Authors tattle, but should readers care?
Let’s get something straight here: Harry Potter, and the wizarding world he lives in, isn’t real. Nor are any of the characters that inhabit it. Can you see where I’m going with this?
Since J.K. Rowling “outed” the much-beloved Albus Dumbledore, debate over his sexuality has engulfed conversation, from online chat boards to dining hall chitchat. Whether or not Dumbledore’s sexuality should “matter” to the reader isn’t really a question, since clearly it does matter. But it shouldn’t even be an issue, and not for the reason we open-minded, gay-friendly college kids think. Rowling should’ve never said it in the first place because as far as the series is concerned, Dumbledore isn’t gay.
Back in May, in an interview with L.A. Weekly, Ray Bradbury shocked readers with the revelation that his most famous work, Fahrenheit 451, was not about government censorship, as is most commonly taught and accepted, or a response to Senator McCarthy’s investigations. Instead, he explained, it was about the way television replaces an interest in literature.
So have teachers across the country scrapped their prepared lectures? Have literary critics retracted their many essays and commentaries, retreating in shame and embarrassment? It would be absurd if they did.
If fifty years after the book’s publication, audiences are still getting the interpretation so blatantly wrong then perhaps Bradbury just didn’t do a good enough job writing the book. Once a work is published, the responsibility of its interpretation falls to the audience and the creator gives up that right. An author has sole interpretive duties only as long as the words remain unread. Once the work enters the public conscious, readers are going to bring their own ideas and paradigms to the work. This is not only inevitable, but is at the heart of what makes reading so enjoyable in the first place.
In interviews since the publication of the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Rowling has been giving fans new facts about the pasts and futures of her characters. Many are harmless: Knowing that Arthur Weasley was originally supposed to die in the fifth book gives us enlightening insight into Rowling’s writing process, but it doesn’t change anything about the nature of the story. Others – like the future professions and marital statuses of Hogwarts students – run beyond the time frame of the books, so it could be argued Rowling can continue indulging in new details of a world she created.
The problem with the most recent revelation about Dumbledore then is that it adds a new, important dimension to a character in a finished novel; this detail has no significance in the world beyond the confines of the novel. And like it or not, sexuality is a big deal. Yes, it’s just one facet of a personality, but it’s an undeniably important one. After all, there’s a reason readers are reacting like a close family member just came out and less than 24 hours after the information was released, YouTube was already swarming with gay-Dumbledore montages.
Dumbledore was never an explicitly sexual character – even the secrets revealed about his past in the seventh book never touched on sexuality or romance of any kind. By announcing that Dumbledore was gay and therefore a sexual being – and the extra that he was in love with his best friend – Rowling added an extra, complex layer that she somehow never found prudent to fit in somewhere over the span of seven books and thousands of pages.
Even if Rowling goes on to write a supplementary encyclopedia, thereby officially extending the Harry Potter canon, further extrapolation on important character themes would be inappropriate. If it’s not part of the novels, then it’s just not part of the Harry Potter world.
The author reserves no right to mold the reader’s perceptions, interpretations or imaginations at will once a book is finished. No matter how much extraneous detail exists in an author’s imagination, it is only relevant if it made it into the final product. A fictional world is just that – fictional – and it exists only within the physical confines of the novel and in the minds of the readers.
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Looking for gays? Ask your suitemates. Or you can return home.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/10/23/dumbledore/
Angelica
October 24, 2007 at 12:05 am
As the linked article above suggests, Rowling was alluding to gay romance in the novels, we just didn’t see it.
Angelica
October 24, 2007 at 12:07 am
JKR has every right to make comments on her universe because it IS a complete universe that she’s created. You can’t fit absolutely everything into the books, and shouldn’t be expected to.
I’m sure anyone could have reached the conclusion that he was gay just from canon – therefore your first problem is with saying “as far as the series is concerned, Dumbledore isn’t gay” because in reality, as far as the series is concerned readers could have interpreted it that way and that would allow it to be true according to you. Just because it was never explicitly written doesn’t mean it wasn’t there — the subtlety is what elevates HP from good literature to great literature. Jo didn’t have to reveal it, but she did because her fans wanted to know more about this universe that is so real to them.
And excuse me? To say that Bradbury, one of the most brilliant writers ever to live on this earth, didn’t write his story well enough just because people were interpreting it in a different way than intended is patently ridiculous. It’s brilliant because it CAN be interpreted, but it’s fascinating and educational to see it from the author’s point of view.
Hey, I could be interpreting your argument completely wrong. But I would never call you a bad writer because of it.
Staci Gold
October 24, 2007 at 12:18 am
haha, my friends and i just had this argument two nights ago. i think you’re right on. it’s not about some wizard being gay, it’s about the responsibility of the writer to let their books speak for themselves. you write a story, you submit it to the public, and then the meaning it accumulates is a combination of the words on the page and the interpretation of the readers and the ensuing debate. great ambiguities makes great literature and literary debate. that’s why i have to disagree with staci. F451 is such an awesome and complex book, a responsible author would want to foster debate, not end it by limiting the discussion. it’s literature, not physics–there are no answers, and that’s just how we (should) like it.
Derek Thompson
October 25, 2007 at 9:13 am
As Staci and the Salon article say, there definitely WAS subtext for Dumbledore being gay and in love with Grindelwald in DH, the intense way that their relationship was described…I certainly thought that AD/GG was a viable potential ship, the most likely slash ship in HP, and that their friendship could have been something more. Having this in mind as I re-read DH, I saw the slashy tones even more–so JK’s announcement was not shocking, but merely a confirmation or clarification of what was already in the text.
However in general I firmly agree with you–JK needs to stop making up stuff on the spot and passing it off as canon, such as Ron’s two jobs, and the love interests of Luna and Neville, which have no relation to anything in the text (Hannah and Neville barely interact, and we never even meet Rolf!), and which would be preferred to be left to the imagination by many fans and shippers. You can tell she’s coming up with stuff on the spot by all the contradictions in recent interviews. Plus the pimping of certain ships and characters that continue to remain unpopular b/c of the way she wrote them in the books (like H/G) needs to stop as well–if she wasn’t successful in making Harry and Ginny appear to be soulmates in the book, then she can’t declare that they are so in interviews, and that they’re equals, and expect us to consider it as canon and swallow it whole. Your Bradbury point was especially interesting and relevant.
So thanks for the article, it’s great that so many media outlets are finally refusing to put up with JK’s nonsense anymore, though I think it’s wrong that they are only doing this in response to Dumbledore being gay, when there have been numerous equally objectionable statements by her in her books and in interviews that have gone unchallenged.
Katharine
October 27, 2007 at 4:42 pm