.dumbledorepride.com/

jeffrey

Wow. Story is everywhere.

lilbangladesh

I never liked Dan Abrams before, but now I have a level of respect for him.

I loved how he baited the right-wing guy!

michaelkeys

lilbangladesh wrote: I never liked Dan Abrams before, but now I have a level of respect for him.

I loved how he baited the right-wing guy!

I dunno...Abrams came across rather Hannity-like in his condescension. I say let people hang themselves with their own rope. We're always bitching about right-wing types doing this sort of thing to guests they don't agree with, so why go for a cheap thrill this time?

eggcream

Abrams came across like some high school interviewer. What a joke. No wonder MSNBC's ratings are in the dumps all the time.

Too bad Rowlings didn't have the nerve to call this character gay in her book.

sevenoneeighty

eggcream wrote: Too bad Rowlings didn't have the nerve to call this character gay in her book.

That is probably the most interesting note in all of this, but I think I would substitute the word "nerve" with the word 'courage'. Does an old wizards sexuality even have any bearing on the stories of Harry Potter?

This seems like a cheap, trite parlor trick and when all of the dust settles, I'm not sure how the gay community really feels about this one (looking for opinions here).

I mean, why did she wait until after she made millions upon millions of dollars in books and movies and her decision to not write any more potter books to NOW say that some secondary character is gay...? It really puzzles me. What is the point of even bringing that up now? does it play in to the story somehow? Did he hav a lover in the book series? Why is his sexuality brought up as an issue now of all times.

J.K. Rowlings seems gutless to make the announcment now.
Why not at least say Harry Potter is gay at this point? Go for the home run!

p.s. one of the gorillas in the movie "Congo" is gay.

sprite

SevenOneEighty wrote: [quote=eggcream]Too bad Rowlings didn't have the nerve to call this character gay in her book.

That is probably the most interesting note in all of this, but I think I would substitute the word "nerve" with the word 'courage'. Does an old wizards sexuality even have any bearing on the stories of Harry Potter?

I mean, why did she wait until after she made millions upon millions of dollars in books and movies and her decision to not write any more potter books to NOW say that some secondary character is gay...? It really puzzles me. What is the point of even bringing that up now? does it play in to the story somehow? Did he hav a lover in the book series? Why is his sexuality brought up as an issue now of all times.
Dumbledore is a major character, and his backstory is important to the plot of book 7. I don't want to reveal too much, but Harry learns that in his youth, DD had a very close friendship with another powerful wizard, and one aspect of that relationship has a direct effect on Harry's quest to defeat Voldemort. So yeah, it's relevant.

I think JKR handled this relationship very well in the book. Its nature is not made explicit, so a reader could see it as nothing more than a friendship, but another reader can find reasons to wonder whether DD was in love with the other man. It's subtle, and I think that's a good thing.

As for why now, we learned a lot about DD in the book, but there were some gaps. I'm sure the questioner just wondered if he'd ever been married or something. Fans have asked similar questions about other characters in the past. So I don't think this was a publicity stunt; I think she was giving an honest answer to an honest question.

Frankly, I don't see what all the fuss is about. This was probably less shocking for hardcore Harry Potter fans than the revelation in book 6 that Lupin is NOT gay.

sevenoneeighty

Intersting.
Admittedly, I don't know the books or story line that well at all.
Just another, non-American perspective from times of India:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/The_fuss_about_Albus/articleshow/2495902.cms

Priyanko Sarkar wants Dumbledore back in his white tomb.

The most astounding piece of news for the 2000 lucky fans who got a chance to interact with J K Rowling last Friday at Carnegie Hall in New York was that Albus Dumbledore was gay. Gasps and claps met the announcement and this sharply divided reaction pretty much summed up the response from the rest of the world. There was consternation at what Rowling had done - Christian right-wingers in the US, who have long hated her nasty magic, now had a new stick to beat her with. In other homes and in some gay communities, there was admiration for her courage in outing a character and a curiosity about her motivations for doing so. And inevitably, Rowling was accused of sleight: why had she delivered so disconcerting a bombshell when the series was finished and done with? If she were really so brave, why hadn’t she put her money where her mouth is and unlocked the closet in book seven when Dumbledore’s dark youthful past was paraded before the reader?

