odds :: Gay characters in YA lit :: ends

[pauraque_bk]

eponis asked a good question the other day: Didn't Fred and George ever wonder why this bloke named Pettigrew was always shown on the map in Ron's dorm?

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scarah2 has a post on the perennially popular topic of whether particular characters may be gay in JKR's mind, regardless of whether she'll ever tell us so.

This put me in mind of a discussion keladryb and I recently had on the subject, more focused on whether JKR can/would explicitly state that a character is gay in the books. I'm not sure what purpose it would serve, beyond diversity for the sake of it. Remus is already figuratively queer, so it would seem a bit odd to make him literally queer as well, wouldn't it?

We agreed that JKR can write whatever she wants; no one could possibly stop her. We also discussed the precedent of gay characters in children's/young adult literature. Kel brought up Annie On My Mind, one of the very first YA novels about gay characters.

I've read Annie On My Mind, and it was pretty frank for the age-bracket it was aimed at. With that as a standard of what's acceptable, allowing Remus Lupin to be gay as a small part of an epic series seems like something that should be taken in stride.

Yet, it doesn't feel like it would be taken that way, at least not to me. We talked about the fact that Annie On My Mind is not just a novel with gay characters, it's a gay novel. You'd know that as soon as you read the back cover. It's in its right place on the Gay Interest shelf, where it's easy to avoid if you don't like it.

But mentioning at this point in the HP series that Remus is gay -- that's quite different. It tells us that he's a human being first, a teacher, a wizard, an expert on dark creatures, a person who makes mistakes -- all these things first, and then he also happens to be gay. It tells us that being gay isn't the end-all-be-all of someone's personality and life experience. It tells us that there isn't a great divide in the world with all the gay people conveniently Over There on their proper shelf where you don't have to see them (separate but equal).

And that's what I think would cause the controversy if JKR did decide to tell us Remus is queer. Even if it was only a passing, minor point -- perhaps especially if it was a minor point -- the message that being gay simply isn't anything to get worked up about is something I think a lot of people would have a huge problem with in a very mainstream YA series.

Any thoughts?

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On a totally different note: If you, like so many of us, are possessed by an unexpected love for movie!Remus, go here to add 'lupin's cardigan' to your interest list.

Comments

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

I think this is a lot more likely than the happyland idea, if only because of pureblood-agenda related political reasons. I think a lot of writers WANT it to be a sort of utopian environment, and I think the early books really present Hogwarts that way, whatever the events and anything else may actually indicate. The fact that it's not *entirely* a made-up world makes me expect problems.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

Right. And slash writers *are* writing for a queer-friendly audience, which automatically gives you way more leeway than if you're writing for Average Person.

[pauraque]

I mean, he is consciously aware of the fact that his lycanthropy can be a danger to those around him - *including* the children he teaches - and to make lycanthropy an allegory of homosexuality seems dangerous. It's something that, in the Rowling-verse, people *catch* from lycanthropes, etc.

This is a good point, and I understand why a lot of people don't like to see him as allegorically queer for these reasons. But it somehow doesn't read like queer-is-scary to me -- I end up separating the fantasy/plotty elements from the allegorical/emotional ones, if that makes any sense.

The "what is Remus an allegory of" question is certainly up for debate, and people have all kinds of answers. I've heard it argued that Remus is allegorically female, which is truly bizarre to me, and bordering on offensive.

But what Hermione does to her, and what we can safely assume happened to her in the Forbidden Forest amongst the centaurs....

You're right that this probably is another thread, but yeah. The centaur thing was intense -- it's such a dangerous, sexualized moment, like dark old fairy tales before they're cleaned up for Disney.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

...my grammar in that comment was stupid. I dunno why I capitalized (the) average person, either. Oh well.

[florahart]

It tells us that he's a human being first, a teacher, a wizard, an expert on dark creatures, a person who makes mistakes -- all these things first, and then he also happens to be gay. It tells us that being gay isn't the end-all-be-all of someone's personality and life experience. It tells us that there isn't a great divide in the world with all the gay people conveniently Over There on their proper shelf where you don't have to see them (separate but equal).

I imagine if she makes someone explicitly gay, it won't be Remus.

For all the reasons you give here, I do wish she would put in a passing reference to someone being gay--someone whose sex life is patently unimportant to Harry, who knows. You know? He goes to McGonagall's office for detention and waits while she smooches Sinistra goodbye or something. You know, he knows, it's not a surprise, he doesn't care, readers aren't supposed to be shocked or alarmed, and the people who are already burning the books because of witchcraft, well, it's not incredibly ikely they're allowing their children to be corrupted by this in the first place, now is it.

This is, incidentally, one of the things I love about Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books, which people say are bad, and maybe they are, but in her first trilogy the main character isn't gay, but a pair of her friends are and she knows it, supports it, and doesn't care, in the sense of, it's not relevant to the relationship she and her friends have. And in a later trilogy, hell, the main character is gay, and again, it's not all he is. Those books, incidentally, are usually classified as juvie lit.

[gmth.livejournal.com]

Didn't Fred and George ever wonder why this bloke named Pettigrew was always shown on the map in Ron's dorm?

