2019 Honorable Mention: Critical Essay Scholastic Art and Writing Competition – Southwest Region
Albus Dumbledore’s Sexuality: The Crimes of JK Rowling The handling of Albus Dumbledore’s sexuality in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and in discussions leading up to its release was a poorly handled, half hearted attempt at gay representation. With its vague and brief storyline, it did not fulfill queer representation’s most basic goals; making LGBT+ fans feel validated and understood and giving a wider audience empathy for what it's like to be LGBT+.
First a bit of backstory: Albus Dumbledore’s sexuality has been a heated issue among Harry Potter fans for a while now. It started when JK Rowling herself stated that she, “thought of Dumbledore as gay,” (Malkin) in 2007, long after the release of the last Harry Potter book. Then it was revealed that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (the second installment of the Fantastic Beasts series) would feature a young Dumbledore during the time he was battling with his old friend Gellert Grindelwald. Since the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald was always described as an incredibly close one, and since Rowling said herself that, “Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald,” (Renfro) fans naturally assumed that, in the new film, Grindelwald would be presented as young Dumbledore’s past love interest. Then the director of Crimes of Grindelwald, David Yates, told Entertainment Weekly that though he believed the characters “fell in love with each other’s ideas and ideology and each other,” (Hibberd) Dumbledore would not be “explicitly” gay in the upcoming film. Fans were outraged (though unsurprised) that they had likely been queer baited.
Now the movie is here, and it lives down to its queer fans’ expectations. There is no discussion of any past romantic relationship, and the topic of sexuality does not come up at all. The closest we get is Dumbledore describing their relationship as, “closer than brothers.” (Yates) There is only one other maybe-gay moment worth mentioning. Dumbledore looks into the Mirror of Erised and sees Grindelwald standing next to him. The Mirror of Erised shows the, “deepest desires of a person’s heart,” (Columbus) so while this moment does illustrate the closeness of their relationship, it is not “explicitly” gay by any stretch.
The biggest problem with dropping hints about Dumbledore's sexuality rather than presenting it as a fully developed plot line is the message it sends to queer fans. Little moments sprinkled throughout a movie do not reflect anyone’s experiences as a LGBT+ person. They do not help queer fans (especially closeted ones) feel less alone or less isolated; they can’t by definition. If no one is being open about Dumbledore's sexuality, then it is by definition presented as isolating to the character and to anyone who relates to him. Presenting Dumbledore’s sexuality as something he himself is not comfortable “explicitly” saying out loud sends the tragic message that even in the magical fantasy world where fans escaped to as children, homophobia is still an issue, and people are still having to hide in closets.
Another issue with beating around the bush concerning the beloved professor’s sexuality is the lack of effect it has on straight people, especially straight people who are uneducated on queer issues, who haven’t seen a lot of queer people on screen, or who are even blatantly homophobic. These people are not constantly searching for or projecting queerness in media, and if it is not “explicit” they may not even notice that it’s there. While undoubtedly queer art or media should not be made only with straight people in mind, showing queer people on screen, especially in the form of a beloved, established character, can do a lot of good in terms of giving straight people empathy for and positive associations with queerness. Basically, representation that is brief or vague enough that it could reasonably be ignored, glossed over or even go completely unnoticed can’t help straight people confront how they think about LGBT+ people and cannot help them grow empathy for queer people.
At this point you may be thinking, but why are we debating Dumbledore’s sexuality when JK Rowling herself confirmed that he is gay? It’s because merely stating it after all of the books have already come out is simply not enough. We should not be giving Rowling credit for something she never actualized. It’s true that the original Harry Potter series was written in the 90s, a time when a gay character in a children’s book would have been virtually inconceivable, but then why say it years later? It doesn’t do queer people any favors to give us permission to imagine our favorite characters as queer. We have already been doing that our whole lives. And if Rowling really needed people to to know that she, “thought of Dumbledore as gay,” then why didn’t she feel the need to “explicitly” put it in the new movie that she wrote? Adding that detail into Crimes of Grindelwald wouldn’t have disrupted timelines (though the movie does that anyway), and there were so many random plotlines and revelations that surely they could have squeezed it in.
It is also worth mentioning that this is not the first time Rowling has sloppily tried to add representation into the Harry Potter series. She also cast an Asian woman in the role of the human version of Voldemort’s snake Nagini, thereby portraying a woman of color as an object owned by a white man who was literally inspired by Nazis, as well as perpetuating several harmful stereotypes about Asian women. Also, in response to a black woman being cast as Hermione in the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, she claimed that she never wrote Hermione as white even though in the third book the text reads, “Hermione’s white face was sticking out from behind a tree.” (Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 401) She also claimed that Anthony Goldstein (a character so small and forgettable that I had to google him) was Jewish. Basically JK Rowling has made a pattern of claiming that characters from her series are members of marginalized groups without ever expressing this in the original series. It has happened so many times that it comes off as a publicity stunt to make people think her books were more diverse than they were without actually telling the stories of people who weren’t straight and white, a fantastic example of tokenism.
All of this isn’t to say that the Fantastic Beasts series is doomed or that people should stop reading the Harry Potter books. However, the Wizarding World needs to start moving with the times, and it has every opportunity to do so. After all, Crimes of Grindelwald was only the second installment of a 5 part series. A gay Dumbledore would be great! In fact any LGBT+ person in the Wizarding World would be great, even if it’s a small side character I’ll take it, but what I really want is to live in a world where queer people don’t have to beg for scraps. Where queer characters are not pushed to the sidelines or hidden in subtext but instead are given the attention and screen time they deserve. And not just in adult media, in children's stories too. In fact ESPECIALLY in children’s stories so that queer kids can have role models and feel less alone. But until then, LGBT+ Harry Potter fans, if you’re planning to see Crimes of Grindelwald, have fun, try not to get lost in the meandering plot, and don’t expect to see yourselves represented on screen. And JK Rowling, do better.
Works Cited
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, directed by David Yates, Warner Bros., 2018.