Sudhir Dixit, whose Hindi translations of the first six Potter books have sold over one lakh copies, says that the belated outing is nothing but a stunt to manipulate eyeballs. “In any case, Rowling’s view is immaterial since the text is independent of the author,” says Dixit, who teaches English literature at Narmada University outside Bhopal. “Tomorrow if she says Harry and Ron are gay or Professor Minerva McGonagall is a murderess, it doesn’t mean they become so.”

“I don’t know how it is going to help the gay community or Potter fans in any way,” says Kalpana Swaminathan, author of a number of children’s books. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. This is just a big publicity stunt.”

Up in the hills of Dehra Dun, one of India’s most well-loved children’s authors, Ruskin Bond, says he’s not quite sure why Rowling did it. “In children’s literature, traditionally, gay themes have never been made explicit—the bonding between boys is generally a platonic thing with them out to seek adventure. Rowling’s comment is either a way of increasing her adult fan base or perhaps she genuinely thought Dumbledore was gay and her publishers didn’t allow her to put it into her series. In any case, I don’t think she was serious about the whole thing.”

Whatever her reasons, Rowling chose well. Of all the characters in the series, Dumbledore was the most noble. Nobody would’ve minded if she’d said Tom the barman was gay. Dumbledore was different. From the officious Minister of Magic to the evil Lord Voldemort to the house elves slaving in the kitchens, everyone looked up to or feared Dumbledore. Not only was he the most beloved elder statesman, he was also the kindest and smartest, someone who had answers for everything and a great sense of humour to boot. He was an endearingly eccentric headmaster. He was also Harry Potter’s guide and mentor and the orphan’s only link to his parents killed by Voldemort.

For many Potter lovers, Dumbledore’s disinterest in women was normal—he seemed to have devoted his energies to maintain order among the various warring factions in the wizard world. The love that one associated with him was a deep human love, of which he was the biggest expounder. He repeatedly tells Harry that the chink in his nemesis Voldemort’s armour is his inability to believe in the power of love. Did Rowling leave a trail? Perhaps the only pointer for the discerning reader came when Dumbledore says of his best friend-turned-enemy (and now secret lover, Gellert Grindelwald), “You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, inflamed me.”

Dixit predicts that Dumbledore’s holy image will collapse and “his obsessive control over Harry's life will be viewed in a different light”. Already, there are signs of this. At Mumbai’s Utpal Shanghvi School, principal Abha Dharam Pal has told the librarian to discourage children from borrowing Harry Potter for the Diwali vacation. Pal hasn’t read the series but is quite clear about her decision. “I announced that no child would be given a Potter book, but as it turned out not a single student has asked for the books so far. They know what it will imply,” she says. But a former student of the school finds it completely unnecessary. “This hatred of the educated class to homosexuality is very disturbing,” he says. “In a book I wrote, I had a gay character and I feel we need to practise tolerance towards such issues.”

Tolerance apart, many parents simply don’t know how to answer curious questions from their tots. Clinical psychotherapist Seema Hingorrany says that worried parents have been coming to her after the Dumbledore incident. Other parents are simply banning the book from the house. “My ten-year-old daughter was curious and asked me why Rowling had said that Dumbledore is gay,” says Shalini Vyas, a parent in Mumbai. “I just told her they are different from normal people. I won’t encourage her to read Harry Potter any more. I might confiscate all her Potter books. There are millions of other books that she can read.”

Adult readers are inclined to be more laidback. Actress Minissha Lamba, a big Potter fan, says, “Children today know more about such things than we give them credit for. Personally, my faith in Dumbledore is unshaken. I always looked upon him as a benevolent patriarch. You don’t connect sexuality with such a character. The only thing Rowling’s statement has done is to humanise Dumbledore and give her readers an insight into his dreams and hopes and ambition.”

