Via Chet Scoville of The Vanity Press.
Love it! Thanks for your humor and your epic saga, J. K. Rowling!
Update: Mustang Bobby of Bark Bark Woof Woof has some choice words on the matter:
Rail on, supercilious twits. Your rants and outrage only point out how ridiculous and ignorant you are and prove once again that your predilection for focusing on irrelevancy pretty much confirms that you have no earthly business as literary critics or social commentators. And in an ironic way, making a big deal out of Dumbledore's sexual orientation will only sell more books.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Harry Potter series has already served as an allegory for misunderstood and demonized people -- witches and wizards -- and it's not too far a stretch to make the connection to the gay community. In Rowling's world, the wizarding community has to live apart, they have their own language and traditions, and they do all they can to conceal their true selves as they move through the Muggle world. As the story is told through the point of view of a teenager, the additional layer of adolescent angst and hormones makes it even more allegorical, and I daresay that there are probably legions of young readers who are already coming to terms with their own identity -- sexual or otherwise, gay or straight -- who felt an affinity towards Harry Potter as an outcast based on nothing more than who he was by birth and yet the rest of the non-magical world cannot accept him. The fact that "the gay character" in the story is Dumbledore and not one of Harry's contemporaries -- Ron or Neville, for example -- is understandable; these kids already have enough to worry about as teenage wizards. It also makes it clear that a gay man such as a teacher can be a mentor and a friend without any of the lurid overtones of pedophilia that is never far from the fevered imaginings of the Christian conservatives and their perpetual adolescent fixation with sex.
I have news for them: there is more -- much more -- to being gay than the basic matter of attraction, sexual or otherwise, to someone of your own gender. The fact that the fundies cannot get beyond that says a lot more about their hang-ups than it does about anything else.
Update 10/24:
Bill O'Reilly galumps up to put his two cents in:
On his Fox News show last night, Bill O’Reilly joined in the fray, asking if Dumbledore’s outing was part of the “gay agenda” of “indoctrination” of “children.” O’Reilly claimed that by dropping “the gay bomb,” Rowling is a “provocateur” who is “going to let all hell break loose”
Uh... right, Billo. Just what hell is that? Does it involve falafels, loofahs, phone sex and a huge mega-million dollar settlement? That kind of provocateur?
Update 10/25: Paul Croft's two foot tattoo of Dumbledore is a teasing point with his workmates, but Paul says:
“The tattoo is about 2ft in length and shows Dumbledore played by Richard Harris – who was the original and best.”
He insisted: “I don’t regret it and I’m not going to get rid of it.”
Way to go, Paul! How about acknowledging that Dumbledore is one hell of a cool wizard, you guys?
11 comments:
Well duh, that's why he didn't run for Minister of Magic and contented himself to a life in academia.
Teh Wingnuts are off their rockers over this.
I've had an invasion of traumatized right-wingnuts all weekend long ever since the news came out (heh).
I even had to turn on comment mod for the first time ever.
It's not pretty.
Obviously wearing robes and having air blowing about your privates has an effect....
I think she did it just to tweak the whakos. They already hate the books, now she has upped the ante.
My estimation of Ms. Rowling has shot through the roof.
I love J.K., and not just because she's rich.
Well, true. She became rich because we love her.
J.K. did us all a favor (one of many, actually): she reintroduced social commentary into "children's" literature. The concept is not a new one, but it had gone into hiding for a while.
I admit I'm charmed at the notion that Dumbledore is gay. (FTR, I'm straight, not by choice but by nature, as surely as gays are gay by nature.) After reading the entire series, I'd begun to worry that elderly wizards (and presumably witches as well) were completely asexual. How unlikely would that be! They're human, after all.
Again FTR, notwithstanding several comments floating around, there are several other witch/wizard couples in the HP series besides Harry's parents. Remus Lupin and the late lamented Nymphadora Tonks come to mind. I don't recall any "out" gay couples, female or male, though.
I think only some Americans, not Brits, are shocked by Dumbledore's outing. And those Americans were already lost to Rowling as potential readers, so she had nothing to lose by calling it as she saw it. As Mustang Bobby notes, the characters are who they are, and Rowling "merely" lets them tell their story through her very well-turned prose.
Let the fanfic begin! (I'm sure it already has.)
Um, yes. The fanfic has already been very ... promiscuous in its pairings. My daughter tells me that the authors of such tales have been extremely ... creative.
I'll take her word on that.
Fanfic, oh great just what I need, more stuff to read on the internets.
Some are of real quality, others ... well... imagine the pasty white guy in his grandmother's basement...
That said, this is what my daughter and her friends do as entertainment, write several different fanfics together.
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