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blamebramptonWhat a strange day on lj. That minx JKR has 'revealed' that Dumbledore was gay. In terms of actual surprise value, this is up there with the facts that I am short, JFK was a man whore and the moon is pretty and shiny.
But I accept that there are people who may not have their gaydar sufficiently attuned to have tweaked to the many hints (beginning with high-heeled boots and a bow in his beard and really not letting up ...) and I love her cheekiness in revealing this in the same week as stating that the whole series has a deliberate Christian allegory behind it.
What DID surprise me were the reactions. There was a lot of squeeage, which I believe shows that we are still in fandom, Toto, some serious analysis of why it's an important statement (earth_magic pointed to a very smart reading by flamewarrior over here), and then some, to my eyes, quite off the wall responses.
On a completely unrelated note, in a desperate bid to stay awake long enough to watch the rugby, I finally watched the most recent Pride and Prejudice and was horrified to realise they made alternative endings for British and American audiences. Why, Americans, why do film-makers patronise you so? I've met so many of you with giant brains, you produce The New Yorker, Harpers, The West Wing ... how can anyone believe that as a nation you are not capable of getting the fact that Lizzie and Darcy will snog after the credits roll?
Sigh.
Finally, I know it's unpatriotic, but I really would prefer Kimi Raikonnen win the F1 driver's championship, much as I like Lewis. And oh Jonny, I believe in you and the boys, but if the Springboks run around you massive, mighty forwards, know, oh Lions, that I will still love you. And that's only partially because you beat the Australians. Alas, I am now dying and must go to sleep if I hope ever to conquer the dark circles under my eyes.
But I accept that there are people who may not have their gaydar sufficiently attuned to have tweaked to the many hints (beginning with high-heeled boots and a bow in his beard and really not letting up ...) and I love her cheekiness in revealing this in the same week as stating that the whole series has a deliberate Christian allegory behind it.
What DID surprise me were the reactions. There was a lot of squeeage, which I believe shows that we are still in fandom, Toto, some serious analysis of why it's an important statement (
earth_magic pointed to a very smart reading by flamewarrior over here), and then some, to my eyes, quite off the wall responses.The dominant one of this last group has been the complaint that she didn't proclaim Dumbledore's sexual orientation in canon. Which made me wonder: who expects the point of view of a teenage boy to encompass his headmaster's shagging preferences? There are few people more ready to pick up on the queer subtext than me (see below for explanation) and even I have been surprised through the years to meet teachers out of school and see who they were with. Some that I would have sworn were happily het were not, and vice versa. Some were once, and now aren't. School, despite many fictional assertions to the contrary, is not a place to parade the sexuality of teachers. They're too busy trying to keep a lid on the sexuality of students so that a spot of learning can take place.
Then there was the complaint that by proclaiming one character gay, she has closed off the option for all the others. To which I have no words, only hand gestures; big HOW???? style hand gestures. For the majority of characters, their sexuality remains fully open. Some have canonical suggestions towards homosex (Draco, Madame Hooch), others towards heterosex (Flitwick, Rita Skeeter (though I always thought she ogled too much and secretly went home to a lovely witch)), but for the most part sexuality plays a comparatively small role in what is essentially an action/quest story.
The final frequent complaint that startled me was that she outed someone whose great love was miserable. A lot of people have quoted unrequited, which I believe comes from the Newsweek article. The Leaky Cauldron's partial transcript and the other major news sources floating about do not contain the word unrequited, they say, rather, that Grindelwald let Dumbledore down horribly. Years of working in journalism lead me to believe that someone at Newsweek was projecting (unless further on-the-spot witnesses confirm).
So, taking the "He's aloowed to be gay, but not to have sex, who is JKR, the Pope in disguise?" complaint off the table, this leaves us with "She made his great love a miserable one!"
Fair enough, she did. I like to read Grindelwald's last scenes with Voldemort as a story of atonement and regret for what he put Albus through, you might read them differently, that's fine, but I'm not going to disagree with anyone that it's a doomed relationship. And the reason for this is not some perverse homophobia, it's because she's writing a novel that requires dramatic conflict. Dramatic conflict is the reason behind most angst in literature , and it needs to be there
This is Hamlet without dramatic conflict:
Polonius: Good Prince fresh home from England's verdant shores,
your mother bids you tend upon her now.
