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Just Another Essay



The State of Masculinity in the Western World

Essay Posted October 23, 2007 by James E. Nelson

J.K. Rowling has started speaking out about all things Potter and has dropped a couple of bombshells in the process. As it was reported in the blogosphere last week, the two pertinent points are (1) the Harry Potter series are Christian books and (2) Dumbledore is gay. Here are the two comments she made (direct quotes from Rowling):

To me [the religious parallels have] always been obvious, but I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going.

That quote is a bit convoluted, so let me expland and clarify: She didn’t think inserting Christianity into a children’s story was a problem, but she was afraid that introducing it explicitly would reveal too much about where the story was going. In other words, she didn’t want to build a spoiler into the story.

As to Dumbledore’s sexual orientation (and this comes from The Leaky Cauldron blog), it began with a question: “Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?”

Rowling: My truthful answer to you. . . I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [Ovation.] . . . Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how I always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair. . . [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, “Dumbledore's gay!” [laughter] “If I’d known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!”

Both of these statements deserve some unpacking. First, concerning Potter’s Christian themes: It was certainly nice for Potter fans who are Christians to hear that the inclusion of so many Christian themes and allusions was intentional. Everyone suspected it was the case and wondered why Rowling was so coy about it. Her explanation about not wanting the books to be predictable cleared that up.

But that being said, it is not Rowling’s claim that the books are rooted in Christianity that makes it so. If Rowling had intended the Potter books to be Christian allegory but instead got it rather wrong and wrote a story that her readers recognized as gnostic, Rowling’s intent would have been a moot point. This is perfectly illustrated with Dumbledore.

Rowling is a nominal Christian (by her own admission) and, like all of us, deeply influenced by the wider culture. From that perspective, a collection of Christian themes fits quite nicely with a gay headmaster; especially for a nominal Christian who grew up in the Church of England and is now a part of the Church of Scotland.

But it is the nature of books that they have a life of their own that is often distinct from the self-conscious worldview of the author. And in fact readers and critics from many different traditions recognized the classical Christian underpinnings of the books (and never suspected Dumbledore was gay) long before Rowling said anything about either subject.

It is also worth noting that not everyone agrees. Most famously, the pope condemned the books. I’m sure that Rowling’s recent statements would not have changed John Paul II’s opinion of the books had he still been alive. Similarly, Fr Jonathan Tobias (Second Terrace blog) has not changed his opinion that Rowling goofed in a big way (in terms of the Christian allegory at work) by allowing Harry Potter to live even though Rowling has said that she did it as part of a resurrection theme at work in the final book. Fr. Jonathan argues that the larger Christian theme would have worked far better if Harry would have died (and stayed dead) along with Lord Voldemort.

It is not Rowling’s claim as to its meaning that makes the scene function as a Christian allegory; it is rather whether the resurrection scene does or doesn’t work in its own right as part of the book. In short, literary works have a life of their own no matter what the intentions of the author. In the end, it doesn’t matter what Rowling says about them; they are what they are.

And this speaks to J.K. Rowling’s second bombshell: Dumbledore’s sexual orientation. Since the books neither say anything explicitly about this nor even allude to the subject, the matter is insignificant in terms of the books. Several Christian bloggers have been deeply disappointed in Rowling for conceiving the headmaster as a homosexual and then outing him now. But I have a rather different take on the whole matter. (And let me be clear that this is speculation. Rowling has not explained the significance of this bit of information in any of her interviews or writings, although she does indicate that Dumbledore was a particularly difficult character to develop.)

Rowling confesses that Dumbledore is, in the end, a rather dark figure:

I love Dumbledore more for his frailties but it was important I think to show, and it was part of Harry becoming a man to realize that even this man he revered is alone, had his frailties, had made his mistakes. After all, Dumbledore is, although he seems to be so benign for six books, he's quite a Machiavellian figure really. He's pulling a lot of strings. Harry has been a puppet to an extent but I think, I hope I led the reader to a place in the seventh book where they could actually feel sympathy for Snape rather than Dumbledore. That was the trajectory of that story that I was aiming for. [From her Los Angeles “Open Book Tour” interview as reported by the HPANA blog.]

So how do you make a Machiavellian figure kind and loving? A Machiavellian figure is so macho, so controlling, so . . . masculine, as masculinity is understood in modern society. Dumbledore needed a kinder and gentler side if he were to be believable as Harry Potter’s beloved headmaster. In the modern scheme of things, you make him gay, give him a “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” makeover. Take your average Machiavellian tyrant, have “Fashion Savant” Carson Kressley and “Culture Vulture” Jai Rodriguez (two of the Fab Five from “Queer Eye ...”) give him a personality makeover and voila you have a Headmaster that even sensitive Harry Potter can respect.[1]

The fact that J.K. Rowling found it necessary to think of Dumbledore as gay says a lot more about the state of masculinity in the modern world than it does about homosexuality (which was simply never an issue in the book).

For further evidence from our side of the pond, consider Hillary’s “kinder and gentler” campaign of the last few weeks. Robin Young, the host of NPR’sHere and Now interviewed Kay Henderson on the subject, and Henderson’s response was that Hillary’s handlers were worried that she was going to hammered for her stance on the Iraq War and terrorism as it is both perceived and portrayed in this campaign. In order to counteract the developing problem, Hillary is acting more feminine.

Rewind nearly a decade to the waning years of the Clinton presidency. After Monica-gate President Clinton was widely seen as passive and ineffective while Hillary was viewed as the one wearing the pants in the family. Even in this period Hillary had a problem with an image of masculinity.

Henderson’s point (although she didn’t say it in so many words) is that being gung-ho for a war is a masculine thing. Let’s extend that. The Machiavellian Neoconservative vision of the world where we impose democracy on everyone no matter whether they want it or not, and no matter how many people have to be killed in order to achieve it, is a guy thing. It’s masculine. And candidate Hillary voted for it in the Senate. The best way for the candidate to distance herself from Machiavellian tendencies is to bring out her feminine side.

Or in the case of Dumbledore, celebrate one’s gayness.

And at this point we do indeed enter into an area that is profoundly pagan: Masculinity represents sin while femininity embodies righteousness. It is a disturbing revelation about the author of the Harry Potter series. But let me be clear, the disturbance is not so much about the homosexuality question (which is bound to be speculated about in nearly every public forum in this day and age), but rather about Rowling’s view of what makes men tick (and what it says about her subconscious assumptions about good and evil). As wonderful a portrayal of Christian themes through fantasy as the Potter books are, her private views of how goodness and badness (sin and righteousness) are portrayed is deeply flawed.

Footnote

[1] I generally don’t explain my pop culture references, but this one is obscure enough to warrant a footnote. “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” was a television show on the Bravo cable television network nearly a decade ago. While it was (and remains) a cult classic, Bravo is an obscure t.v. network that many people have never heard of. “Queer Eye” was the old joke, “Why is it all the cute, clean, and polite eligible bachelors are gay?” writ large. Each episode featured a heterosexual man who was hopelessly out of style and had repeatedly failed to find a girlfriend. The “Fab Five” (as the the gay stars were known) spent the show remaking the guy so that he would be attractive to women. It was sort of a “This Old House” that featured a lovable loser instead of a broken down house.