If you’ve been on Twitter in the last couple of days, you might have noticed a lot of tweets poking fun at J.K. Rowling...more than usual, that is.
In a DVD special feature for last year’s film Crimes of Grindelwald, the second installment in the Harry Potter spin-off franchise Fantastic Beasts,
the author noted that characters Dumbledore and Grindelwald had an “incredibly intense” relationship
. “It was passionate, and it was a love relationship,” she said. While my initial gut instinct is to be grateful for any type of queer representation, the reality is that mentioning it in passing and excluding it from the film does not count as diversity. It’s just a cowardly and lazy way to make headlines and appease fans.
We’ve known Dumbledore was gay since JKR disclosed it to fans, despite the fact it’s never addressed in the books. When asked about Dumbledore’s love life, she revealed that as a teen he fell in love with his close friend Grindelwald, who later became a powerful dark wizard in a pre-Voldemort era.
For fans, it was exciting to finally have queer representation in the Harry Potter universe. We largely ignored the fact that it was left out of the story – at the end of the day the books were about Harry Potter’s journey, we told ourselves, and Dumbledore’s love life wasn’t really relevant to the main plot.
When we, the collective Harry Potter fandom, found out that the five-film Fantastic Beasts franchise would be focusing on Grindelwald, we got our hopes up. They’re set during the time when the evil Grindelwald comes to power, while Dumbledore is doing everything he can to thwart him. Surely, surely, their relationship has to be mentioned at some point, if not shown in flashbacks. I’m no screenwriter, but it just makes sense, right? But just as we were allowing ourselves to become excited for the first look at a gay character in Harry Potter canon, the movies’ director, . While there were a few moments in Crimes of Grindelwald that hardcore fans could over analyse and read into (oh, and we did), there was nothing written into the script.
I grew up reading the Harry Potter books, I still listen to three weekly podcasts about the franchise, I have a lightning-bolt tattoo. The books form a huge chunk of my identity, and the idea of seeing another part of myself - my queerness - represented in the franchise makes my heart soar. To see heterosexual writers and movie producers announce that a character is gay but that it plays no important part of their storyline feels dismissive at best, and ignorant at worst.
While we don’t know everything that went down between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, we do know that it was important. Dumbledore physically can’t fight him, presumably due to a pact they made while he was still in love. The work the two young men did together before going their separate ways could change the wizarding world forever. But somehow it’s not worth mentioning they were also probably sleeping together?
It really wouldn’t be that hard to include even just one flashback scene depicting their romance. I’m not asking for a full-blown sex scene, or even a kiss – we have to stay family-friendly after all. If it’s important enough to JKR to mention it in an interview, then it’s important enough to be an actual plot line. This is 2019. It’s a year where audiences everywhere are screaming out for diversity. Last year saw the first major studio teen gay romcom, Love Simon, become a box office smash. The 2018 comedy Blockers featured a lesbian character without any fanfare, and this year’s Oscars was peppered with queer stories, from Green Book to The Favourite. We even got a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gay character in Disney’s live-action Beauty and The Beast.
Yes, Dumbledore’s storyline, if included in any of the upcoming Fantastic Beasts films, may receive backlash from conservative audiences. But surely no more than the original Harry Potter book series itself received for the supernatural themes that caused parents to call for its ban from school libraries.
I know from personal experience that coming out as queer is a risk. And by the same token (though for different, and way more trivial reasons) including queer characters in movies is a risk for a studio. But embracing diverse storylines and acknowledging Harry Potter’s LGBTIQ+ audience is one that needs to be done.
After outing Dumbledore, to thunderous applause, she told the audience: “If I’d known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!” Back then we could give her the benefit of the doubt for not recognising the fandom’s craving for some representation. But now she knows we’re hungry for it and passing comments in DVD extras just won’t do. We’re only two films into this five-film franchise, and the third installment isn’t coming out for at least two years. JKR and the film’s other writers still have time to fix the erasure that’s been done.
Jemima Skelley is a freelance lifestyle and entertainment writer (who happens to know the Harry Potter universe inside and out). Follow her on Twitter @jemimaskelley
