Sunday, October 28, 2007

God bless the intelligence and common "horse sense" of the noble masses

An article in the Chicago Tribune argues that since J.K. Rowling never wrote Dumbledore's sexuality into any of the Harry Potter books, she cannot now say that he was gay. Which is wrong, of course.

Many of the more than 150 comments posted on the article so far see that. There are exceptions, but (when they're not doing the "I'm not a homophobe, but..." bit) they do the neat trick of defusing their own points.

One (from Birmingham, AL ) uses the screenname "GayRights EQUALSRacism." Another writes,

She cannot make something up after the boks (sic) have been writen.


Nu, I supose she cnt, cn she?

1 comment:

Richard said...

That dope in the Tribune is wrong at least three different ways.

First, of course a writer can know something about a character that never gets mentioned in the actual story if it isn't relevant. We have to assume Stephan Benzkofer has never written fiction, or at least had any published, if he believes that books are magical things of infinite dimensions that can be endlessly long and contain every single stray thought and notion an author may have. Wait a minute, this guy is an editor? Someone who asks writers to keep to strict word counts? Amazing.

Second, of course a writer may choose not to say something about a character explicitly because of outside pressures or concerns that have nothing to do with the story. For example, if this had been disclosed back in July, every last shred of publicity and news about the release would have been all about teh gay and nothing else. It wouldn't have been "last Harry Potter book goes on sale" -- it would have been "Rowling pens scandalous gay sex romp for kiddies!" nonstop 24/7.

But third and perhaps most importantly, as Rebecca Traister has documented here, it's quite clearly in the book after all.