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There has been, as you might expect, some reaction from certain Christians concerning J.K. Rowling's revelation that one of her characters is gay. Not all the reaction is what you might expect though. John Mark Reynolds, a Creationistwho has weebled on about how delightfully Christian the Harry Potter books are
is really, really upset, and insists that Ms. Rowling does not know her figment of her own imagination as well as he does. No way can Dumbledore be gay, he proclaims, and if he is, why did she not mention it earlier?
She wrote about Christianity openly by Book Seven, but if Dumbledore was gay, she decided to hide it. She hid it so well that there is no evidence of it.
But was it that well-hidden? In a comment on Making Light, Rob Hansen recalls a conversation with a literary critic:
I remember Roz Kaveney telling me at the time the book appeared that she read the Grindelward/Dumbledore relationship that way and that she figured Rowling had been careful to write it the way she had to forestall the howls of outrage from the usual far-right/religious reich cretins.
Comments elsewhere have linked to where Kaveney put that thought into writing but, naturally, I can't find any of them now. Nor does Reynolds' argument, that Rowling is no longer the sole "owner" of her own intellectual property, that coherent either.
No offense to an excellent author, but Dumbledore no longer belongs only to Rowling. He also belongs to her readers who have been given a series of books in which Rowling was free to say what she wanted to say.
Alas, for this argument, we have fanfic, where the readers take other authors' characters and write their own stories about them. If the fanfic is anything to go by, then the readers have concluded, in a loud and unanimous voice, that not only is Dumbledore gay (and probably really, really kinky with it), but so are all the other characters. And they're all at it with one another!
(via Pharyngula)
Posted in
Pooves and closet cases
and Popular Culture: Harry Potter
at 17:21. Last modified on October 23 2007 at 17:50.
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Comments
1: Posted by: Thomas | October 23, 2007 6:45 PM
The issue is one of verbiage. Of course Rowling owns the intellectual property of the Harry Potter franchise, or at least those parts of it that she has not sold or licensed to other entities.
The question is not one of ownership but rather of cultural appropriation. Fanfic notwithstanding, the cultural entity of Harry Potter is largely defined by its audience, this is true of virtually any work, not only Harry Potter. The text, itself, does not give Harry Potter it's cache. It's the love, the attention, the effort, the money and the identification of the audience. This is true of Star Wars, Shakespeare and Monday Night Football just as much as it is of Rowling's novels.
The HP fan base had taken a series of young adult novels and exalted them into the best selling books of the industrial era, turned them into a cultural monolith few other works of fiction ever reach and in doing so have made Rowling and a handful of other people very, very wealthy. Fans thusly and correctly have proprietary feelings regarding the franchise.
That having been said, I think it's all a bit silly and not exactly newsworthy but the feelings of adherents on both sides are entirely justified.
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