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One of the strangest things about embarking on this degree has been the fan studies aspect of it. Don't get me wrong, it was entirely my choice to include a chapter on fandom in my thesis. It's just...the hoop jumping? I had to fill out an ethics form and have it signed off by a committee in order to do something that I've already been doing on a daily(ish) basis for the last fourteen years - that is, talk to people on the internet.
It's all for a very good reason - one that I'm 100% behind - but that doesn't mean it's not surreal.
Also surreal is the ability to turn around and go 'oh hell no' to some of the books I have to read and then proceed to nitpick the fuck out of them.
I mean, a book of essays on Harry Potter crossed my To Read pile earlier this week. (I say that like I hadn't checked it out of the library weeks ago and then only just got round to reading it yesterday, which is what actually happened.) And yeah. My thesis isn't even on Harry Potter, but thanks to the sheer span of fandoms covered in transmedia and fandom studies, I kind of had to read it anyway. (At least it wasn't Star Trek. Again.) And I couldn't take it seriously. At all. I ripped it to shreds and then handed it back feeling vaguely guilty like I should be ashamed of myself for landing so hard on the fan side of aca/fandom.
I mean, there was this one essay that could have been fantastic - it was all about the medical side of the Potter series - had the author...read the books first? Just tiny details that didn't really detract from his point but that turned me into that person regardless.
One of the other essays really made me think, though. It essentially summed up the 'Gay Dumbledore: Yay or Nay' debate that sprung up after Rowling outed him, and then came down screaming "NAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!" until I had to wonder if the author, like Mr Medicine up there, had read the books at all? Or if it was just me in my lonely corner over here who had seen the ho-yay all over Deathly Hallows even before Rowling's revelation. (I may be a slash writer, but I'm not that bad, I don't think. Maybe I am. Who can judge themselves that fairly? But my inherent dislike for Dumbledore kind of outweighs anything I might have gained from going "yup, he and Grindelwald were banging" halfway through that book.)
This looks like a good time to point out that Essay Author was discounting Rowling's word on the matter because - and I paraphrase here - ignoring authors' extra-textual revelations is what literary theorists DO. And so, turning to the books, she saw no evidence to support Dumbledore being gay because it was never explicitly stated in the narrative.
This, of course, opens up the whole representation issue. Does Dumbledore count as LGBT+ positive because Rowling has said he's gay? Or does he not because he never came out to Harry personally at any point. Essay Author, who apparently reads less buttsex into her subtext than I do, claims he's not. People can only be positively represent the LGBT+ spectrum if they're out and proud and fluttering around Hogwarts in a cloud of glitter. (That last bit is almost an exaggeration - she did mention looking for stereotypical tropes of homosexuality within the narrative because...reasons?) Except, there are two major issues that she overlooked.
Issue One: In what universe do headmasters routinely come out of the closet to their students?
The relationship between Dumbledore and Harry is an unusual one, I'll admit. As a leader in the war and, until a point, the only person who truly knows Harry's destined role within it, Dumbledore keeps Harry closer than usual. He manages some aspects of Harry's life to a degree that would worry most educational figures, and then intentionally turns a blind eye to others. I could rant about the exact nature of Dumbledore's relationship with Harry for days, so I'm going to move on now, but let's just say that the entire thing is entirely too Jeremy Bentham for my tastes. The point is: Dumbledore's primary role within the school is that of headmaster. Basically, high-level admin. Harry is a student. A special student, to be sure, what with his whole Dark Lord-defeating destiny and all, but a student nontheless, and for the most part there is a distance between Dumbledore and Harry that suggests that someone somewhere is trying to maintain the boundaries headmaster/student relationship. That all goes to hell in Half-Plotted FanFic - I mean Half-Blood Prince - but yeah. Until the sixth book, Harry and Dumbledore meet a couple of times a year, usually when Harry has just narrowly escaped death. They aren't exactly bosom-buddies.
