In one of the odder bits of news from the last week, Harry Potter J.K. Rowling has outed one of her characters - Albus Dumbledore -as gay, even though the subject never comes up in the books (so I'm told). Strangely enough, Michael Dorf finds that this is a good jumping off point for discussing the original intent theory of constitutional interpretation. It goes like this:
But given that the Potter books, now complete, make no mention of Dumbledore's sexuality, Rowling would not appear to have any authority to declare the print version of Dumbledore gay, straight or bi. Her views on such matters are naturally of interest to fans of her books, but the work must stand on its own.It reminds me of Ray Bradbury's recent claim that his novel Farenheit 451 is not really about censorship, but a critique of the corrosive effect of television. Not many people bought that and I'm not sure many people will buy Rowling's outing of Dumbledore. If Dorf is right, we don't have to.
These principles may seem obvious enough when considering the relation of a fiction writer's intentions to her text, but they are highly contentious when it comes to legal documents. In the balance of this column, I will explain why James Madison is no more of an authority on the meaning of the U.S. Constitution, than J.K. Rowling is on Dumbledore's sexual orientation.
6 comments:
That's quite an interesting revelation. It reminds me of some reaction that I heard to the audio commentary of the Lord of the Rings flicks where Ian McKellen was talking about personally being gay and themes he saw in the books that advocated tolerance.
actually, I wasn't all that surprised. There was something a little intense about the friendship with Grindelwald that was revealed in DH. It wasn't that I had suspected it all along; rather, some things made a lot more sense when I heard that story.
I think the media is makign a bigger deal of this "outing" than it's really worth. She said (in response to a question that didn't have anything to do with Dumbledore's sexuality) that she had always pictured that character to be gay in her mind. It wasn't like she put that information out there in some kind of press release, like it really makes much difference.
Anyway, that being said, I haven't read the books, so I really don't know if it comes through in his character or not. What I do know is that this is going to cause a big ruckus in the media and sell a lot more books, because now everybody's going to have to see what the big deal is. Hoorah!
From what I understand it came up because the script for the next movie (or the one after that) had Dumbledore telling Harry about an old girlfriend and JKR sent back a note saying, "BTW, he's gay."
Rebecca, I've read them all obsessively. There was nothing too overt about sexuality of any characters, beyond the usual teenage dating. However, if you know what to look for, you can see it there in one part that talks about Dumbledore saying something like "I'm glad you came to visit your aunt or else we wouldn't have met." This sounds more like someone you'd have a romantic interest in, rather than 2 teenage boys hanging out.
Most of the adults in that book are pretty asexual anyway. Again, that's pretty close to what kids that age think. They all think they discovered sex and usually don't see adults as sexual beings. That's one of the things that I love so about the books: she's got the actions of kids in whichever age group down pat.
Oh! So that's why he wears a dress.
Post a Comment