quote: Not once, in ANY of the seven books, did I wonder what his sex life was like.
Then it's awfully fortunate for you that she didn't say anything about his sex life (she said tartly).
Posts: 910 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
"She was being sarcastic. She doesn't think the secrecy laws are bad at all nor does she want the Muggles to find out about the Wizarding World."
Thats your opinion. But I prefer to believe mine:)
Edited to add the quote. I thought it might be weird if I was replying to Fyfe's post. Posts: 243 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I don't see how the sarcasm works, exactly, although it makes sense, coming from her.
Why would she rather that Wizards/Witches become commonly known before than after Voldemort's disappearance?
Unfortunately, I can't locate my copy right now, it's probably under 3 layers of other stuff somewhere. My room's a bit of a mess.
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quote:"She was being sarcastic. She doesn't think the secrecy laws are bad at all nor does she want the Muggles to find out about the Wizarding World."
Thats your opinion. But I prefer to believe mine:)
In the paragraphs before she says that, she states that she thinks people would be more careful in their celebrating and calls someone who made shooting stars "stupid."
She also says it's no reason for wizards to lose their heads, and calls them careless.
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quote:I don't see how the sarcasm works, exactly, although it makes sense, coming from her.
Why would she rather that Wizards/Witches become commonly known before than after Voldemort's disappearance?
She's not saying she would rather they become known before V's disappearance. She's comparing the good thing - V's downfall - and the potential bad thing. It's Alanys Morissette type irony, winning the lottery and dying the very next day.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I know what she says. But as steven says why would she rather that the truth become known after Voldemorts demise?
That whole section of the conversation isnt coherent IMO. But again, considering I cant come to a definate conclusion about the intent of the remark, I would rather believe that what bshe says is sincere.
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Thanks, Dag. I swear I have a copy somewhere, I must have read it 4 times...actually, hmm...I think I let my daughter borrow it.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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Sorry Dag I posted ^^^ that before I read your post.
Ive never seen it that way before. I guess that because I read it when I was seven and didnt catch the sarcasm it just never struck me on later reads.
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posted
And BEING a fairly typical, Traditional Mormon/Christian dad, I'm profoundly NOT WORRIED at all about my children learning homosexuality from Dumbledore.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
I pulled out my copy of SS and I agree, McGonagall was being sarcastic. The quote is on page 10 of my book though. It is a hardback copy of the American version of The Sorcerer's Stone if that makes any difference.
quote:I never really was in favor of a Neville-Luna relationship; I can see him wanting to marry her, but I don't think she'd have him. Her marrying a weird-creatures-finder guy is much more better, I feel.
I just picture the two of them rebuiding that weird house and living there together with her editing the magazine and him growing weird plants in the yard on his breaks from Hogwarts. The first person I thought of when I read the weird-creature-finder guy is Hagrid!
I don't care that JKR is revealing a bunch of stuff after the fact but I would rather her just write another book. I would love to read a companion novel like Ender's Shadow where we find out what happened at Hogwarts that last year. She could reveal a bunch of this info in a book like that.
I also don't really care if DD is gay but I do think she may be alienating some of her audience with that revelation. Not that it's right and not that she should make all her characters straight for fear of what people will think but it will certainly happen.
quote:I don't know what the big deal is. I always assumed that Dumbledore was gay.
But you claim to assume that about everyone, Tante.
I have to say this wasn't a huge surprise. I mean, it's pretty tame compared to the rumors about his brother.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I think there was a reason she did not tell people about Dumbledore until after the last book had come out and the dust had settled. She wanted the work as a whole to be accepted and digested for a certain amount of time so that Dumbledore could be fully seen. THen when she told us he was gay, we already love and understand him. This is a huge way of underlining her statement of tolerance which is the main theme in the books. We have been manipulated. Do not underestimate this woman for a second! She is my hero.
Posts: 39 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Makerofthings: I think there was a reason she did not tell people about Dumbledore until after the last book had come out and the dust had settled. She wanted the work as a whole to be accepted and digested for a certain amount of time so that Dumbledore could be fully seen. THen when she told us he was gay, we already love and understand him. This is a huge way of underlining her statement of tolerance which is the main theme in the books. We have been manipulated. Do not underestimate this woman for a second! She is my hero.
