It’s a debate. The actress who played Hermione in a play was black and people complained saying she was white.
“Hermione’s white face was sticking out from behind a tree.” Prizoner of Azkabaz Ch:22
Their evidence came from Rowling’s illustrations, a line saying her white face and her skin being dark as a way of expressing a tan, (they had spent a lot of time in the sun and Ron had more freckles)
The other’s say that her race is never explicitly stated and Rowling up voting mixed race. (Though also note apparantly the “T” in Voldemort was supposed to be silent and Rowling never said anything till after the movies were over, despite spoiling Snape entire backstory to his actor.
Also cue jokes about racist who reread the Harry Potter books to look for that line.
I’m going to reply, then redirect the conversation so we don’t get in trouble for going off-topic.
Her face is described as “white” in a moment of fear; if she is lightskin, such as the actress playing her in the play, it is entirely possible that her skin paled to that extent. And, again, paling is not a Caucasian-exclusive thing. Also, black people can and do tan.
Sneaks has it right, imho
Sorry for unintentionally changing the flow of the conversation. Let’s get it back to being about LGBTQIA+ representation. If we keep on with Harry Potter, why was Dumbledore only announced as gay after the series was completed? Was it for shock value/to be PC, as some people claim, or do you think there were hints throughout the series?
To be fair, the majority of the population of my town came here from the Midwest…so the rest of Cali is pretty much what you imagine (depending on the image) my town is more the outlier because of tens of thousands coming here from the dust bowl. If you’ve read Grapes of Wrath thats were I live.
Quite possibly it just didn’t matter to Dumbledore’s character that he liked dudes. I mean McGonagall’s sexuality isn’t brought up in the story either (iirc), because who cares she’s McGonagall.
[quote=“ashestoashes018, post:90, topic:27311”]
And, again, paling is not a Caucasian-exclusive thing. Also, black people can and do tan.
[/quote]Yeah I know. But it’s like describing a blond person. Chances are if it’s described as noticeably darker it’s safer to assume white.
Like I said that was part of their evidence, though I’ve never heard of someone describing a black person’s face as white when it pales. Anyway the illustrations would be much stronger evidence anyway.
Isn’t his backstory hinged upon a rejection from his best friend?
I haven’t read the books despite owning them all (minus the last one, I think I read it before the movie came out). I mostly heard from my friends that he love this guy who was a wizard supremacist who he followed partly out of love and then a family death convinced him to go against it.
If I remember correctly (it’s been 1 or 2 years since I last read the series) that’s pretty much it. I think he also didn’t want to let Grindelwald find the deathly hallows bc he’d use them against the muggles so they ended up fighting and Grindelwald broke Dumbledore’s nose or something?
But in regards to the actual point of the thread here are my two cents.
It depends; It should vary on what type of narrative you want to have. Realism isn’t the opposite of LGBTQ, but, based on the age your story will be set in you’ll have to decide if you want to make it more like it supposedly was at that time or if you want to give a little more leeway in regards to how the “issue” of homosexuality or trans/nb people was dealt with/reacted to.
If you want to deal with how those things were dealt with in those times in a realistic manner I think it’s safe to assume your story is not going to be light-hearted and would need much more attention to detail and research.
And to finish my point: if you have Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, etc frolicking about casting magical spells and fighting dragons but you say that two men or two women kissing would be considered weird in that world I’m gonna have to raise a skeptical eyebrow at you.
I think gay women have it much better than gay men if we’re talking about ROs in mainstream games (or media in general). It’s for the wrong reasons so it’s not exactly a good thing, but still.
Yeah, @TSSL’s “sniggers” comment. Still lower class people were usually in more danger and had more to fear by being homosexual. A medieval priest on a witch-hunt wasn’t usually going to target the son of the Count, they usually found some people lower on the totem pole to persecute.
I think greater then initially assumed historical tolerance for lower class gay people might indeed have been more prevalent in many era’s throughout history, but again we usually know so little about lower class life in many periods and what we do know often tells of persecution where being gay was certainly a complicating factor.
