Monday, October 29, 2007

He's Not Gay He's Just British

This is a warning. Cora Spondence is blogging for the next thirty days and I have decided to be her blogging partner, so quality may give way to quantity and a darker sense of humor may slip thru the self-editor. Ye’ve been warned.

Apparently, Albus Dumbledore was a queen. I guess you have to take J.K. Rowling at her word, she wrote the character, but it screams of a revisionist shock value attempt. It doesn’t bother me if Dumbledore hated to see Snape go but loved to watch him leave, but after roughly 3,000 pages I got the sense that the professors were asexual for all intents and purposes. I never thought about McGonagall’s relationship with her wand, even though she was all alone since Dumbledore was a friend of Dorothy. Rowling dealt with all of the kids’ sexuality in a strictly 1950’s kind of puppy love style – lots and lots of “snogging”, no “Don’t worry Ginny, you can’t get pregnant the first time. I promise.” But now, seemingly out of nowhere, Dumbledore liked assless chaps and show tunes. I guess my problem with it is that the revelation of Dumbledore’s taste for wet butt doesn’t do anything for the character or the story. It seems to me that it was Rowling’s farewell tweak to her religious zealot critics – a Wiccan homo. If this is the case then she should have gone the whole nine yards and made him a gay, transsexual, black, non-worshipping Jew, basically a cross between Sammy Davis Jr. and Little Richard. I don’t know if she would have sold fewer books or if the demographic of her audience would just have been a little bit different. Everybody else would be in their wizard robes, but the headmaster (giggle, giggle, snicker, snicker) would be in a belly shirt, daisy dukes, and jellies. He wouldn’t have the long hair and long beard. He would have a Quo Vadis with hi-lites and a goatee to match. I’m sorry, but I can’t think of any other borderline bigoted homosexual stereotypes right now. Please feel free to add any prejudiced comments you may have that I have missed.

3 comments:

MJ said...

I was hoping for more of the witty Dumbledore jokes you've been spouting off lately in person. They're a little lighter than this darker humor. But I was warned.

Cora Spondence said...

Sir Ian McKellan, Gandolf and gay.
Patrick Stewart, yes, my dear, I have it on good authority. John Travota, too. I'm glad Dumbledore wasn't a prancing poof in those pages(you gotta appreciate the alliteration right there)because statistically speaking it was inevitable. Headmaster? Nice one.

JSG said...

Pity that Rowling didn't know what to do once the anticipatory spotlight no longer glowed on her next manuscript.