Personally, since the Harry Potter series has -never- delved into certain aspects of the character's lives, I feel it would have been out of place and distracting in a mostly-sexuality-free series.
However, if your viewpoint is her true motivations, then it makes me think a lot -less- of Rowling. Waiting until the series is over? Waiting until she won't have to put it in the real book itself, but let it slip as a random comment? That sounds very little like a master plan to promote tolerance and more like a tactic to not tick off her publishers. Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Plus when I thought about it, I couldn't really think when she would have given us this information. In the first six books, we don't know anything about Dumbledore's personal life, because he's not forthcoming about it. Besides which, I'm getting the vibe that he's been alone his whole life (bless him), so the only thing we could really have learned about was Grindelwald, and we couldn't learn about Grindelwald until the last book.
So okay, she could have told us in Deathly Hallows (that would have pleased me), but honestly, she's been working on these books for, what, twenty years? You can see where she might not want to turn the culmination of all that work into the Dumbledore Is Gay Show, and might instead want people to focus on the actual plot with the defeating Voldemort and the proving me totally right about Snape in every particular.
Posts: 910 | Registered: May 2000
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What's interesting about this is that it seems like the media is assuming that if Rowling says Dumbledore is gay, then Dumbledore IS gay. Had she written something about it in the book, then she could have chosen Dumbledore's sexual preference. But at this point, assuming she is composing no more Harry Potter books, her interpretation of the series isn't any more correct than any other person's. She can't make Dumbledore gay just by declaring it so any more than OSC could. That's up to the reader to interpret.
Having said that, as a reader, I have to say that this is probably the first time Dumbledore's sexual preferences ever crossed my mind. He could be gay, or maybe not. I'm not sure it really impacts the story in any way.
It does raise an interesting question about Hogwarts that I'd never thought of before. Is every teacher at Hogwarts single? Dumbledore seemed to be unmarried, but that never seemed in any way out of the ordinary because everyone else at Hogwarts seems to be unmarried too.
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quote:What's interesting about this is that it seems like the media is assuming that if Rowling says Dumbledore is gay, then Dumbledore IS gay. Had she written something about it in the book, then she could have chosen Dumbledore's sexual preference. But at this point, assuming she is composing no more Harry Potter books, her interpretation of the series isn't any more correct than any other person's. She can't make Dumbledore gay just by declaring it so any more than OSC could. That's up to the reader to interpret.
quote:Had she written something about it in the book, then she could have chosen Dumbledore's sexual preference. But at this point, assuming she is composing no more Harry Potter books, her interpretation of the series isn't any more correct than any other person's.
posted
I dont know, she's the one who wrote it, she knows it up and down, inside and out, she's got volumes of notes in her head and on paper. Of course her interpretation is the most correct since she wrote the book.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:"Had she written something about it in the book, then she could have chosen Dumbledore's sexual preference. But at this point, assuming she is composing no more Harry Potter books, her interpretation of the series isn't any more correct than any other person's."
Why?
Because fiction novels, or at least ones like the Harry Potter books, are not read to find out what is in JK Rowling's mind. A child doesn't normally pick up the book and think "I wonder what the author is intending to tell me in this." It's not like reading a letter or an essay where the goal is to accurately figure out what the author is trying to tell you.
Rather, a reader picks up a novel like Harry Potter in order to use his or her own mind/imagination. The words written by the author are the tool through which the reader does it, but ultimately the reading of a story is pretty much a matter between the reader and himself (or herself). Thus the meaning of the story is really up to how the reader interprets the author's words.
If there are some who read Harry Potter in order to try to speculate on the contents of JK Rowlings mind, then I suppose that for those readers it does matter what she thinks Dumbledore's sexual preferences are. But I would tend to think the average reader picks up a book for the reasons I do: To find out who these characters are, what happens to them, and to eventually care about them. In those cases the characters I am referring to are not necessarily the ones that were in Rowling mind as she wrote the words, but the one's we are imagining as we read those words.
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posted
And, practically speaking, the reason why I think all that matters is because I'm sure now there's going to be a bunch of people on the political Right who will be unable to enjoy this series simply because Rowling claimed one of the most heroic characters is gay. I think that is a shame. They should not feel it necessary to withhold a great series of books like this from their kids just because the author's interpretation of it conflicts with their particular religious values. If they can get joy from reading it by interpreting the characters in a different way, that is more meaningful to them, I think they should.
posted
Practically speaking, the number of readers that probably have kept up with these after-publication notes is probably relatively small. More significantly, the number of future readers that will encounter these notes before reading the books is probably even smaller.
