Mary Robinette Kowal - Dumbledore Is Gay, So Where's Fantasy's Pride Festival?
Back in October of 2007, Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling did something amazing: She told the world that Dumbledore was gay. What makes this remarkable is not that she chose to write Hogwarts' wizened headmaster as homosexual, but that she broke a firm fantasy stereotype by taking Dumbledore out of the closet. David Yates, the director of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as well as the upcoming Deathly Hallows has said, "He's a wonderful character, Dumbledore -- graceful, wise, powerful, quirky, terrific sense of humor, loves knitting. There's a jumble of things in there and his sexuality is just another thing." Meaning that rather than defining him by his sexuality, the books and movies let Dumbledore exist as a complete person. Not so in most other fantasy movies, where gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered characters tend to fall into one of two traps.
GLBT Equals Evil
Red Sonja (1985) -- According to the narrator, what is it that makes our heroine (Brigitte Nielsen) recognize Queen Gedren's (Sandahl Bergman) evil ways? Is it the pillaging of the landscape? Perhaps the slaughter of her entire family? No. It's that Queen Gedron thinks Sonja is hot. Now, see if you can follow this logic path: Evil Lesbian Queen Gedron kills Sonja's family, therefore Sonja hates all men. She's only whole again when she lets herself love a man at the end. Interesting argument.
300 (2007) -- Now, you might say that Red Sonja is a product of the times, so let's jump forward 20 years to 300. Meet Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro): He's evil, and part of the way you can tell that is because of the "perverse" way he dresses, with piercings and useless fashion accessories. Contrast the Persian ruler with the hypermasculine hero Leonidas, and you get a sense of the movie's stance towards homosexuality. Now, understand that I'm not saying gay characters can't be evil, but if the only representation of homosexuality is one of evil then the movie has made a statement, whether it wants to or not.
GLBT Equals Funny!
Mannequin (1987) -- Among the many things that makes this movie not good is the portrayal of Hollywood (Meshach Taylor), an overtly gay man who's played strictly for laughs (because, you know, being gay is funny). What's astonishing is that the script doesn't seem to have had the plan to draw Hollywood as horrifyingly broad as he is. The main character, Andrew McCarthy (Jonathan Switcher), doesn't even notice that Hollywood is gay. When another character makes a verbal slam, Andrew calls him a bigot. This is good to see, but it's a shame that the actual movie falls into the trap of setting the gay man up as comic relief.
Stardust (2007) -- Jump forward twenty years, and my how time stands still. Captain Shakespeare (Robert De Niro) is either gay or a cross-dresser -- either way he is firmly in the closet because he believes it will ruin his reputation. His fear, sadly, is an accurate reflection of the Western world view that affects a lot of people. The real problem is that his cross-dressing is played for laughs. Why? Because the idea of Robert De Niro, the quintessential guy's guy, in a dress is inherently funny. A woman in man's clothing doesn't generate laughs, but swap the genders and it becomes a riot. Emasculating someone in fantasy removes their strength and makes them a subject of ridicule.
You'll notice I've only touched on four movies. The reason is because there are very, very few fantasy flicks that even have GLBT characters in the first place. Go ahead and try to find one that doesn't fall into one of these two stereotypes.
I can point to exactly one, besides Dumbledore: A 2008 indie, Were the World Mine, which is a musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In it, a gay high school student discovers the recipe for Cupid's love potion. He runs around town making everyone fall in love with the first person they see. It raises questions about tolerance and acceptance. It also looks at the morality of forcing someone to change their sexual identity.
So if Dumbledore -- one of the most powerful fantasy figures next to Lord of the Rings' Gandalf -- can be "no big deal" gay, why can't the rest of the genre follow suit? Perhaps the homophobia can't be overcome until it's dealt with in a more honest and forthright manner. Or perhaps Dumbledore will herald a new era in fantastical gay pride. Ask me again when the Red Sonja remake comes out in 2010. I'm not holding my breath.
Mary Robinette Kowal is the winner of the 2008 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and a professional puppeteer. Her first novel Shades of Milk and Honey is being published by Tor in 2010.