Again in Dutch history from our “golden age” onwards the risks for homosexuality where for the wealthy upper classes mostly limited to blackmail or in extreme cases exile (with a significant chunk of their fortune), whereas lower class people risked being drawn and quartered in the town square or a life sentence of hard labour and in later periods possibly being deported to the colonies to do so. Again versus the extreme cases among the elite being exiled to somewhere nice (usually France) with a large pile of money.
This trope, he may have been gay all along but with older people works so rarely show any overt sexuality to them it might as well not matter.
Again older people are only very rarely depicted as sexual or sexualized. In practice since everybody will assume anyone is straight, unless told otherwise, this works against older non-straight and non-heternormative people.
Rowling has claimed that she already had decided that Dumbledore was gay long before she started writing the series. This is never brought up in the books, but I can’t really blame her for that, mostly because I find hard to find a scenario in which it would be appropriate for him to talk about his sexuality.
But his sexuality is connected to his backstory, as it has been said:
Also, there has been rumours that now that she is working in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, she is also planning to explore the character in more depth and his relationship with that wizard.
About Hermione issue, she is probably supposed to be white (JK was very involved with the casting and the book mentions her skin going pink and her Pottermore appearance) but that doesn’t mean she can’t be played by a person of color or read as such. I think that, since the character’s race isn’t connected to their character or the plot its fine to imagine her as black.
But yes, maybe we are deviating too much from the original topic.
She could have thought of something had she really wanted to. They could have overheard him talking to an “old friend” in a private conversation. He could even have another boyfriend, even if it is just casual, old(er) people are still people.
Yes, but it’s supposed to be tragic. That the betrayal from Grindelwald and the problems with his family made such a huge impact on him that he never wanted to have a romantic relationship again.
But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it wouldn’t have been nice to have a more explicit representation of LGBT people in Harry Potter, but I understand why we hadn’t had it with that character.
Hopefully, she will be able to do something more in the future. It was a pretty big deal at the time to reveal that Dumbledore was gay and in some interviews about Fantastic Beast, she seems that she would be in favour of depicting his sexuality more overtly. I don’t know if the Studio would support that, but if they do it could be a domino that begins a change in the way that LGBT characters are depicted in big franchises.
If JK Rowling was such a big supporter of LGBT community, then why hasn’t there been actual representation of such in Harry Potter? There isn’t a single major gay character and even Dumbledore was never portrayed or even implied that way until later on, when he retroactively made him gay. I’m not saying his sexuality should have been explicit, but if he was so in love with Grindelwald and if that was a big part of his life when he was a young man, it would have been nice for that to actually be present in the book itself. This way it seems like she just retroactively decided “oh and btw, he’s gay and he was in love with Grindelwald” to score points with a certain audience.
I don’t agree with how she handled that situation and think it was a little tacked on, maybe a case of she worried too much about the reaction of including that, or couldn’t find a place to mention it? It also could have been a retcon to make it more “diverse” following criticism or whatever. Though to be fair, I know at least a dozen people who wouldn’t have gotten to read the books if it would have had a homosexual character in them, because those parents spoke out against the books after the announcement Dumbledore was gay.
Yeah, but gay people’s stories are suspiciously often supposed to be tragic, thus the bury your gays trope.
…it would have been nice to see that change for a little…or to at least give us a canon lgbta character that gets to be happy…but well maybe the phantastic beasts movies will change that? We will see.
The last book of the franchise was published 10 years ago, and since then, there has been a lot of changes in the way that LGBT people are represented in media. It’s still not too much, but its better now. We might not be able to expect to have a very nuanced representation of LGBT characters the same way that we do today.
I love Harry Potter despite this, and I still hope that we can get better portrayals in the future. But yeah, I wouldn’t use this books as an example of how to do queer representation.
And please, rembert that it’s ok to criticize the books if you don’t like how it was handled, what it’s not ok is criticise the author for it.
Well, on the bright side, I think that he was a little happy to some extent, despite not having happy relationships. He was an interesting character and a good teacher. J.K. Rowling wrote him as a very nuanced character and she made him human.
It’s not much, but it is still better than anything.
And Harry Potter was also the introduction for a lot of people like me to the world of fanfiction and shipping, so there is that.
