Saturday, October 20, 2007

rowling outs dumbledore

in the words of my good friend woody, "who...cares?"

really. a fictional character was always gay in the author's mind. and that's it. he was never gay in the books. so, those of you out there that might take offense, don't. those of you that might want to congratulate her for authoring a strong gay character, don't. because she didn't. she always imagined that the character was gay, but never actually wrote about it. hey, maybe next week she'll tell us how she always imagined that the big hairy guy was really a woman, post op of course.

it doesn't change the character at all because the character in a story is based on what we're told or what we can infer from details in the story. if anyone says they can tell that dumbledore was gay from the story, they're lying. because the author says she didn't do anything more than imagine that he was.

and really, i don't care. i'm just posting about it because i saw it on every news site i looked at today. as if it were actually news.

8 comments:

Adam said...

And also J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter will draw hits. =P

Yeah, that's the thing with literature is that readers can interpret things in different ways.

edluv said...

readers can interpret things in different ways, that is true.

but, we're not really talking about interpreting lit. this isn't an issue of how did we understand the story, etc.

character development happens in many different ways. and, by most methods, you don't really develop a character by writing a multivolumn story, and then after it's all said and done change the characters.

they are her stories, and she could say, "i've always thought of him as gay," but to do so after it all seems like pandering. if she had announced/developed/outed the character at any point during the story, fine, it's part of the story. but to do it here, it makes me call b.s.

were all the characters really gay in her mind? except for those that do some openly hetero act, of course (i don't know as i didn't read the books, and haven't seen most of the movies). as a reader, we have no idea. and really, it doesn't matter unless the author now makes these claims.

btw, jar jar binks, gay. lucas just announced it. maybe that will help us rethink that character.

Adam said...

I remember some people speculating about Dumbledore's sexual preferences before the series was completed.

I would argue that were some people who were definitely interpreting the literature in that particular way.

edluv said...

i had not heard that.

Adam said...

Yeah, there are points in the story where Dumbledore speaks rather wistfully of an old foe, Grindelwald.

Apparently, he had a thing for bad boys.

edluv said...

matt lauer agrees with me. but the beehive blogger doesn't

Adam said...

I've really got no issue with it. How many movies are there out there where viewing it a second time, you see things significantly differently, because something was revealed at the very end? Think about Fight Club, or Memento. How many media are rereleased later with extras, director's cuts, never-before-seen scenes, prequels, commentaries, reviews. These things all alter the perception of the viewer/reader but were never part of the original published work.

I see nothing wrong with an author changing one of her characters, even after the fact, if Ebert can go to a film and then taint my viewing with his commentary.

Besides the fact that it was a reader who prompted her with the question. Obviously, some people out there, however few, were under the impression that he may be gay, without any declarations from Rowling.

You say:

if anyone says they can tell that dumbledore was gay from the story, they're lying. because the author says she didn't do anything more than imagine that he was.

So you're saying that Rowling is a master of reigning in her sub-conscious and nothing ever could have leaked onto the pages of her manuscript? Even so, people read things into written works that authors never thought of.

edluv said...

the subconscious doesn't exist. Frued was a fraud