Again about JKR and Dumbledore

[fpb]

In her private life, JK Rowling is a fairly typical, though not slavish, member of the moderately educated left. Her honesty to her own imagination, though, has been leading her in all sorts of directions which seem increasingly incompatible with the ordinary sort of left-wing attitudes prevalent in Britain. In her private life, after a few traumatic years as a single mother, she lends her face to the group that represents single-parent families; in the novels, there are no single-parent families at all, and the most attractive family by far is the largest. In her private life, she is a feminist; in the novels, she delivers a strikingly attractive picture of not merely male, but patriarchal authority and wisdom. In her private life, she talks nonsense about Susan Pevensie “discovering sex” and C.S.Lewis “punishing her” for it; in Goblet of Fire, she delivers a delightful and truthful account of Harry and co. fumbling towards the other sex – and if she gets the details of male love totally wrong in Half-Blood Prince, she at least continues with a picture of teen-agers growing towards heterosexual love and marriage. One in which, by the way, and contrary to contemporary clichés, sex as such is of very minor importance indeed – so much for teen-agers’ supposedly rioting hormones. In her private life, she has clearly stated that she does not approve of boarding schools (in their peculiar British form, with its class and political overtones, as “public schools”); but the novels are based on a brilliant and magnetic vision of all the peculiar glamour and romance of this very peculiar British institution, to the point that they have actually contributed both to an increase in the number of boarding school students, and to a tendency in the British state school system towards a closer imitation of “public schools”. And then there are the Umbridge chapters of Order of the Phoenix, with Umbridge teaching “non-violent conflict resolution and negotiation”, and Harry leading an underground class in the use of weapons; one might practically be reading a tract by an American right-to-bear-arms supporter.

Now, I think there is evidence elsewhere that JKR does tend to react to her readers’ concerns and interests. The whole Tonks and Remus affair seems to me to have been put in to address fannish shipping concerns – or because, as I would argue, it was a most attractive and charming pairing. JKR found it, found it attractive, and used it – but less felicitously than kikei or pandoraculpa, possibly exactly because it was imitative. The revelation of Blaise Zabini’s identity and background is in my view less successful (here I tread on poisoned ground: some scumbag deliberately lied about my views in f_w, to make me sound like a racist, leading to the most unnecessary flamewar I ever fought) but reflects just as much a reaction to fannish concerns. The mere throwaway name of the Slytherin had roused more fan interest than any other minor character, not exluding Grindelwald; owing, as I argued long ago, to the fact that it suggests two of the “coolest” nationalities possible, French and/or Italian. (There was also a pathetically ignorant attempt to prove that someone called Blaise could possibly be female; of which, the least said, the better.) I think that the sudden revelation of a wholly different descent represents JKR’s irritation at all the froth generated by a mere name. So JKR does, in my view, react to reader concerns.

I think, however, that with the growth of her success and influence, a much more basic anxiety must have touched her mind. However little she may read of criticism, review and debate – and she could never keep up with the cataracts of argument that take place daily across six continents – she must have started to notice that most of those who dislike her world, treat her as ideologically unsound, or attack her writing, tend to come from the media and literary left; while many of her keenest and most outspoken defenders not only come from the right but have a decidedly conservative axe to grind. Most of all, she must be clear in her mind – for she is not stupid – that her own work does provide them with plenty of ammunition.

So, I think, she decided to do something to balance matters.

In one feature, she has done it with such artistic integrity and insight that it has gone unnoticed. The Dumbledore family, broken by tragedy that turns brother against brother and hag-ridden by secrets, makes a striking counterpart to the Weasleys, and heavily qualifies what had been so far an almost one-sided view of the family as a fortress. And at the same time, she manages to slip in, credibly and imaginatively, a classic left-wing topic – unhappiness and oppression come from outside, from “society”. The Dumbledores are ruined by the brutal and stupid assault on their daughter, and by the oppressive Ministry laws that force the father into Azkaban and the mother into taking the family into virtual concealment. As a result, circumstances deprive brilliant young Albus of the intellectual companionship that is his natural environment, forcing him back into the restricted world of his brother; and his brother, in turn, develops the surly and very negative attitude that will haunt them both. This leads in turn to Albus being seduced – whether sexually or not it does not matter – by Grindelwald, a breath of fresh air to the virtually exiled teen-ager. It is not, as in the most shallow and doctrinaire left attitudes, exclusively the fault of society; the arrogance of Mrs.Dumbledore, the resentment of Aberforth, make their own contribution to the picture of unhappiness and constriction; but the primary impulse is from an oppressive state of society. And as it is done with such a light touch, with such keen observation and truth to life, that we never even stop to think about the socio-political message it conveys. Also, to that extent, it shows that a left-wing viewpoint has something to say about society that is not merely escapist or doctrinaire, that it is grounded in real experience. Oppression does exist. People may be ruined and twisted from outside as well as from inside. Lives may be ruined by burdens they are not responsible for. All this is very true and very good.

