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Should Harry Potter author, JK Rowling, have announced that the character Albus Dumbledore was gay?
Results so far:
| Yes | 39% | 1577 votes | Total: 3993 votes | |
| No | 61% | 2416 votes |
Yes
by Maya Schioler
Created on: December 07, 2009 Last Updated: December 08, 2009
Many people seem to be extremely uncomfortable at the thought of anything at all political in children's media. I do understand their position, and I agree that children should be allowed to be children; they have the rest of their lives to be aware of everything from the environment to gay rights. As children they should get to be blissfully ignorant.
However, this is simply not possible. No matter how sheltering a parent you are your offspring will still be exposed to the not so nice parts of the world. To avoid that you would have to keep them away from TV, the Internet, school and even people in general.
Childhood isn't an isolated period of time; it is part of the process of growing up. If we are never tried we cannot improve. Who do you think will be the more sensible around fire - the person who has never been near it or the person who has been burnt before?
The same thing goes for media and politics. People are thunderstruck by teenagers turning into racists and rapists, but is it really any wonder? Is it really any wonder, when no one has ever talked to these kids about morals? Maybe if someone had told them about things such as equality they would have been more well rounded now.
Furthermore, children are far from stupid. Contrary to popular belief, they can actually handle a lot, and it is vital that some things are discussed before it's too late. Children should be made aware early on that not everybody is the same, and that this is indeed okay. Such a basic key statement everyone should be able to agree to.
It has been stated in the No-side articles that Dumbledore's being gay changes the genre from children's literature to something completely different. This is simply a bad disguise for the discomfort or dislike towards homosexuals they feel themselves. What they are actually saying is that there is no place for gay characters in children's books. Otherwise there would surely be complaints directed against the Weasleys, for instance. They are married and have children, and therefore obviously sexual beings, and characters in children's literature should apparently be void of sexuality...
Rowling has not dropped a bomb here. She has not released a collection of graphically explicit descriptions of Dumbledore's sex-life, neither has she - as some of the nay-sayers claim - used the Harry Potter series as a political platform. Stating that Dumbledore is a homosexual is much less political than the analogy to racism that the whole purity of blood theme constitutes.
Never minding what children can or can't bear to hear, one might question whether the Harry Potter series really is primarily for children. It may have started out that way, but as the characters grew up so did their readers. Hopefully the teenagers of today can cope with a character being gay (something that, mind you, isn't even mentioned in the Harry Potter canon!).
On another note altogether, J. K. Rowling was merely talking about a tiny part of the background of one of her characters. Authors usually know much more about their own creations than what can be found out from the finished book. Also she was never making a song and dance about it; she was only responding to a question in a fairly casual setting.
We're about to enter into the second decade of the 21st century. If we truly are as progressive and democratic as we like to think, a boy who falls in love with boys shouldn't be a problem, not even in a book meant for toddlers.
Learn more about this author, Maya Schioler.
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No
by Dave Simmons
Created on: July 09, 2008 Last Updated: November 11, 2011
I've voted for 'no' rather than 'yes' on this simply because I can't understand why she would bother in the first place. The only thing I can think of is so Rowling could generate a little publicity for the books and generate a few more sales; this would have made sense in a year or two when the books weren't flying off the shelves as rapidly as they were, but to announce such a thing a few weeks after the launch of the final book is incomprehensible.
If it made the slightest difference to the story, it might be more understandable; if Dumbledore's sexuality somehow caused you to reinterpret his actions throughout the series, that might matter. It doesn't, not even slightly. His infatuation with the evil wizard (whose name, frankly, escapes me - He Whose Name Isn't That Terribly Memorable, perhaps) in his youth, and the disagreement they had afterwards,are due to the other's dark leanings. Whether or not there was any bum-fun going on between chapters is pretty irrelevant.
Besides, an author has no business doing this. While they're writing, they have every right to try to make the characters whatever they want. How easily this can be achieved is another matter altogether; anyone who's even tried to write a novel will know that after a certain point, the characters start doing what they damned well please, no matter what you do. But once the book has gone to print, the author has said everything they're going to say. Past that point, they become the property of the reader.
Not in an 'intellectual property' sense, as many plagiarists have found out to their costs. But it is the reader who's immersed in their world who gets to interpret why a character is doing something, what motivates them. If the author is a good one, this should be fairly clear. If it's not, and they have to announce that a character was homosexual or not at a public dinner/meeting/press conference/whichever nosebag they were at the time, it's a sign of poor writing.
If, say, Terry Pratchett (an author who typically outdoes Rowling, in terms of sales and writing quality) stood up and announced one of his main characters, like the Librarian, was left-handed, I'd be amazed. Amazed partly because it would have absolutely no effect on his Discworld books, and secondly because I'd expect better from him than to try to shoehorn in plot elements long after finishing a book.
It could be that the remark was merely an offhand one; if I remember the details correctly, Rowling was simply commenting that while writing the books, she simply considered Dumbledore as gay, and always had. If so, it says more about what makes a good yellow journalism headline than anything about the author. I rather suspect she dropped the G-bomb quite deliberately, though. It's so hard to tell these days which media stories are hysterically generated by the press, and which are fed to the press because they know that kind of reaction will ensue.
Finally, quite a while after all the hubbub has died down: Does it really matter? Has this made anyone who loves the books toss them aside, vowing never to read them again? Has this influenced one gay person (or straight person, for that matter) to buy the books when previously they would never have considered it? Has it in any way somehow promoted or prevented the understanding of human sexuality? Even a tiny bit?
In short, who cares?
Learn more about this author, Dave Simmons.
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