I'll repeat that. Harry and Dumbledore aren't friends. They're allies. Harry respects and admires Dumbledore a great deal, and he follows through with Dumbledore's plan, I can't deny that. Dumbledore claims to love Harry a great deal and he mentors him, but that doesn't stop him from actively plotting Harry's death. There is no friendship angle there that would justify Dumbledore opening the closet door for Harry's sake. There isn't any mentoring reason, either. By Half-Blood Prince - the book where Harry and Dumbledore are closest to each other - it's pretty well decided in the narrative that Harry identifies as straight (though I'll continue to write him as queer until you take my laptop from my cold, dead hands because that's what fan writers do). He's not in a situation where, struggling with his sexuality, a sympathetic and empathetic word from a respected authority on the matter might have helped. Some of Rowling's readers might have been in that situation, and yes it would have been nice to see in the text, but there's no reason given within the narrative to justify it being there.
Issue Two: Think, for just a second, who Dumbledore was in love with.
Like, really think about it for a second.
Dumbledore was someone who was revered as a great wizard by a significant portion of the population, who held important positions in government and was trusted to provide a safe (ha!) and high-quality (*gigglesnort*) educational environment for young wizards and witches, and who defeated a Dark Lord. He was also in love with that Dark Lord. A Dark Lord whose location and regime echoes that of another megalomaniac who was kicking about in Europe at the time - right down to the sinister philosophical inscriptions over the gates of their prisons/concentration camps.
Dumbledore was in love with Wizard Hiter.
He even, up until a point, believed in the same philosophies. Certainly, he didn't stop believing in the "greater good", although what he saw as "good" was altered. I suppose a Muggle comparison would be this: a British anti-Semetic eugenicist (and yes, there were quite a lot of them) had a crisis of conscience and realised that Hitler was taking it a bit too far, so he signed up to fight. Now imagine that that anti-Semetic eugenicist was, after fighting bravely and becoming something of a war hero, elected to hold a couple of significant political positions and given the role of headmaster at, say, Eton. And now imagine that one of his school's top students decided, all on his own, that 'hey, maybe Hitler had it right!' and decided to go on a genocidal rampage of his own and that the anti-Semetic eugenicist - because it was quite a large crisis of conscience and what's happening is really, plainly awful - has to convince people to fight against this lunatic ex-student of his. He has to convince not only the general populace, but his students as well - and especially one student, who has to die for this Neo-Nazi ex-student to be defeated.
In that situation, why on earth would he come out and say it? "For one delirious summer, in the springtime of my youth, I was in love with Wizard Hitler and fully supported the whole concentration camp idea. But no, this guy is the really evil one we have to stop." Bang up PR job that would be.
As much as I like to disagree vehemently with Dumbledore as a whole, by not doing what Essay Author up there claims he should have done (screamed his love for Grindelwald from the astronomy tower and then flounced off to watch Ru Paul on Wizard Netflix?), essentially made sure that there was someone people could flock to instead of Voldemort. (I mean, yeah, they could have gone to the MInistry, but that's a whole other kettle of corruption.) He was a war leader as well as a headmaster. Telling anyone about his love affair with Grindelwald - even if it was in his formative years - may have had a disastrous and destabilising effect on his power base. It was bad enough in Deathly Hallows, but by that point he was dead and things were destabilised anyway (because leaving half-educated seventeen year olds in charge of your resistance is a bit silly).
In conclusion, Dumbledore remained closeted for hella good reasons.
But does that mean he's a negative LGBT+ figure? Essay Author says yes - or that he's not gay at all because her brand of literary theory means that a) we can't take Rowling's word for it, and b) he doesn't make enough flamboyant hand gestures to be stereotypically gay enough for him to be read that way.
I call bullshit. On all of that. Mostly on the second part, because untangling the thorny mess that is the relationship between literary theorists and the authors they study is going to do nothing but make me flee my academic field and I'd like to at least get my PhD before I do that.
In Dumbledore, we have a respected war leader and educator whose creator wrote him as gay. He's not flamboyantly gay, no, though there's something to be said about those robes. He's powerful. He's (very) flawed. He's multi-faceted. He's an intelligent, nuanced character who - no matter from what angle you do it - is terrifically fun to explore. And he's gay, quoth the author. She wrote him that way knowing him to be gay, even if it didn't make it into the books - and she released that information to the public later on and didn't hoard it to herself.
Think what you like about Rowling's extra-textual revelations, but the moment when she outed Dumbledore was one where a pretty awesome, non-stereotypical (albeit divisive) character was handed to the LGBT+ community. And that, sorry Essay Author, is something powerful.