Ungrateful though it may sound, the gay world has been muted in welcoming this famous personality into the tent. Thirty-two-year old Harpreet, who is gay and swears by his seven Harry Potters, explains why: “Initially, we thought Remus Lupin (Harry’s Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher) was gay because he’s bitten by a werewolf and tries to run away from who he is and people avoid him. These are things gays identify with. But the Dumbledore announcement overwhelmed us. We didn’t expect her to be so blase about it. He’s the greatest character in the book. It’s something to be proud of and she should have had the guts to put it into her book.”

“Falling in love can blind us to an extent,” Rowling said of Dumbledore’s feelings, adding that Dumbledore was “horribly, terribly let down” and that his love was a “great tragedy”. That’s exactly what this whole episode is—a great tragedy that has left most of Jo’s fans feeling let down. Too bad that Butterbeer doesn’t exist in the Muggle world.

(The writer of this piece is a big fan of J K Rowling and wants that she should ignite the imagination and not silly controversies)

sevenoneeighty

I'm looking forward to George Lucas' revelation that Luke Skywalker is gay.
(hey, he only kissed his sister in the entire trilogy...need I say more?)

Also gay: Obi Wan (Ben) Kenobi, the jawas, the sand people, Boba Fett, and of course, as we all know, C-3PO - definitely gay!! All the clues were always there for any true fan to see.

Hey, this is a great game. :P
It's called: "Who Wants to be Retroactively Gay?" LOL!!!!

pitu

MichaelKeys wrote: [quote=lilbangladesh]I never liked Dan Abrams before, but now I have a level of respect for him.

I loved how he baited the right-wing guy!

I dunno...Abrams came across rather Hannity-like in his condescension. I say let people hang themselves with their own rope. We're always bitching about right-wing types doing this sort of thing to guests they don't agree with, so why go for a cheap thrill this time?

cheap thrills = irresistible crumbs
MSNBC could just call a bigot a bigot and not give Knight legitimacy with airtime. But until they do that, I'll enjoy the cheap thrill.
Is it so wrong?

sweet tea

a couple of thoughts on this:

as a writer, i'm in full support of the idea that jkr might think things about her characters that don't end up explicit on the page. in fact, i think that's just about the only way to create good characters. so i'm perfectly willing to believe that she didn't just decide to make dumbledore gay. as sprite points, out, it adds a dimension to the grindlewald story, and it makes that story make more sense, which to me imples that it's likely jkr did have that in her mind while writing. was it also publicity-savvy to mention it? sure, but that doesn't mean she made it up on the spot.

as one of teh gayz, i'm of two minds about all this. on the one hand, of course i love dumbledore and yay for my team, all that. on the other hand, i'm a little "enh" that the gay character is the one who falls in love once, has it go badly (and destroy his family), and spends the rest of his life single. this is a model of what is appropriate for a gay adult? selfless celibacy while everyone else gets hitched? um...thanks?

as far as parents freaking out, who cares? really. to write any of the 90 zillion articles coming out about this, you'd have to get some outraged parent quotes, but i'm unconvinced that those quotes necessarily represent a groundswell of discontent.

sevenoneeighty

as one of teh gayz, i'm of two minds about all this. on the one hand, of course i love dumbledore and yay for my team, all that. on the other hand, i'm a little "enh" that the gay character is the one who falls in love once, has it go badly (and destroy his family), and spends the rest of his life single. this is a model of what is appropriate for a gay adult? selfless celibacy while everyone else gets hitched? um...thanks?

Word to the mother...those are good points. And I don't think J.K Rowlings should get "brave" points for this one given the circumstances. He should have had an ACTIVE relationship or obvious interest in the series if it was so critical. Why so "cryptic"?

Especially if she is going to make this proclamation now. It reminds me of the overall themes shown in the movie/ documentary "The Celluloid Closet" about how gay people have been represented in Hollywood, etc. They are always portrayed as "outcasts" that never have healthy relationships and/or deeply sad...,DAMAGED, etc. They could never be portrayed any other way. Is this just another example?
It's crap.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112651/

Screw the parents and right wing people getting upset about the announcement that the lead wizard is gay. If that was such an important point in the story, was it figured out by true fans before the announcement by J.K Rowlings...? Not after the announcement, but before. Just curious.