However, the supposed revelation of Dumbledore’s homosexuality, though much more resonant, is far less felicitous. Of course, it has drawn a shower of praise from the usual suspects, from the detestable Peter Tatchell to, alas, my friend avus; and that is, in my view, just what JKR intended. She was not happy with the party tinge her work was acquiring – very much against her conscious will – and decided to reposition it in the most visible and blatant way. Whether she had always intended Dumbledore as an aged homosexual, or whether this is something she retconned into the previous six novels, is not relevant here; the point is that it is done so badly that it works against her conscious purpose. I have nothing against Potterverse characters being gay (though I do object to the perversity of switchknife and the like, who seem incapable of touching any male character without making him, not so much a homosexual, as an arse-bandit). My favourite candidates for the role, as I repeatedly said, are Harry himself, Dudley, and Moody, but I have no great objection to Dumbledore being one if you insist, ma’am. The point is however that there is nothing in Dumbledore that tends to suggest it.

As a homosexual correspondent pointed out on superversive’s LJ a while back, being homosexual does not just mean occasionally falling for pretty boys (or girls) or even having the occasional mad passion or great lifelong love. It means that your whole way of looking at the sexes, that is at the whole of society, is different. For ninety-seven per cent or so of mankind, the possibility of desire between (unrelated) man and woman is so natural that it is taken for granted, being factored in into professional, commercial, working, social relationships of every kind and quite across the board. Notice, for instance, how often married couples will consort with other married couples. It is at the heart of everything that is peculiar in the interplay of the sexes, from the conventions of chivalry to the cultural fear of rape.

For the remaining three per cent, however, this permanent potential for sexual desire is vested in their own sex. A homosexual man invests his own sex, especially the younger and more handsome of them, with what medieval English called daungier – the power and danger of possible attraction. Does anything that Dumbledore does tend to suggest it? It is possible, of course, to answer in the positive. He can be said to be virtually idolatrous towards handsome, green-eyed Harry Potter, and at the same to hide away from him – especially in Order of the Phoenix - with exaggerated caution, as a man would from a possible object of attraction. The problem is however that none of these things is ever presented as in any way strange or excessive or out of the norm. If Dumbledore admires Harry, then so do the rest of us. If Dumbledore keeps away from Harry, we know he has the best possible reason – with Voldemort in Harry’s mind, Harry is a possible spy at court. What is more, Dumbledore takes immediate measures to remove the problem, ordering Harry to study Occlumency.

But whether or not JKR actually meant it from the beginning, the fact is that the supposed revelation of Dumbledore’s sexual tendencies could not have been worse managed. First, as I pointed out last time, it rests on an odious fallacy, rooted mostly in female suspicion and jealousy – that passionate male friendships must have something sexual at the bottom of them. Second, its impact on Dumbledore is wholly negative. There is none even of the reparative function that, in my view, homosexual passion does afford to damaged spirits. It is quite literally a seduction into evil. It allows Grindelwald to suspend Dumbledore’ sense of morality and critical intellect, drives him to a fraudulent world of sick fantasy and the most debased kind of wish-fulfilment and ego tripping, connects him, in short, with everything that is vicious and depraved. And it leaves Dumbledore with a permanent suspicion of himself – worse, with a sick disgust of himself and his motives – that makes him permanently less effective as an opponent of evil. If an anti-gay campaigner had wanted to present a profoundly negative view of homosexual passion, he or she could not possibly have done a better job of it.

As I said, Peter Tatchell and the usual suspects are cock-a-hoop. What is it about a certain kind of fanatic, that always leads him to applaud everything that is most contrary both to his interests and to his beliefs?

Comments

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

Susan Pevensie didn't discover sex; she discovered the vapid pleasure of being a pretty object--"lipsticks and nylons". As a feminist as well as a Christian I hope she repented.

[leia-naberrie.livejournal.com]

You know that and I know that and I think fpb knows that. However, JK Rowling didn't - doesn't? - know that and hence her vocal disdain of the Narnia novels.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I certainly do. I took part in a wonderful online debate on rjanderson's journal, after a tremendous article she wrote refuting JKR brilliantly. I only regret I cannot find the URL and link you.