TL;DR: I'm still more of a fangirl than I am an academic and I waffle a lot.
(Crossposted to my LJ.)
It's all for a very good reason - one that I'm 100% behind - but that doesn't mean it's not surreal.
Also surreal is the ability to turn around and go 'oh hell no' to some of the books I have to read and then proceed to nitpick the fuck out of them.
I mean, a book of essays on Harry Potter crossed my To Read pile earlier this week. (I say that like I hadn't checked it out of the library weeks ago and then only just got round to reading it yesterday, which is what actually happened.) And yeah. My thesis isn't even on Harry Potter, but thanks to the sheer span of fandoms covered in transmedia and fandom studies, I kind of had to read it anyway. (At least it wasn't Star Trek. Again.) And I couldn't take it seriously. At all. I ripped it to shreds and then handed it back feeling vaguely guilty like I should be ashamed of myself for landing so hard on the fan side of aca/fandom.
I mean, there was this one essay that could have been fantastic - it was all about the medical side of the Potter series - had the author...read the books first? Just tiny details that didn't really detract from his point but that turned me into that person regardless.
One of the other essays really made me think, though. It essentially summed up the 'Gay Dumbledore: Yay or Nay' debate that sprung up after Rowling outed him, and then came down screaming "NAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!" until I had to wonder if the author, like Mr Medicine up there, had read the books at all? Or if it was just me in my lonely corner over here who had seen the ho-yay all over Deathly Hallows even before Rowling's revelation. (I may be a slash writer, but I'm not that bad, I don't think. Maybe I am. Who can judge themselves that fairly? But my inherent dislike for Dumbledore kind of outweighs anything I might have gained from going "yup, he and Grindelwald were banging" halfway through that book.)
This looks like a good time to point out that Essay Author was discounting Rowling's word on the matter because - and I paraphrase here - ignoring authors' extra-textual revelations is what literary theorists DO. And so, turning to the books, she saw no evidence to support Dumbledore being gay because it was never explicitly stated in the narrative.
This, of course, opens up the whole representation issue. Does Dumbledore count as LGBT+ positive because Rowling has said he's gay? Or does he not because he never came out to Harry personally at any point. Essay Author, who apparently reads less buttsex into her subtext than I do, claims he's not. People can only be positively represent the LGBT+ spectrum if they're out and proud and fluttering around Hogwarts in a cloud of glitter. (That last bit is almost an exaggeration - she did mention looking for stereotypical tropes of homosexuality within the narrative because...reasons?) Except, there are two major issues that she overlooked.
Issue One: In what universe do headmasters routinely come out of the closet to their students?
The relationship between Dumbledore and Harry is an unusual one, I'll admit. As a leader in the war and, until a point, the only person who truly knows Harry's destined role within it, Dumbledore keeps Harry closer than usual. He manages some aspects of Harry's life to a degree that would worry most educational figures, and then intentionally turns a blind eye to others. I could rant about the exact nature of Dumbledore's relationship with Harry for days, so I'm going to move on now, but let's just say that the entire thing is entirely too Jeremy Bentham for my tastes. The point is: Dumbledore's primary role within the school is that of headmaster. Basically, high-level admin. Harry is a student. A special student, to be sure, what with his whole Dark Lord-defeating destiny and all, but a student nontheless, and for the most part there is a distance between Dumbledore and Harry that suggests that someone somewhere is trying to maintain the boundaries headmaster/student relationship. That all goes to hell in Half-Plotted FanFic - I mean Half-Blood Prince - but yeah. Until the sixth book, Harry and Dumbledore meet a couple of times a year, usually when Harry has just narrowly escaped death. They aren't exactly bosom-buddies.
I'll repeat that. Harry and Dumbledore aren't friends. They're allies. Harry respects and admires Dumbledore a great deal, and he follows through with Dumbledore's plan, I can't deny that. Dumbledore claims to love Harry a great deal and he mentors him, but that doesn't stop him from actively plotting Harry's death. There is no friendship angle there that would justify Dumbledore opening the closet door for Harry's sake. There isn't any mentoring reason, either. By Half-Blood Prince - the book where Harry and Dumbledore are closest to each other - it's pretty well decided in the narrative that Harry identifies as straight (though I'll continue to write him as queer until you take my laptop from my cold, dead hands because that's what fan writers do). He's not in a situation where, struggling with his sexuality, a sympathetic and empathetic word from a respected authority on the matter might have helped. Some of Rowling's readers might have been in that situation, and yes it would have been nice to see in the text, but there's no reason given within the narrative to justify it being there.