Gertrude: Hamlet my son, welcome to this our feast
To celebrate the love twixt King and Queen.
Hamlet: Unhand me, whore, I plunge this dagger deep
Between your breasts, and now I draw it hence and
draw again across the treach'rous throat
Of he who was my father's fell belov'd
Dear brother turned to killer and whose blood
I share and spill in equal part, now done
I take the crown and ask if there is one
Who would deny me Denmark, let him speak.
Omnes: No, we're good. Sounds perfectly fair to us, Your Majesty.
(Sorry, Shakespeare) Anyway, all of this has me thinking on the matter, and to leave fandom's meanderings behind, I am forced to admit that I am HOPELESSLY out of touch with much of the world on how 'Gay Issues' play.
Because in my house, they're not issues. My mum is gay (so very very gay that the fact of my birth never ceases to astonish me), Dad was and I am not particularly fussed about the gender of who we shag (which is NOT to say bisexual, because oh god the endless crapping on about the politics, it's more to say opportunistic, because I inherited his affable trampiness.) I have two out uncles and two closeted ones, two out great-aunts and one great uncle, I grew up with a mix of legal, hippie and arts people (all bastions of queerdom, the first and last more than the middle if truth be told) populating my world, and currently live in a suburb that has two gay pubs on the high street.
So when anyone starts to make a big fuss about promoting gay rights, on the one hand I think "That's nice!" but on the other hand I think "Fuck, how can we still be here? How I be this old and these discussions are still going on?"
Because twenty years ago I was at university and talking with a Tory about gay family rights and he said point-blank "Yes, dear, but think of what it will do to the children. Don't they have a right to grow up as you and I did?"
And once I'd stopped laughing (it took a while), I gently explained why he was an idiot. "But," he spluttered, "but you're so normal." Now of course, by that he meant feminine and poshly accented, but I agreed, because I really am very normal.
Where I think we stumble the most is that when we as a society think about 'Gay Issues', we do it with capitals and inverted comments. And of course that's idiotic. Because the rights of gays, women, the Sudanese, African Americans, children, Aboriginals, Jews, the Irish, paraplegics, Scots, the deaf, Muslims, atheists, the Welsh, men ... they're all human rights. They are all the same basic rights to live as human beings with independence and guaranteed respect within your community, and every time that we break away from that, we start to say that the rights of x are more important than the rights of y, we're buying into the whole cocked-up situation that we're allegedly trying to struggle against.
Then there was the complaint that by proclaiming one character gay, she has closed off the option for all the others. To which I have no words, only hand gestures; big HOW???? style hand gestures. For the majority of characters, their sexuality remains fully open. Some have canonical suggestions towards homosex (Draco, Madame Hooch), others towards heterosex (Flitwick, Rita Skeeter (though I always thought she ogled too much and secretly went home to a lovely witch)), but for the most part sexuality plays a comparatively small role in what is essentially an action/quest story.
The final frequent complaint that startled me was that she outed someone whose great love was miserable. A lot of people have quoted unrequited, which I believe comes from the Newsweek article. The Leaky Cauldron's partial transcript and the other major news sources floating about do not contain the word unrequited, they say, rather, that Grindelwald let Dumbledore down horribly. Years of working in journalism lead me to believe that someone at Newsweek was projecting (unless further on-the-spot witnesses confirm).
So, taking the "He's aloowed to be gay, but not to have sex, who is JKR, the Pope in disguise?" complaint off the table, this leaves us with "She made his great love a miserable one!"
Fair enough, she did. I like to read Grindelwald's last scenes with Voldemort as a story of atonement and regret for what he put Albus through, you might read them differently, that's fine, but I'm not going to disagree with anyone that it's a doomed relationship. And the reason for this is not some perverse homophobia, it's because she's writing a novel that requires dramatic conflict. Dramatic conflict is the reason behind most angst in literature , and it needs to be there
This is Hamlet without dramatic conflict:
Polonius: Good Prince fresh home from England's verdant shores,
your mother bids you tend upon her now.
