(Dumbledore-related
spoilers for The Deathly Hallows, if
you don’t already know them.)
I loved
the first Fantastic Beasts movie, but
I’m admittedly a little apprehensive about the next installment in the new
series. The switch on Grindelwald
definitely lessened my interest (I really wish we could have kept the one we
had,) and I’m not a fan of the possibility of Newt and the other new characters
having a decreasing presence as the plot goes on, which has been rumored – in
particular, I adore Newt and want to keep him front and center. However, I’m also all about expanding the
wizarding world and seeing magic in new settings, and the casting of Jude Law
as young Dumbledore seems like a neat move to me.
Then,
along came David Yates. In a recent
interview, Yates said that the new film wouldn’t “explicitly” address
Dumbledore’s sexuality, which presumably includes his past with
Grindelwald. In fact, Yates appeared to
kind of shrug it off, saying that “all the fans are aware of” that history
while suggesting this meant there was no reason to include it onscreen. This sent the Internet into an uproar, with
people understandably upset about erasure and invisible representation, and
J.K. Rowling took to Twitter to suggest that people not send her abuse over
something the director said; she reminded us that none of us have seen the
script yet, and that there are three more movies after this one.
It’s true
that we don’t yet know what’s in the movie, and it’s true that The Crimes of Grindelwald wouldn’t be
the last opportunity to make an in-canon “explicit” acknowledgment that
Dumbledore is gay and was once in love with Grindelwald. However, there are a few thoughts I have on
this subject.
We know
that The Deathly Hallows (the book,
at least) contains veiled references that Dumbledore had romantic feelings for
Grindelwald in his youth, which Rowling confirmed when she announced after the
book’s publication that she’d “always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” We know that Dumbledore and Grindelwald ended
up on different sides of the blood purity/magic supremacy question, and that
Dumbledore eventually fought a duel with Grindelwald in which he (Dumbledore)
took ownership of the Elder Wand. Since
we know the Fantastic Beasts series
deals with efforts by the wizarding world to put a stop to Grindelwald,
especially moving forward, and we know Law has been cast as Dumbledore, it’s
reasonable to assume that Dumbledore will be involved in that plot and that
we’ll likely see this duel at some point.
Given
that information, here’s what I have to say.
If the circumstances were entirely the same but Grindelwald was a woman,
all of the following would be true:
- Fans wouldn’t still be debating whether Dumbledore and Grindelwald dated/Dumbledore’s feelings were unrequited/Grindelwald manipulated him/etc. because the book would have said so.
- Rowling wouldn’t have had to tell us after the fact that Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald because the book would have said so.
- No interviewer would have asked Yates whether or not Dumbledore’s past feelings for Grindelwald would come up in The Crimes of Grindelwald because there would’ve been no reason to think they wouldn’t.
- Even if someone had asked him that, Yates’s answer wouldn’t have been “all the fans are aware” that the big bad is someone Dumbledore used to be in love with and is now fighting against, so there’s no need to actually bring that up in the film, right? At least, “not explicitly.”
- Oh, and not a single person would be pointing out, “Well, there are still three movies after this one,” because this history would factor into all of them.
Seriously
– if a witch Dumbledore once loved was evil and Dumbledore had to fight her
years later, there’s no way in hell a
movie would ignore that history. To
pretend otherwise, to act like this is a normal thing to do and has nothing to
do with Dumbledore’s sexuality, is dismissive, cowardly, or both. Again, I haven’t seen the film and don’t know
what’s in it (if Yates’s comments are entirely off the mark here, I’ll gladly
applaud the film for it,) but the remarks on the subject made by the production
thus far don’t lead me to believe they get why this matters.
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