Put Dumbledore Back in the Closet

(2 of 2)

I had always given the Potter books a pass on the lack of gay characters because, especially at first, they were intended for little kids. But particularly with the appearance of the long, violent later books, Rowling allowed her witches and wizards to grow up, to get zits and begin romances, to kill and die. It seemed odd that not even a minor student character at Hogwarts was gay, especially since Rowling was so p.c. about making her magical creatures of different races and species, incomes, national origins, and developmental abilities. In a typical passage, the briefly mentioned Blaise Zabini is described as "a tall black boy with high cheekbones and long, slanting eyes." Would it have been so difficult to write in a line in which Zabini takes the exquisitely named Justin Finch-Fletchley to the Yule Ball?

And then there's Dumbledore himself. I don't mind saying I got misty when Rowling killed off Dumbledore in Half-Blood Prince. His twinkling eyes, his flowing manteau, his unfailing (if at times fortune-cookie-ish) wisdom—Rowling made it impossible not to revere him.

But here is a gay man as de-sexed as any priest—and, to uncomfortably extend the analogy, whose greatest emotional bond is with an adolescent boy: scarred, orphaned, needy Harry. Rowling said at Carnegie Hall that in her conception of his character, Dumbledore had fallen in love long ago with Gellert Grindelwald when the two were just teenagers. But Grindelwald turned out to be evil, which apparently broke Dumbledore's heart. (Quite evil: Grindelwald is Rowling's Hitler figure, opening a camp called "Nurmengard" for political enemies in the 1940s. Dumbledore/Churchill eventually defeats Grindelwald/Hitler in a 1945 duel.)

But as far as we know, Dumbledore had not a single fully realized romance in 115 years of life. That's pathetic, and a little creepy. It's also a throwback to an era of pop culture when the only gay characters were those who committed suicide or were murdered. As Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (1981) points out, in film after film of the mid-century—Rebel Without a Cause; Rebecca; Suddenly, Last Summer—the gay characters must pay for their existence with death. Like a lisping weakling, Dumbledore is a painfully selfless, celibate, dead gay man, so forgive me if I don't see Rowling's revelation as great progress.

Am I making too much of this? Undoubtedly. Some of the best Star Trek fan fiction—and there is so much you couldn't read it all in a lifetime—involves steamy Kirk-Spock love affairs. So it will be with the Potter world, as Rowling has acknowledged. Lasting books cease to be their authors' property; we are now all free to imagine a gay life more whole and fulfilling than the one Rowling gave Dumbledore. But it would have been better if she had just left the old girl to rest in peace.

1. Gore's Bold, Unrealistic Plan to Save the Planet
2. Star Wars: Episode 3.5?
3. Batman Is Back — TIME Reviews The Dark Knight
4. What's Next for the HIV Vaccine?
5. Nuclear Brinksmanship
6. A New Prophet for the Polygamists?
7. The Dalai Lama's Buddhist Foes
8. An Olympic Equestrian Tragedy
9. The Pursuit of Teen Girl Purity
10. Warming to the Kindle