Thus, we're really concerned about the group of readers that have read the books, kept up with the notes, and are so disturbed by the notice that Dumbledore is gay that they enjoy the books less, despite that there is not much concrete evidence that any of Dumbledore's actions were influenced by his sexual orientation.
That is, they are so disturbed by the mere presence of a gay character in their reading material whether or not they act that way, that it has a profound impact on how they enjoy it.
I would say that people in this position have a bigger problem that just their ability to enjoy a children's book, particularly when they start reading about Roman, Greek, or Chinese history Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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I don't think there are very many people who got over the whole witch and wizard thing who would then be turned off by Dumbledore being gay, speaking as someone who use to object to the witch and wizard thing.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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You know, I'd honestly be upset if she DIDN'T have back story on all the characters. It's just a part of good story writing, in my mind. How do we know she DOESN'T have all of it written down, and was just answering a simple question? For all we know, she could have been planning on putting that in the encyclopedia thing, and only revealed it because someone asked a question to which that information would be relevant.
If that makes any sense.
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quote:Foust, your comments about this phenomenon in speculative fiction vs. mainstream fiction are wrong. Reworks have been done of Little Women, Les Miserable, the Phantom of the Opera, Gone with the Wind...
"Reworks"? Do you mean the author went back and changed the text for a new edition?
If so, that's not the same thing. Changing the text and moving completely outside of it are different.
Posts: 1515 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I should probably have said, "sequels or prequels that significantly alter the original character(s)."
Anyway-- the market for alternative/extracurricular information regarding particular stories is just as prevalent in the literary fiction market as it is in speculative fiction.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally posted by MandyM: the American version of The Sorcerer's Stone --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Isn't that redundant?
My understanding is that The Sorcerer's Stone sold in Canada has different page numbers than the one sold in the U.S. I could be wrong.
Posts: 1319 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Ah. I didn't realize that Canadians were as dumb as US Americans.
My biggest hope and prayer about Harry Potter is that some fine day, they'll see fit to change the word back to Philosopher's in the books and movies in the US.
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No, we had The Philosopher's Stone up here. We have the same covers/paging as the UK edition in Canada.
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Uh oh, incoming Snape X Voldemort. Now we really know how Severus convinced the Dark Lord of his allegiance Posts: 349 | Registered: Jul 2006
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She didn't mention that Dumbledore was gay.
She also didn't mention which characters were right handed or left handed, which had tattoos, or other than Harry, who had any interesting birthmarks. There were a lot if unimportant details that she left out, frankly because they were unimportant.
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When I read that (elsewhere), my first thought was basically "Okay." *shrug* "Makes sense." By which I mean it makes sense in the context of the books, just the way Snape's love for Lily made sense of his past actions. That was necessary to the plot, while this isn't. But it makes sense.
My second thought was that it would be (in certain circles) like somebody threw a bees' nest into a church social and then barred all the doors.
A wate of time? *shrug* visiting forums is a waste of time- a pleasant one that people often find worthwhile, yes- but it's not like any of us are curing cancer.
The AUTHOR has no more right than a random person to say DD is gay because it wasn't in the books?
Pick any author and tell them a favorite character whose sex life is never mentioned or relevant to the plot and tell them the character is gay and see what happens.
It's all a tempest in a teapot. An interesting diversion, but not earthshaking in any sense.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I don't think it's an agenda, retroactive change, or even a surprising thing at all. I think it's part of the character she defined for herself that she didn't spell out, that nevertheless informed his motivations that she could now mention because the books are over and someone asked her. Nothing more than that. For those who are interested this fact perhaps adds another layer to his actions.
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quote: Heck, entire English departments thrive on discussing the implications that the words on the page might reveal about the story's larger universe, across nearly every genre.
Sorry, I didn't see this before. What you're talking about is still different from what Rowling is doing, and from what fan fiction does (especially slash fiction). You're talking about the words on the page. As far as I know, there's nothing in the Harry Potter books themselves that suggest Dumbledore is gay.
quote:I should probably have said, "sequels or prequels that significantly alter the original character(s)."