[luckymarty.livejournal.com]

http://rj-anderson.livejournal.com/176635.html

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much indeed.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

I agree that she handled the revelation poorly in the interview -- I think it could've been handled more allusively, just mentioning the infatuation with Grindelwald and subsequent heartbreak, but in a way that could be understood either sexually or not, and leave the g-word out entirely. Because Dumbledore is a character we only see from other people's POV's in the canonical literature (primarily Harry himself, but by the omniscient narrator in book 1, chapter 1), we the readers can only surmise his motives and internal life from what we see of him through others' eyes, particularly Harry's. Yes, certain things can be read between the lines, but there's always a question of whether it's really there or if we're reading things into it based upon our own expectations -- and thus a tension. Had she managed to handle the revelation in such a way that continued to keep our understanding of Dumbledore's character "at arms' length," I think it would've been that much stronger. We weould've known that the tragic end of his relationship with Grindelwald severely damaged his spirit in ways that would echo throughout his life and even in the lives of those he touched in various ways, but would not lay bare his inner life which had previously remained discretely closed to us.

[leia-naberrie.livejournal.com]

But whether or not JKR actually meant it from the beginning, the fact is that the supposed revelation of Dumbledore’s sexual tendencies could not have been worse managed. First, as I pointed out last time, it rests on an odious fallacy, rooted mostly in female suspicion and jealousy – that passionate male friendships must have something sexual at the bottom of them. Second, its impact on Dumbledore is wholly negative. And it leaves Dumbledore with a permanent suspicion of himself – worse, with a sick disgust of himself and his motives – that makes him permanently less effective as an opponent of evil. If an anti-gay campaigner had wanted to present a profoundly negative view of homosexual passion, he or she could not possibly have done a better job of it.


Once again, I applaud you for saying what I feel but could not articulate as well.

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

Brilliantly said and well argued, sir.

[super-pan.livejournal.com]

I am mostly addressing your last two paragraphs. It was sort of the first thing that came to my mind as well. I personally never liked the whole Grindelwald/Dumbledore connection even before he was gay. It just made him seem so weak minded, to be blinded and swayed by brilliance. And if he was also so affected because of sexual attraction, it just makes him seem weaker. And then of course, since Dumbledore ever after seems to have gone it alone, as if he never loved again, it could give the message that homosexual love is something better left repressed and ignored, lest you attempt genocide. And while I am not making that argument, certainly one could. Again, I just didn't like what she did with Dumbledore anyway. But you know, of course any valid point you make will be lost because people will see and hear one thing: fpb + insert hot topic here= time for wank.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I do not object to Dumbledore being weak-minded in his youth, although to my mind JKR has gone a bit over the edge in the King's Cross scene by having him talk to Harry in a positively lachrymose way. It is clear that the man we meet in Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone is someone who has gone through a lot of effort and changes and may well have been a good deal different - and less attractive - as a youth. And there are a couple of things that, to my mind, suggest a certain weakness: his habit of bragging ("that was a good idea, even for me"; "being rather more intelligent than the average" - I am sure that I got both wrong, but you know what I mean) and his frightened refusal of any position of political authority. Obviously, being old and wise, he is aware of his own limits and takes them into consideration when drawing up his plans. I placed the hint of a comment on this in my fic, The First Nymphadora. I think it was JKR's design from the first to show Dumbledore as flawed, noble but human, not the God-like figure that some see and fear in him. And as I said, I could have lived with the notion that he was gay - after all, so were Plato and Virgil. It is the way it was done - as you perceive very well - that I found deeply and infuriatingly disappointing. I really have an itch to argue it out with JKR herself; but the thing is, why should she listen to me out of million of other fans? Most of whom will be hooraying and praising her to the stars for this ill-judged move.

AS for f_w, it has been too long since I had a proper flamewar. I think they have forgotten me - even my insulting Wiki entry is out of date. So, with any luck, this will be unnoticed too.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

This is harmonious with my first thought when I heard the news, which was to think, "Oh! JKR thinks only dead people should be gay!" o_O

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

No offense, but since when is Italian a “cool” nationality?

Oh, I'm going to get in trouble for that one.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Some might say, since Armani and Versace and the rest. Others, since Verdi and Rossini and Vivaldi and Puccini. Others, since Canaletto, Michelangelo, Leonardo, etc. And others, since Virgil and Horace and Cicero. Not to mention those who would bring in Paolo Rossi or even Gianni Rivera.

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

If you ask me, the Italians started being a cool about when Brutus deposed Tarquin the Proud. Some commentators would push the coolness back to the time of Aeneas. See (Virgil for details).