Oh Hollywood...upon seeing the film as a kid, I never thought of him as being gay, either. Although that line where Jonathan introduces Emmy as his girlfriend and she's turned into a statue again is hilarious-
"Maybe I could get G.I. Joe and we could double sometime." :D
However, the captain in the book "Stardust" WASN'T a 'big whoopsy'. I have no idea why they made that change...although I believe a "MAD TV" sketch where they have DeNiro as the lead character who happens to be gay came before it, but wasn't as crazy as the movie.
I'd say our best bet for a decent depiction of homosexuals in fantasy film at the moment is, funny enough, the planned Warcraft film. Why? Raimi and Tapert. They've produced fantasy TV with either notable homoerotic subtext (Xena) or out gay characters (Legend of the Seeker and the forthcoming Spartacus series) and they've done it fairly well.
Are we only talking about Fantasy?
How about Ra from Stargate? Science fiction in the loosest of terms. When I first saw Xerxes in 300, that was the impression I got. Both are technically male but are supposed to be somewhat vague as to gender. I think Ra has an even stronger intimation that he is evil gay, especially being surrounded by boys as he is and taking pleasure in inflicting pain on them. Certainly not a positive association with GLBT.
There really is a challenge in portraying GLBT as fully developed characters, especially when the skewing of fantasy comes in, where even straight characters atypical. How do we show it on film, amidst all the magic, without diluting the rest of the aspects of their character?
Though Dumbledore is gay, he is also safely celibate and it is impossible to tell (at least so far) from the films. We also have the added difficulty of what being gay was during eras traditionally portrayed in fantasy such as the medieval period, Greco-Roman and Egyptian era. Great challenge that I think has been met within genre literature, but certainly not movies yet.
Wow, way to completely miss the point in 300. Xerxes was all about self-indulgence and hedonism, Leonidas was about a greater good (his people/culture and family) despite his power. So I'd say homosexuals living in denial of the biological imperative is accurately represented by Xerxes self-indulgent hedonism.
pysch0fred: Wow. Thank you for nicely demonstrating the point of this post, in real life. People have unfortunate ideas of what it means to be gay, lesbian, bi, or transgendered and usually revert to crude stereotypes based on inaccurate media portrayals.
Regarding 300 - Of course, in order to maintain the dichotomy, the film had to completely ignore the way homosexuality was thoroughly normalized and integrated into Spartan society.
Thank you for this blog post, Mary. It will provide even more fodder for discussion at this years Gaylaxicon, the annual LGBT science fiction / fantasy convention. The representation of LGBT people, or lack thereof, in sf & fantasy (film, tv, books, all media really) is always a great topic.
Thanks for the article; good stuff.
But I was a little surprised to see you use Dumbledore as a positive example of a portrayal of a gay character, given that there's no indication in the books or the movies that he's gay. (Everyone now knows that he is, or was supposed to be, but only because Rowling explicitly said so.)
You said that "rather than defining him by his sexuality, the books and movies let Dumbledore exist as a complete person." I would argue that rather than letting Dumbledore exist as a complete person (that is, complete with the degree of sexuality that most people have), the books and movies portray Dumbledore as having no particular sexual interests. (Nothing wrong with that per se--there are asexual people in the real world, and I don't mean to imply that those people are incomplete. But if Dumbledore was supposed to be gay, then the complete view of who he was was obscured in the books and the movies.) And the default ("unmarked") state of characters in modern Western literature is straight; that is, in the absence of information to the contrary, most of us tend to assume a given character is straight.
You mentioned several common stereotypes about GLBT folks in movies. Another common portrayal of them in movies (in general, not fantasy movies in particular) is as being so closeted that straight viewers don't even know they're there. Characters have often been coded as gay in various ways, letting gay viewers (and others familiar with the codes) recognize them while leaving other viewers oblivious. Dumbledore takes that to an extreme, being so closeted from viewers that even most people looking for coded gay characters didn't guess he was gay until Rowling said it.
So ... although it's great that Rowling portrayed a character positively and then said that he was gay, it would be even greater if there'd been some indication in the work itself that he was gay.