Since she is a worldly professional writer with a series with global appeal, she should know that people are going to look at this an analyze it somewhat - and people SHOULD analyze the announcement and the intent behind it. Rowlings obviously wanted to make some point, I'm just not sure what is is yet....

Bill Maher on Dumbledore:

"I don't give two fingleberries and an McShittol that Dumbledore is gay. What concerns me is adults who read 800-page books about magic schoolboys, and then try to talk to me about it. If I had the slightest interest in homosexuals with powers, I'd be a Republican."

alafairnadia

sprite wrote: I think JKR handled this relationship very well in the book. Its nature is not made explicit, so a reader could see it as nothing more than a friendship, but another reader can find reasons to wonder whether DD was in love with the other man. It's subtle, and I think that's a good thing.

definitely. I've heard scholars argue that Huck and Jim are fucking on that raft the whole time they're on the great Mississippi (in my first year of college literature-for-science-majors class). if your brain zigs where a lot of other folks' zag, well, I guess that's a possibility. the DD and GG relationship in book 7 was pretty blatant. the language JKR uses to describe the seduction of DD by GG makes it clear that it is not based on 'friendship' alone. I know I walked into a forum on the Saturday AM after the book release and informed a group of international fan fic writers that I expected to see DD/GG slash fic asap. guess what? there's tons of it out there.

JKR is also pretty obvious in the books about equal treatment - that in the wizarding world magical power is what is important. black, female, half-giant - whatever in her world. so it's not surprising that she imagined a character as gay. heck, for several books, we had no clue that Blaise was a male.

SevenOneEighty wrote: Intersting.
Admittedly, I don't know the books or story line that well at all.
Just another, non-American perspective from times of India:

a lot of folks are pretty ticked about JKRs incessant additions to the backstory of her characters. but, as sprite pointed out, she's been doing this since book one. unfortunately/fortunately, she's not going to stop anytime soon.

sweet tea wrote: as one of teh gayz, i'm of two minds about all this. on the one hand, of course i love dumbledore and yay for my team, all that. on the other hand, i'm a little "enh" that the gay character is the one who falls in love once, has it go badly (and destroy his family), and spends the rest of his life single. this is a model of what is appropriate for a gay adult? selfless celibacy while everyone else gets hitched? um...thanks?

I don't think, though, she said that he only falls in love once and then is alone forever. the explanation she gave was pretty brief - he fell in love with GG and was blinded to GG's nefarious plans by his love. killing GG (which we've known he did since book one so no spoilers here) probably made him pretty nutty. and that's about all we know. we can speculate, though (yay fanfic writers): DD was 150 years old. are we sure he wasn't hanging out with Slughorn, or spending weekends with a partner in Hogsmead? some folks I know speculate about DD's relationship with Snape (no no no! Snape is for Harry!), especially when Snape turned in his DE badge.

I'm glad JKR did this. yeah, I would have been happier if it were part of the canon text in a super overt way, but frankly, that would have been tough. there's enough subtext there for an open minded adult to figure it out, and not enough so that some 10 year old is going up to mum and asking what 'craving his manhood' means. what I do wish, frankly, is that she'd sit down and write biographies of her characters. she has imagined them very complex, interesting lives and fans everywhere would love to have the text to reference their lives. unfortunately, we're ending up with outside sources that track her interviews and mesh them into the canon, like the harry potter lexicon to keep track of JKR's universe.

eggcream

Ok, courage it is and I like cheap trite parlor trick.

