Btw, the Patil sisters wore robes in the books. Why are you blaming JKR for the costume designers shoddy idea of Indian clothes? Oh and LEE JORDAN was an AWESOME character and HE WAS POC. PATIL SISTERS, KINGSLEY SHACKLEBOLT, ANGELINA JOHNSON were all amazing, strong, capable characters in the books! And her depiction of house-elves shows how deeply brainwashed exploited populations can be, who believe their marginalisation is only right. The untouchables in India were the same, never raising a voice against their persecution for fear of reprisal and brainwashing into Karma Theory. And Goblins were an amazing race but their values were different from wizarding folk, so much so, that wizarding folk believed them to be greedy or recalcitrant leading to prejudice, when Goblins were simply living by their own morality. There is so much nuance in her books but I suppose you would need to read it first.
JK Rowling Outs Dumbledore [the fictional book character] as Gay
J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall. After reading briefly from the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she took questions from audience members.
Can fan fiction be characterized as private study? Not likely. If a fan wrote a sequel to a book she loved and put it in a drawer, or shared a copy with a few close friends, you could argue private study, but once posted to the internet and shared with the entire world, it is impossible to make the argument that it is private in the legal sense of the term.
In 2007, Rowling revealed that Dumbledore was, indeed, gay. At the time, this was often seen as a progressive move, angering conservatives and delighting those invested in diversity: a beloved fictional character and mentor figure being queer seemed like good news to the queer community indeed! However, critical reflection on both the real-world politics surrounding this revelation, and the actual storylines in the novels themselves, can serve as a sobering reminder of just how non-radical, and even conservative, this big revelation was.
Furthermore, even if one were to ignore the past 15 years and just go back to the moment when Rowling originally revealed that Dumbledore was gay, the original arguments from 2007 as to why this was not particularly progressive still stand. Rather than choosing to include an openly gay character in her books, Rowling avoided publicly confirming his sexuality until after the book was safely published and sold.
The problem with Dumbledore is twofold. First of all, if he had been confirmed as gay, he would be the only explicitly queer character in the entire book series, meaning that the only version of queerness that readers would have access to would be one associated with evil. This is particularly egregious considering that the novels have a huge cast of characters spanning seven novels: the idea that literally none of these characters are queer except for the one whose queer desire led to violence is pretty obviously homophobic.
I love these books, I love the characters, and I love the world they have created for us all to enjoy. I can't tell you how many hours I have spent on Pottermore, being sorted into my House (go Gryffindor!), figuring out what my wand was, exploring the updates about Ilvermorny, and more. When it was announced that they were adapting Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them into a movie series, it was as if Christmas came early; I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to explore a whole new realm of the Harry Potter universe.
There is another group that has an issue with the character of Albus Dumbledore. After the original book series concluded, J.K. Rowling revealed that Dumbledore was in fact gay, and what's even more, he was romantically attracted to Gellert Grindlewald, a notorious evil wizard on Voldemort's level, when they were younger.
In the book series, the author uses characters such as Harry's guardian family to depict a middle-class, modern world. Harry's family is weak and mean-spirited; wealthy characters are greedy and villainous. In the movie series, visuals like neighborhoods with hundreds of identical houses reinforce the idea of mindless conformity.
Perhaps the most famous - and controversial - progressive stance in the Harry Potteruniverse never appeared in the books. Rather, in a post-release conference for the final installment, Rowling announced that the character of Harry Potter's caring mentor (Albus Dumbledore) was gay. Casting a major heroic character as homosexual might be another subtle influence in Internet Pioneers' generally accepting attitudes toward homosexuality.
Should ground-breaking literature be so easily edited and redefined at the whim of an author, or left alone once it hits shelves? The Fantastic Beasts film series is fresh material from Rowling, but decades after the introduction of the Potter books, all the main roles are once again occupied by white characters, with minorities being designated to outlying roles in the story. There was also further controversy around the Nagini character in the film, in which the only Asian actor cast played a snake that has no agency in a white-centric world. Nagini also featured heavily in the marketing materials, but had no real impact on the overarching narrative.
The wildly popular Harry Potter books and their author, J.K. Rowling, have already been blasted by Christian conservatives for glamorizing witchcraft and the occult. The fantasy series is now charged with encouraging homosexuality following the author's announcement that one of the novels' main characters is gay.
In 2007, J.K. Rowling revealed that even if it wasn't completely spelled out in her books, Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was meant to be a gay character. During a reading of her final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she answered a fan question as to whether Dumbledore had ever fallen in love, saying, "Dumbledore is gay, actually." When the news was received warmly by the crowd, she expressed a bit of regret that she hadn't been more clear about that before, saying, "I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy."
His death would be devastating enough, but the way it was described on the page was positively brutal. "Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face," Rowling wrote in the book. She would later apologize to fans for claiming the fictional life of a character who was so beloved by readers. In 2015, she tweeted, "Today I would just like to say: I'm really sorry about Fred. *Bows head in acceptance of your reasonable ire.*"
Make all the memes you want, gays, but remember: J.K. Rowling is happy to give interviews until the hippogriffs come home about Dumbledore getting his cheeks clapped, but she and the filmmakers have consistently refused to present him as a fully-realized gay man on screen -- it's too late for the books, unless she wants to pull a Stephanie Meyer and rewrite one from Dumbledore's perspective -- possibly because they feel that it would alienate their "family" audience. Dumbledore is also apparently the only queer person in the entire Wizarding World extended universe, which is frankly ridiculous. Professor Sprout is a lesbian icon! Luna Lovegood? Bisexual. St. Mungos must offer some kind of magical HRT! Until Rowling and Warner Bros. decide to make their characters gay on screen, everything else is just fan fiction. OK, one more for the road. 2ff7e9595c
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