As Ami Chopine implied in an earlier comment, it's certainly possible that there'll be more of an indication of that in the remaining movies. (And I haven't seen the latest one yet, so can't comment on that.) But so far, I'm not seeing Dumbledore as a resounding success in terms of portrayals of gay characters in fantasy movies, except inasmuch as he doesn't perpetuate negative stereotypes.
PS: See also the movie and book The Celluloid Closet, about depictions of gay characters in movies. I haven't yet read or seen it, but I've heard good things about it, and I think discussions of it were the first places I saw discussions of coded gay characters.
That's an interesting point, Jed.
I thought that given that the POV characters are school children, I'm not sure that any of them would have had an awareness of the sexuality of any of their teachers. Certainly, there's none displayed in any of the others teachers. But you're right, faced with the lack of alternate clues, we do default to assuming someone is straight. Besides the fact that he knits, there aren't any other non-traditional things (allowing for being a wizard) about him.
Just as a hypothetical, given the constraints that the thing takes largely takes place in a boarding school and we only see Dumbledore through the eyes of the kids, what would have been appropriate?
PPS: Fwiw, I actually liked De Niro's character in Stardust; I felt that although he was initially played for laughs, he became more sympathetic and interesting as the movie went on, and I loved his crew's acceptance of him at the end of that sequence. And I was pleased by the casting of that role, too -- not only because I love De Niro as an actor, but also because it's another instance of a major straight-as-far-as-I-know male actor playing a gay character, which still happens rarely enough that it pleases me.
There are certainly problematic aspects to the character's portrayal -- for some good discussion of positive and negative aspects, see (http://andweshallmarch.typepad.com/and_we_shall_march/2006/12/the_stardust_mo.html). (Search in the page for De Niro.) Nonetheless, I thought Captain Shakespeare was one of the best parts of a good movie, and overall I would count him as a positive portrayal of a gay character.
(Or, arguably, a straight transvestite. But I read him as gay.)
Good question re "what would have been appropriate" -- especially because showing an adult gay man in a close friendship with a teen boy is treading on dangerous ground in all sorts of ways. And for that matter, I think a lot of straight people are still twitchy about the idea of gay male teachers in general.
Still, there are things that could be done. For example: we know that Snape is straight (or conceivably bi, but I have no reason to think that), because we see him being interested in Lily. (Though I think that hasn't happened yet in the movies.) We don't see anything inappropriate there; and yet, he's a teacher, and we see that he has sexual and/or romantic interests.
So similar things could be done with Dumbledore. He could have a photo of him with whatsisname, but that's maybe unlikely given what happened with whatsisname. He could be seen in flashback or in the Pensieve pining over, or reacting to, whatsisname. I'm sure there are other possibilities.
Of course, it's harder to explicitly show someone as gay if there's only ever been one person they loved, and that person betrayed them and turned out to be evil. (I'm oversimplifying, but you see what I mean.) With Snape, we find out about his One True Love because it's important to the plot. On the other hand, Dumbledore is a lot more open about his emotions than Snape is.
One more thing: I vaguely recall that Rowling told one of the film directors that Dumbledore was gay because the director wanted to put in a scene of Dumbledore telling some of the protagonists about a woman D. had loved in his youth, and Rowling said no, don't put in that scene. So at least one director (if I'm remembering right) felt that D. being out about his sexuality to the kids would've been fine if D. had been straight. So they could have changed that proposed scene to have D. talking about a man he'd loved in his youth. Or, to be more coded about it, talking about someone of unspecified gender who he'd loved. (Unspecified gender of love object is one of those gay codings.)
Anyway, I'm babbling and I gotta run, but my point is that portraying a character as gay doesn't require anything inappropriate to happen onscreen. It may not be enough of a priority for the filmmakers in this particular instance, but I bet they could find a way to make it clear if they wanted to. And even if they didn't make it explicitly clear, hinting at it in a coded way would still be preferable to leaving it out entirely, in my view.
(And though I see what you're saying about the knitting, fwiw the only man I know in the real world who's a serious knitter is straight. But, yeah, knitting certainly signifies some degree of effeminacy in fictional characters.)