This sucks

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22640695-5013016,00.html?from=mostpop

sweet tea

^^

that's a great advertisement for NOT getting tattoos of things you didn't think of/design yourself -- the creator might change what your tattoo means.

in case i should come across too harshly, let me say that i'm basically in the happy camp about this revelation -- i think it makes sense for the stories, and yay for my team, etc. the issue of who "owns" creative work once it has been made public is an interesting one, but certainly the author does have a right to say what she was thinks.

what i'm very tired of -- and i mean no personal offense to anyone here -- is people who haven't actually read the books sounding off on what they do and don't say. i mean, come on, they're children's novels; it's hardly proust -- just read the things if you want to debate them.

sevenoneeighty

from a reader of the series; I find it interesting:

http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2007/10/23/dumbledore-is-not-gay-taking-stories-more-seriously-than-the-author/

Dumbledore is not Gay: Taking Stories More Seriously than the Author

John Mark Reynolds
Culture
10.23.2007

Recently, J.K. Rowling announced to the world that one of her characters, the heroic mentor of Harry Potter, Dumbledore was gay.

Nonsense. There is no evidence of it in the books and the books (at this point) are all that matter. I have always thought the books deeply Christian not because Rowling told me so (which she recently confirmed), but because the text is full of Christian images and ideas. She had a chance to give Dumbledore a boyfriend, but she muffed it. I refuse to denigrate friendship by reading every close one as sexual . . . and she gave us nothing else.

No offense to an excellent author, but Dumbledore no longer belongs only to Rowling. He also belongs to her readers who have been given a series of books in which Rowling was free to say what she wanted to say. She wrote about Christianity openly by Book Seven, but if Dumbledore was gay, she decided to hide it. She hid it so well that there is no evidence of it.

At this point it is too late for Rowling to change the text. She cannot decide to kill Harry now . . . or announce that Harry is actually a vampire, a member of the Tory party, or antidisestablishmentarian. She wrote what she wrote and now it belongs to us.

Is this post-modern?

Is authorial intent the only thing that matters in reading a book?

Authorial intent is important, but not the only important thing.

If the author has hidden her intention so well that only her opining after the fact reveals it to us, then she has missed her chance.

Rowling chose to hide her “opinion” of Dumbledore’s sexuality until the story arc was done, Dumbledore dead, and his life written. Now her opinions no longer matter, just her text. If she could point to anything in that text that suggests something greater than friendship, mentoring, or a professional relationship, then that would matter. She has not and cannot. She carefully hid the “fact” and now it is too late to introduce it.

Lest one think that I say this only because homosexuality bothers me, then let me compare it to another situation. Suppose that Rowling now claimed that Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall had a passionate relationship. Since there is no reason in the text to know this is true, or to find it relevant to the story arc as we have it, Rowling’s opinions of the headmaster’s heterosexual affairs matter very little in terms of understanding the books as they are. There is as much evidence of this (after all) as of Dumbledore’s homosexuality.

If I utterly hide a fact (as an author), then I cannot suddenly introduce it by opining outside of my book about my book.

Author’s revelations about her intent might be interesting to the scholar in studying the directions Rowling did not go with her novel. They might inspire learned papers on why she hid Dumbledore’s love life (homophobia?), but they no longer can impact the text. The text is fixed and if she did not reveal it there, then it is not anywhere. Of course, the reader, like Rowling, is free to invent her own private meanings and expand the stories in new ways, but Rowling cannot force us to do so.

This is not different than the way I treat any book.

No piece of Plato’s biography will change the text of Republic. It is possible that some new biographical information could swing the interpretation of a disputed passage in one direction, but it could not introduce a new character or give an old character a new role.

(”The lost scroll of Plato noted that the Master thought that Cephalus was committing impieties and not sacrificing when he left in Book I.”)

Rowling said nothing of Dumbledore’s sexuality, wrote nothing of it in the “canon,” and so her opinion is interesting, but not determinative.

What if the apostle John had secret beliefs about cosmology that he did not place into his text of the gospel? What if he thought about these views as he wrote the text? Once the text is fixed, then it is too late for him to introduce his ideas into the book.

What if Rowling writes a guide to her characters in which she gives new “back story” to the characters?

That too will not matter . . . anymore than I care much about the “Lost Books” (really his notes) that the Tolkien family keeps publishing from the author of Lord of the Rings insofar as it could possibly change the meaning of Tolkien’s main work. The text is fixed and it is as it is. The fact that Tolkien had other ideas about Frodo, Merry, or any other characters is important to discuss how the story came to be, but does not change the meaning of the text, if there is no explicit (or even hint) of the “new” matter.

