Rowling outs Dumbledore??!!

Can we forget the the world’s troubles for a second and talk about the fact that an author just outed her fictional character’s sexual persuasion? Tina Jordan explains for Entertainment Weekly‘s PopWatch blog: At last night’s talk at New York City’s Carnegie Hall ? an event for thousands of young Harry Potter fans and their ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Can we forget the the world's troubles for a second and talk about the fact that an author just outed her fictional character's sexual persuasion? Tina Jordan explains for Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog: At last night's talk at New York City's Carnegie Hall ? an event for thousands of young Harry Potter fans and their parents ? J.K. Rowling outed the kindly headmaster. Responding to a question from a child about Dumbledore's love life, Rowling hesitated and then revealed, "I always saw Dumbledore as gay." Filling in a few more details, she said, "Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald.... Don't forget, falling in love can blind us. [He] was very drawn to this brilliant person. This was Dumbledore's tragedy." She added that in a recent meeting about the sixth movie, she spied a line in the script where Dumbledore waxed poetic about a girl, so she was forced to scribble director David Yates a note to correct the situation.Now this raises all kinds of interesting questions. 1) Does what Rowling think matters? 2) Does an author have a responsibility to keep aspects of a fictional character's life private? What if the character is in a children's book? What are the ethics, if any, of fictional outings? 3) Am I just procrastinating on deeper thoughts? Blog reactions at Red State and Andrew Sullivan.

Can we forget the the world’s troubles for a second and talk about the fact that an author just outed her fictional character’s sexual persuasion? Tina Jordan explains for Entertainment Weekly‘s PopWatch blog:

At last night’s talk at New York City’s Carnegie Hall ? an event for thousands of young Harry Potter fans and their parents ? J.K. Rowling outed the kindly headmaster. Responding to a question from a child about Dumbledore’s love life, Rowling hesitated and then revealed, “I always saw Dumbledore as gay.” Filling in a few more details, she said, “Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald…. Don’t forget, falling in love can blind us. [He] was very drawn to this brilliant person. This was Dumbledore’s tragedy.” She added that in a recent meeting about the sixth movie, she spied a line in the script where Dumbledore waxed poetic about a girl, so she was forced to scribble director David Yates a note to correct the situation.

Now this raises all kinds of interesting questions.

1) Does what Rowling think matters? 2) Does an author have a responsibility to keep aspects of a fictional character’s life private? What if the character is in a children’s book? What are the ethics, if any, of fictional outings? 3) Am I just procrastinating on deeper thoughts?

Blog reactions at Red State and Andrew Sullivan.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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