Anyway-- the market for alternative/extracurricular information regarding particular stories is just as prevalent in the literary fiction market as it is in speculative fiction.
Sequels and prequels are new texts. What you're talking about is more like putting Rowlings comments about Dumbledore into the mouth of a character in a new edition of some Potter book.
And, again, what English departments do - unless there's a branch of literary theory I'm completely unaware of - is work with the text as it is. Yes, they hunt for the holes and the voids in the texts and speculate - but the text is the basis.
Again, assuming there's nothing in the text suggesting Dumbledore is gay, what Rowling is doing is basically equivalent to George Lucas explaining the differences in the light saber battles between the original trilogy and the prequels by talking about the physical limitations of the characters rather than the limitations of special effects in 1977. Lucas is going outside the text to add something.
Posts: 1515 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Dumbledore apparently had no romantic relationships in his life except for one unrequited summer crush when he was a teenager.
That's not gay. That's celibate.
If it was supposed to be a lifelong unrequited thing like Snape's, then he has appalling taste. What wise adult holds onto a crush on evil? Dumbledore didn't seem like that much of a fool.
To answer the above question: Bellatrix LeStrange, clearly, except for the "wise" part.
Thwarted or twisted love of all kinds seemed to have driven the complicated adults in Harry Potter. None of them got over it, either - they all apparently stuck to the love or the inclination that got to when still just a kid. I suppose that's a staple of fairy tales - "And then the princess got over it, met someone else, and only thought of the prince occasionally with bemusement or fondness once a year or so."
The exception being Robin McKinley's Aerin, and I swear on my life that's part of what those books so utterly great.
posted
kat, I agree with all of your post except one nitpick. Celibate is not asexual. Celibate people are still either homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual, they just don't act on it.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I agree. What I was trying to say was that possible objections to making Dumbledore gay from the imaginary opponents mentioned above might be different than previously described because there is a difference between inclinations and acting on them.
I don't agree with the above classifications, though. I think it is definitely more of a continuum than anything, so there are considerably more than three options.
Hmm...more than that, too, if you take the other dimension into account - how interested/invested they are in love/sex in general. So any particular individual's romantic interest could be graphed on a plane with the X-variable being gender preference and the y-variable being personal importance of romantic relations.
For Dumbledore, whatever the gender preference, it sure looks like the personal importance of romantic relations was pretty low. Whether it was native to him or else induced by traumatic experiences I couldn't say. If induced by traumatic experiences...I don't know - if the personal importance was high, I'm thinking he'd have found a way.
--
Thinking about it, the love lives of Harry's generation were a great deal more complex (and real, I think). Harry did have a crush and then got over it. Cho picked one of two boys she liked and was happy, but probably would have been happy the other way as well. After the first died, she tried to have a relationship with the other but wasn't done grieving.
Ginny had a hopeless crush on Harry and then ignored it to date other people. Hermione dated Victor before Ron, Ron dated Lavender before Hermione, and Harry was crushed on by a quarter of the school, like you'd expect. The previous generations' practice of only one significant other per lifetime is bizarre in comparison.
[ October 23, 2007, 10:34 AM: Message edited by: Javert Hugo ]
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quote:The previous generations' practice of only one signifigant other per lifetime is bizarre in comparison.
I don't think we can assume that just because the books don't tell us about any past relationships by the teachers, it means they never had any. After all, the series takes the perspective of the students. When you were in high school, were you informed about the past romanatic relationships of all your single teachers?
It should also be noted that being single is different from being celibate. It is possible Dumbledore would have gotten married, had he found the right person.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
I'm just glad she had the brains to not include it in the books. That would have been such a distraction to such a good series of books without adding anything meaningful to the story at hand.
The closeness between Dumbledore and Grindelwald came through quite well in the text and never once did I think they might be lovers. Not every close same sex friendship need be sexual.
Now had Reeta Skeeter been the one to drop the bombshell, that would have been different, because it would fit the outrageous accusations she's known for. Whether its true or not can be left to the reader to decide, but since most of the stuff she wrote actually did have some basis in fact it would be hard not to conclude that there might have been something more to their close friendship.
Posts: 197 | Registered: Jan 2007
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posted
Lots of things are possible. We could spend all day imagining the untold details. I believe there is even a slightly-crude term for that activity.
--
In New York, Rowling said it was unrequited.
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