I do not react this way because Rowling has said something I find personally distasteful. I do find homosexual behavior contrary to nature and the laws of God. However, I do not find the tendency to homosexual behavior shocking or particularly distasteful. We live in an imperfect world and if Dumbledore lived a celibate life giving himself to his work, then he is a perfect (fictional) model of how to deal with disordered affections.

The problem is that there is just no way to know this “fact” about Dumbledore from the books. It is not there, it is not relevant, and Rowling’s opinions about her characters are now only of historical interest. She meant Dumbledore to be gay, but she left it out.

We can only know such things by “revelations” from Rowling and Rowling is no longer god of her private world. She created it and stepped away from it.

It does not matter if she had Dumbledore’s failings in mind as she wrote, since she censored it out so heavily as to be of no use in understanding her novel. Unless we are give word’s new meaning, she chose words like “friendship” to describe Dumbledore’s relationships.

Too late to change the path you have written, when standing before your own words.

A story is crafted and then it enters the public. We read it as a whole and accept the world in which it was created. Unless Rowling writes a new book (a prequel?) and changes the canon, then she is stuck with the world she created. In it Dumbledore has no particular sexuality at all.

and then the opposite:LOL!

http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2007/10/24/dumbledore-is-not-hetero-taking-stories-more-seriously-than-the-author-ii/

alafairnadia

man. that article makes the argument for riptarded heteronormative fools not comprehending the universe. I'm no child psychologist, but I do know enough psych (my major in college was partially psych based) to know that all children (using the word broadly - people from age 0 to age 25, perhaps) have their own odd sexual/sexuality experiences. I, for one, can't testify as straight up straight b/c of the once every few years lesbian experience. men, I think, are a little more hesitant to indulge the odd urge and/or even recognize it as an urge versus a bizarre asexual fantasy. point being, friendship in many novels - american and not - has manifested itself in all sorts of interesting ways with respect to sexuality. gosh. who else read the talented mr. ripley?

p.s. yes. I'm 3 barrettes to the wind.

carnivore

alafairnadia wrote: yes. I'm 3 barrettes to the wind.

Plus Albarino! :twisted:

alafairnadia

Carnivore wrote: [quote=alafairnadia]yes. I'm 3 barrettes to the wind.

Plus Albarino! :twisted:

shut up! I was pretending to be soberer than I am!!

lilbangladesh

I like that: 3 barrettes to the wind. I wonder if I can use that when I get loopy tired. My cat is three micey to the wind: she just destroyed her catnip mouse. Yipes!

Back to topic: I just don't think Rowling added that Dumbledore is gay as an afterthought. I'm in the middle of reading the 7th book now so I'm not in a position to comment on the specifics, but I will talk about generalities I do know.

All good actors and writers create backstory for their characters. And then don't explicitly state their backstories in their work. It creates dimensionality. If there is no backstory, the characters become two-dimensional and flat. If the backstory is explicitly stated, then you basically feel that you are being hit over the head with obviousness and the story becomes less entertaining and the characters become less interesting. Good writing and acting is as much about what you don't tell the audience as much as what you do tell them. The audience doesn't need to know the backstory, but YOU do.

So considering that she has always been very good about creating backstories for all her characters, I'm pretty sure that she always thought of Dumbledore as gay. But then, being a good author, she sublimated it, because while being gay may be important to Dumbledore as a character, it is peripheral to Harry Potter's story.

The weirdest backstory I ever had to develop was when I got cast as a Korean(!) vegetable vendor. This was a bit of a stretch for me because I'm a redheaded Irish-looking girl. And as the director did not want me to wear a wig, the backstory I had to invent for myself was that I was abandoned in Korea by American parents and later adopted by Koreans who emigrated only recently to America which was why I had a Korean accent and didn't speak English too well. (I actually know a black girl who grew up in Korea this way. Korean was actually her first language.) Then for some inexplicable reason, it turns out that I'm really the god Quetzalcoatl. Weird. But I had to find a way to make it work.