Of course, my question is, when did nationalities start becoming cool? Isn't the imperium and the ecclesia somewhat older than this newfangled notion of dividing The Oecumene into nation-states? I think we should all regard nationality as a temporary stop-gap or jury-rig until such time as all the peoples of the West reunite under a duly elected and anointed Holy Roman Emperor.

(Correct me if I am wrong, but that was the role filled by Aragorn in Tolkien: Arnor and Gondor were his fantasy version of the Western and Eastern empires: the siege of Minas Tirith was his version of The siege of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1543, but with a happier ending.)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I have to say... I was skimming my Friends list this morning (as usual, since I am still trying to figure out how to live with the lack of routine that comes with an 8-week-old baby), and before I knew it I found myself reading this whole essay. It was wonderful. :)

[prylliepwns.livejournal.com]

As a mother of two kids, ages five and one, I must inform you that you never recover your pre-children routine and rhythm.

The best you can come up with is an alternate routine that factors in the things you need to do most, then snag a few things off the list of things you want to do most and hope for the best. :o)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Ah, my life was like that before kids. :)

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

Always good to read of you, sir. :)

Again, well done.

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

First, as I pointed out last time, it rests on an odious fallacy, rooted mostly in female suspicion and jealousy – that passionate male friendships must have something sexual at the bottom of them.

See, this is the big thing I disagree with in this post (and in the last one I commented on.) What makes you think women feel this way? I don't think I've ever heard a woman express any such idea. Women can get jealous/suspicious if their partner spends a lot of time with a woman - that's common enough. But if he's got a really close male friend - why on earth would anyone think that had to mean they were gay? If anything, I'd say men are more likely to think that way. When watching the LOTR movies, it was invariably my male friends who'd start making Frodo/Sam jokes. The girls would tell them to shut up and stop being immature. Boys seem to be much, much more uncomfortable with the idea of passionate male friendships than girls are.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

This disagrees with the fact that such fantasies are a wholly female matter. And pardon me, but just how many male friends=slash fics have you ever read written by men? As for the LOTR movies, there is an evident problem there, which some infantile spirits solve by dirty jokes: namely the fact that Peter Jackson is wholly out of sympathy with JRRT's hierarchical view of the world, and therefore wholly unable to place a good master/good servant relationship credibly in his world. I do not recall a single place in all the movies where Sam is called what he is - a servant. And it follows that the intimate, yet hierarchical relationship that is necessary for the characters to exist at all, becomes something inexplicable and even rather morbid.

Frodo and Sam and Gay Hobbits Gone Wild

[cdm014.livejournal.com]

I don't know it was that Peter Jackson couldn't have displayed the master/servant relationship or that he know most people who haven't already read the books not having servants and having very little mastery would not be able to understand an accurately depicted one. I think though in that regard he depicted plain male friendship very well, the gay jokes I think were a result almost more of the appearance of the actors than the relationship of the characters. Elijah Woods looks a little effeminate and if he goes for the build of the chubbier Sam well that's a private thing I guess.

As for morbidity all friendships between soldiers (which they were whether they wanted to be or no) are morbid "see ya if you make it through the day."

Re: Frodo and Sam and Gay Hobbits Gone Wild

[cdm014.livejournal.com]

I think overall it was a very American movie of a very English book.

[knorg.livejournal.com]

I fear, sir, that you have missed the point by a somewhat wide margin.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I fear, sir or madam, that I do not take very seriously people who appear, preen themselves, refuse to proffer any argument, pretend to have simply seen through someone else's, and leave. In case you had not noticed, this comment space is for people who comment. Preferably, after having, one, read the post, and, two, thought.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

I wasn't sure if I should reply to this at all since this is an issue we'll never agree upon, but there are a couple of things in your post that bother me too much to simply ignore them:

The problem is however that none of these things is ever presented as in any way strange or excessive or out of the norm.

Which (I think we can safely say) is precisely JKR's point, and everyone would be rightly disturbed if it were (presented as) out of the norm.

Dumbledore has been training this boy from age 11 for a fight he has precious little chance of coming out of alive, because it is necessary, and because he has even less a chance for survival otherwise; what's more, he's the only one who has to live with that knowledge, and in your opinion it's a 'problem' that he's never shown to be sexually attracted to him? And you're accusing the slashers of suspicion and dirty minds?