Issue Two: Think, for just a second, who Dumbledore was in love with.
Like, really think about it for a second.
Dumbledore was someone who was revered as a great wizard by a significant portion of the population, who held important positions in government and was trusted to provide a safe (ha!) and high-quality (*gigglesnort*) educational environment for young wizards and witches, and who defeated a Dark Lord. He was also in love with that Dark Lord. A Dark Lord whose location and regime echoes that of another megalomaniac who was kicking about in Europe at the time - right down to the sinister philosophical inscriptions over the gates of their prisons/concentration camps.
Dumbledore was in love with Wizard Hiter.
He even, up until a point, believed in the same philosophies. Certainly, he didn't stop believing in the "greater good", although what he saw as "good" was altered. I suppose a Muggle comparison would be this: a British anti-Semetic eugenicist (and yes, there were quite a lot of them) had a crisis of conscience and realised that Hitler was taking it a bit too far, so he signed up to fight. Now imagine that that anti-Semetic eugenicist was, after fighting bravely and becoming something of a war hero, elected to hold a couple of significant political positions and given the role of headmaster at, say, Eton. And now imagine that one of his school's top students decided, all on his own, that 'hey, maybe Hitler had it right!' and decided to go on a genocidal rampage of his own and that the anti-Semetic eugenicist - because it was quite a large crisis of conscience and what's happening is really, plainly awful - has to convince people to fight against this lunatic ex-student of his. He has to convince not only the general populace, but his students as well - and especially one student, who has to die for this Neo-Nazi ex-student to be defeated.
In that situation, why on earth would he come out and say it? "For one delirious summer, in the springtime of my youth, I was in love with Wizard Hitler and fully supported the whole concentration camp idea. But no, this guy is the really evil one we have to stop." Bang up PR job that would be.
As much as I like to disagree vehemently with Dumbledore as a whole, by not doing what Essay Author up there claims he should have done (screamed his love for Grindelwald from the astronomy tower and then flounced off to watch Ru Paul on Wizard Netflix?), essentially made sure that there was someone people could flock to instead of Voldemort. (I mean, yeah, they could have gone to the MInistry, but that's a whole other kettle of corruption.) He was a war leader as well as a headmaster. Telling anyone about his love affair with Grindelwald - even if it was in his formative years - may have had a disastrous and destabilising effect on his power base. It was bad enough in Deathly Hallows, but by that point he was dead and things were destabilised anyway (because leaving half-educated seventeen year olds in charge of your resistance is a bit silly).
In conclusion, Dumbledore remained closeted for hella good reasons.
But does that mean he's a negative LGBT+ figure? Essay Author says yes - or that he's not gay at all because her brand of literary theory means that a) we can't take Rowling's word for it, and b) he doesn't make enough flamboyant hand gestures to be stereotypically gay enough for him to be read that way.
I call bullshit. On all of that. Mostly on the second part, because untangling the thorny mess that is the relationship between literary theorists and the authors they study is going to do nothing but make me flee my academic field and I'd like to at least get my PhD before I do that.
In Dumbledore, we have a respected war leader and educator whose creator wrote him as gay. He's not flamboyantly gay, no, though there's something to be said about those robes. He's powerful. He's (very) flawed. He's multi-faceted. He's an intelligent, nuanced character who - no matter from what angle you do it - is terrifically fun to explore. And he's gay, quoth the author. She wrote him that way knowing him to be gay, even if it didn't make it into the books - and she released that information to the public later on and didn't hoard it to herself.
Think what you like about Rowling's extra-textual revelations, but the moment when she outed Dumbledore was one where a pretty awesome, non-stereotypical (albeit divisive) character was handed to the LGBT+ community. And that, sorry Essay Author, is something powerful.
TL;DR: I'm still more of a fangirl than I am an academic and I waffle a lot.
(Crossposted to my LJ.)