Gertrude: Hamlet my son, welcome to this our feast
To celebrate the love twixt King and Queen.
Hamlet: Unhand me, whore, I plunge this dagger deep
Between your breasts, and now I draw it hence and
draw again across the treach'rous throat
Of he who was my father's fell belov'd
Dear brother turned to killer and whose blood
I share and spill in equal part, now done
I take the crown and ask if there is one
Who would deny me Denmark, let him speak.
Omnes: No, we're good. Sounds perfectly fair to us, Your Majesty.
(Sorry, Shakespeare) Anyway, all of this has me thinking on the matter, and to leave fandom's meanderings behind, I am forced to admit that I am HOPELESSLY out of touch with much of the world on how 'Gay Issues' play.
Because in my house, they're not issues. My mum is gay (so very very gay that the fact of my birth never ceases to astonish me), Dad was and I am not particularly fussed about the gender of who we shag (which is NOT to say bisexual, because oh god the endless crapping on about the politics, it's more to say opportunistic, because I inherited his affable trampiness.) I have two out uncles and two closeted ones, two out great-aunts and one great uncle, I grew up with a mix of legal, hippie and arts people (all bastions of queerdom, the first and last more than the middle if truth be told) populating my world, and currently live in a suburb that has two gay pubs on the high street.
So when anyone starts to make a big fuss about promoting gay rights, on the one hand I think "That's nice!" but on the other hand I think "Fuck, how can we still be here? How I be this old and these discussions are still going on?"
Because twenty years ago I was at university and talking with a Tory about gay family rights and he said point-blank "Yes, dear, but think of what it will do to the children. Don't they have a right to grow up as you and I did?"
And once I'd stopped laughing (it took a while), I gently explained why he was an idiot. "But," he spluttered, "but you're so normal." Now of course, by that he meant feminine and poshly accented, but I agreed, because I really am very normal.
Where I think we stumble the most is that when we as a society think about 'Gay Issues', we do it with capitals and inverted comments. And of course that's idiotic. Because the rights of gays, women, the Sudanese, African Americans, children, Aboriginals, Jews, the Irish, paraplegics, Scots, the deaf, Muslims, atheists, the Welsh, men ... they're all human rights. They are all the same basic rights to live as human beings with independence and guaranteed respect within your community, and every time that we break away from that, we start to say that the rights of x are more important than the rights of y, we're buying into the whole cocked-up situation that we're allegedly trying to struggle against.
On a completely unrelated note, in a desperate bid to stay awake long enough to watch the rugby, I finally watched the most recent Pride and Prejudice and was horrified to realise they made alternative endings for British and American audiences. Why, Americans, why do film-makers patronise you so? I've met so many of you with giant brains, you produce The New Yorker, Harpers, The West Wing ... how can anyone believe that as a nation you are not capable of getting the fact that Lizzie and Darcy will snog after the credits roll?
Sigh.
Finally, I know it's unpatriotic, but I really would prefer Kimi Raikonnen win the F1 driver's championship, much as I like Lewis. And oh Jonny, I believe in you and the boys, but if the Springboks run around you massive, mighty forwards, know, oh Lions, that I will still love you. And that's only partially because you beat the Australians. Alas, I am now dying and must go to sleep if I hope ever to conquer the dark circles under my eyes.
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Date: 2007-10-20 07:09 pm (UTC)It was MP Scott Brison, and I think the only reason it made the news here in Nova Scotia is because he's a local boy. He got married in the Annapolis Valley area, which, if you're not familiar with it, is an absolutely breathtaking beautiful rural area. Lots of farms and quaint villages...and the residents were all for it! I remember one paper quoted an older local as saying that it was hard enough to find love, so if Brison had found it with another man, then good for him! I'm paraphrasing there, but it's the general idea. Joe Clark, Paul Martin, and Stephane Dion were all there, as was former NS Premier Frank McKenna. Actually, I read a funny quote...Brison said that after the hard fought win for gay marriage here in Canada, Paul Martin said to him, "Well, after all I've been through on this Brison, you better get married!" LOL!!!
BTW...the Ontario Health Minster also got married to his partner this summer.