There are of course some teachers, male and female, who enter into sexual relationships with teenaged students, so I'm not going to pretend this kind of thing never happens, but I would assume that the majority, regardless of sexual orientation, manages not only not maintain a strictly professional relationships, but won't even think of them in a sexual light. And certainly none of the teachers at Hogwarts ever shows such attraction (which is perfectly appropriate in a series of children's books that don't specifically deal with this issue), so why should Dumbledore? Your implied reason is that he not only would, but should have done so because (and apparently only because) he's gay, and this singling out is what makes the argument very problematic to me, especially because of all the people who reacted to JKR's revelation by saying it made Dumbledore's relationship with Harry 'creepy', immediately jumping to the gay = paedophile = child molester equation.

You might have a better point if you'd argued, as others have, that his sexuality might have been brought up earlier in another context (that is, obviously, one not related to Harry or any of the students), but on the other hand we learn nothing of any of the teachers' romantic/sexual lives, unless (and before) it turns out to be, as with Snape, crucial to the plot. We don't know if professor McGonagall is straight, lesbian, asexual or anything in between. And while one might argue that in the case of Dumbledore it's, if not crucial, then at least somewhat relevant to the plot too, DH worked fine for me when I thought it was nothing more than friendship, whereas without the knowledge of Snape's love for Lily his whole character arc wouldn't have made sense, so on the whole I think JKR can be excused for wanting to avoid the struggle with her publishers and having the finale overshadowed by a debate about sexual orientation instead of readers focusing on the much more important issues touched there.


(continued)

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

The other thing I take issue with is the 'seduction into evil'.

Now I at least partly agree with you and everyone else who (if maybe for reasons different than yours) said that the ill-fated Dumbledore/Grindelwald romance isn't the positive representation of a gay relationship one might have wished for, but I believe JKR is seeing the whole thing a bit differently and less negatively than you do.

What said was that being blinded by love does excuse Dumbledore to an extent, meaning the real problem was a different one and lay deeper than that. The arrogance, the dangerous intellectual pride were already there before meeting Grindelwald, and while he may have been (willfully) blind to some the extremes the person he loved was ready to go, he was far from innocent. And this, in JKR's eyes, was his sin, not falling in love with another boy. She repeatedly puts the emphasis on a meeting of equals, and it's noticeable that no one who might have had an interest in doing so - not Bathilda Bagshot, not Aberforth, not even Dumbledore himself, casts him in the part of the seduced victim in this scenario. And this is the reason for his reluctance to take over political power, the fact that he knows himself and his weaknesses. It's not love he subsequently becomes suspicious of, it's power.

One may or may not agree with this stance (personally I mostly do), but it's clear from the books, starting with Harry' sorting, that JKR is deeply suspicious of the combination of ambition and intellectual brilliance, unless it's couched within a firm framework of ethics, tempered by a certain amount of humility and self-questioning, or, better still, counter-balanced by love, friendship and an innate sense of what's good and right.

You might say this is splitting hairs and that it amounts to the same thing in the end, but I believe in JKR's eyes these differences are relevant, and you're making the whole thing sound quite a bit dirtier than need be.

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

"the positive representation of a gay relationship one might have wished for..."

Why in the world would one wish for a positive representation of a gay relationship? It is like wishing for a positive representation of adultery, or paedophilia, or incest, or bestiality, or bondage fetishism or any other unhealthy sexual abnormality.

Worse, it is like wishing for a positive representation of pride, gluttony, ire, envy. Lust is a sin even when it is natural.

The idea that homosexuality is healthy or good for you is a lie: it destroys marriages, destroys lives, leads men to abandon their young children, leads men to regard young children as sexual, and it offers nothing but pain, sorrow, and self-loathing.

I see nothing amiss with tolerating homosexuality; but you are very wrong to encourage it, to tell people it's okay. You might as well offer a drunkard a drink, or tell someone addicted to gambling that betting on the ponies is a sign of bravery.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

I'm commenting merely to acknowledge that I've read your reply, with no little amount of disgust I might add. Our opinions on this subject differ so far that I see no point wasting time and energy arguing with you.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

John, this is not only rude but disastrously silly. IN case you had not noticed, solitary_summer (who, for your information, is a fine person and a first-rate artist) does not agree with you that homosexuality is a sin. For that matter, neither does the Church - homosexual PRACTICE is what it condemns. Your coming on like a steamroller, expecting everyone to even understand, let alone accept, your categories, is not useful, and will only lead her not to listen to you in any other context. And incidentally make matters harder for anyone else who wanted to argue with her. If you want to intervene on my LJ in the future, kindly do so politely and with an effort to understand the other person's position, or else, much though I like you, I will be forced to ban you.