Published: October 29, 2007
In some circles the “Harry Potter” news that erupted a little over a week ago still inspires as much amazement as Hagrid’s pet, the half-horse, half-eagle hippogriff. And the Web chatter has been as deafening as the noise in Hogwarts dining hall before the sorting ceremony determines the fates of entering students. Dumbledore, it turns out, the wise and wizened wizard of “Harry Potter” fame, is taking his place alongside other media figures, like Bert and Ernie and Tinky Winky of the Teletubbies. For all, sexuality has become an issue. Dumbledore is, as his creator, J. K. Rowling, asserted at Carnegie Hall, gay.
Dumbledore? The master wizard of the age, whose guidance of Hogwarts put that British boarding school for young wizards in the vanguard of the war against evil? Who watched over Harry from his infancy, schooling him for the last and greatest battle? Who knew? But the real shock in Ms. Rowling’s declaration is not that Dumbledore thought about sexual encounters with men, it’s that he thought about sex at all, given the need to thwart Voldemort’s plot for world domination.More...
In her outing of Dumbledore, Ms. Rowling seemed to be confirming the smarmy kiss-and-tell insinuations of her gossip-mongering character Rita Skeeter, whose lurid biography of the apparently saintly headmaster — titled “The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore” — is described in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
“Coming next week,” a newspaper article on Skeeter promises, “the shocking story of the flawed genius considered by many to be the greatest wizard of his generation.” Skeeter drops teasing hints about Dumbledore’s “murky past,” about his not being “exactly broad-minded” and suggests that in his mentoring of Harry there is an “unnatural interest,” something “unhealthy, even sinister.” As for the idea that Ms. Rowling suggested — that as a teenage prodigy, Dumbledore had a homoerotic infatuation with another prodigious young wizard, Grindelwald (who later went over to what in “Star Wars” is called the Dark Side) — Skeeter hints at this in coded allusions.
She proposes that when the two friends had a falling out in a dramatic duel, Grindelwald did not fight but “conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and” — the passage then gives way to an obvious (in retrospect) sexual double entendre.
Such homoerotic imagery, at any rate, suggests a strong mischievous streak, not just among these dueling wizards but in Ms. Rowling herself, their contemporary chronicler in the world of Muggles (which is, of course, how the wizards refer to those of us lacking wands or the magic to use them).
So in keeping with this playful spirit, her announcement of Dumbledore’s back story inspired the retrospective application of gaydar across the Web. “Let’s run the gay-check, shall we?” Andrew Sullivan proposed, writing about Dumbledore in his blog (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish): “No known female companion ever. Brilliant in school. Befriends a despised classmate. Childhood crush on another boy.”
Playing off other caricatures, comments on sites like imao.us mention Dumbledore’s “purple robe with glittery silver stars” or winkingly allude to the Hogwarts “policy of Don’t ask, don’t spell.”
One commentator posted: “Oh, who cares? The whole bloody lot of them were gay as far I’m concerned. All those hours of movies and not a single car chase, shootout or kung fu fight.”
But it is possible that Ms. Rowling may be mistaken about her own character. She may have invented Hogwarts and all the wizards within it, she may have created the most influential fantasy books since J. R. R. Tolkien, and she may have woven her spell over thousands of pages and seven novels, but there seems to be no compelling reason within the books for her after-the-fact assertion. Of course it would not be inconsistent for Dumbledore to be gay, but the books’ accounts certainly don’t make it necessary. The question is distracting, which is why it never really emerges in the books themselves. Ms. Rowling may think of Dumbledore as gay, but there is no reason why anyone else should.
Yes, of course, Dumbledore acknowledges that at the bleakest moment of his life, when he was still a teenager and feeling “trapped and wasted,” the appearance of a charismatic friend “inflamed me” and lured him into fantastical dreams of power and influence. “Two clever, arrogant boys with a shared obsession,” he recalls, resulted in “two months of insanity.” But his regrets lasted a lifetime.
What was that insanity? If it was primarily a matter of sexual attraction or sexual identity, it makes Dumbledore’s reaction less plausible. He felt there were profound betrayals latent in his behavior and his ideas during that period: He resented his troubled siblings; he took on an inflated idea of his own importance; he thought wizards superior to Muggles. These attitudes had tragic consequences that ultimately transformed his views of virtue and power and altered his ambitions. Gayness is irrelevant.
As for his later celibacy, it has the echo of a larger renunciation and a greater devotion. That is, after all, what the fantasy genre is all about. The master wizard is not a sexual being; he has shelved personal cares and embraced a higher mission. And if he indulges in sex, it marks his downfall, as it did, so legend tells us, with Merlin, the tradition’s first wizard, who is seduced by one of the Lady of the Lake’s minions. Tolkien’s wizards — both good and evil — are so focused on their cosmic tasks that sexuality seems a petty matter. Gandalf eventually transcends the physical realm altogether.
Ms. Rowling quite consciously makes Dumbledore a flawed, more human wizard than these models, but now goes too far. There is something alien about the idea of a mature Dumbledore being called gay or, for that matter, being in love at all. He may have his earthly difficulties and desires, but in most ways he remains the genre wizard, superior to the world around him.
There is really a puckish impulse at work in Ms. Rowling’s declaration, a provocation evident in the books themselves. She sets the epic in a British school long associated with landed privilege and wealth. But throughout she undercuts the claims of that old world. Those who believe in the importance of ancestry and inherited powers turn out to be easily corruptible and morally blind — tools for Voldemort.
Her heroes are the hybrids, the misfits, those of mixed blood, all bearing scars of loss and love: the half-giant Hagrid, the mudblood Hermione (whose parents were not wizards), the poverty-stricken Ron, the orphaned Harry. Perhaps speaking of Dumbledore as gay was just a matter of creating another diverse rebel against orthodoxy.
This is the formula for much popular fiction, but Ms. Rowling refuses to be content with simply rejecting the old order and championing a morally vague multiculturalism. The pure-bloods here are blinded by their pride, but Harry and his friends see something more profound, a threat that goes beyond self-interest and identity. This is why Dumbledore’s supposed gayness is ultimately as unimportant as Ron’s shabby clothes. These wounded outsiders recognize the nature of evil, and finally that is what matters.
Connections is a critic’s perspective on arts and ideas.
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