My theory about the map has always been that you need to be looking for certain people, or at least have them in mind, when you are using the map in order for them to show up. Otherwise, everyone in the castle would show up every time Harry used the map, and that's not the case. He looks at the map and sees Snape, Filch, Mrs. Norris, Dumbledore, etc., but not every single student in the school. He sees Moody in Snape's office because he's thinking about Snape and wondering where he is, and so forth. Since everyone thought Pettigrew was dead, there was no reason to ever see him on the map. That's in the book, of course; the movie treated it differently, as you know.

[tagore.livejournal.com]

not sure what purpose it would serve, beyond diversity for the sake of it.

Interesting topic. Do you have similar reservations about the Dean Thomas character being black, and by that I mean do you see some kind of unnecessary tokenism in it? Or maybe I'm reading you wrong.

(please note: I'm not asking this with an accusatory tone - I'm really interested :)

[thepiratequeen.livejournal.com]

maidenjedi's already said most of what I came here to say so my post is basically "what she said". :)

Seriously though I think subtext exists for an important reason, to put into words that any character in the HP universe was gay from Harry to Dumbledore to Lupin to Draco to Dobby to Ginny seems unnecessary and cause for a violent shift in the tone of the story. I'd admire and applaud her for doing it in some respect b/c if anyone could come close to getting away with, she probably could but as many here have stated the inherent danger in making any of the characters we already know gay or lesbian seems too great a risk.

That whole Harriet the Spy thing has blown my mind. I read that book a million times and never saw a speck of subtext in it. I kinda want to reread it now.

[maidenjedi]

Yeah, that's almost where I went with that comment.

[maidenjedi]

The fact that it's not *entirely* a made-up world makes me expect problems.

That, and as we get a wider view of the wizarding world, we're learning that the only real difference between it and the Muggle/"real" world is the practice/existence of magic. All the usual societal problems, concerns, values, politics, etc. exist in the wizarding world as they do in the world *we* inhabit.

YA authors have two options - to ignore the realities of the world their readers inhabit, or to incorporate those realities. I think there's even a third option, and that's to turn reality into allegory and leave it to the discerning, more mature YA reader to dissect. Stories are stories when we're very young, and as we get older the same stories become lessons. Rowling doesn't have to educate youth on tolerance for specific real world things, since she's busy doing it for Potter-world things that parallel or allegorize real world issues. But as fanfiction writers who largely take from the imaginative, pure-story aura of our source material, we're more inclined to whitewash and write about a utopian 'verse that we prefer to see (the step *after* stories exist as education).

[maidenjedi]

I've heard it argued that Remus is allegorically female, which is truly bizarre to me, and bordering on offensive.

I can see how that allegory is reached at - again, looking at the moon (which is used as another mythological construct for womanhood - monthly cycles, etc), and at the possible allegorical use of lycanthropy in literature in general. But it doesn't work for me, either, and I agree about the borderline offensiveness of it.

The centaur thing was intense -- it's such a dangerous, sexualized moment, like dark old fairy tales before they're cleaned up for Disney.

Exactly. It's the cleaning up (which WILL happen when this comes to film) that I actually dislike, even though I understand it from some angles. Some Disney films, to use concrete examples, hardly shy away from the darker, more sexualized side of the issues presented - The Hunchback of Notre Dame comes to mind, as does Sleeping Beauty - and I've felt uncomfortable watching these films with children in the room, especially Hunchback. I have a hard time with the idea that small children (I'm talking under 11) have read OotP. Just because they won't necessarily read into it what we have, doesn't mean they aren't picking up on it on some level. And that seques into yet *another* thread, so I'll stop there. ;-)

[maidenjedi]

But even in the book, Remus sees Pettigrew on the map when he's watching to see what Harry, Ron, and Hermione are up to the night of the Shrieking Shack incident. So your theory does work, provided that Remus is actively looking for or is thinking a lot about Peter.

[gmth.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. I don't know that he was actively looking for Peter, but he appears to have been looking for Sirius and was probably thinking about Peter and James at the same time.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hannelore/]

I think in order for it to be subtext and not something HP-bashers would immediately pick up on, it would have to be something that didn't include a main character.

I don't know why this first springs to mind, but in the comic "For Better or For Worse," when a main character's friend says he's gay, I think the strip did a good job talking about several hard-to-discuss issues while not making it the centerpiece.

Hell, I wouldn't mind if Harry was outed as gay. Almost wish it was.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

I imagine if she makes someone explicitly gay, it won't be Remus.

For all the reasons you give here, I do wish she would put in a passing reference to someone being gay--someone whose sex life is patently unimportant to Harry, who knows.

Yeah, she probably won't do it, but if she did, I wouldn't be surprised if it were Tonks. We know very little about her, and she's on the periphery of Harry's life - not important enough to be center-stage, but still a character people like. She's also not already a symbol of anything.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Um, more than a half-century has gone by since Lewis was writing, and longer since Blyton. How can you possibly lump these in with Potter in terms of social mores? Really, I might as well claim that desegregated schools wouldn't happen in modern American fiction.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

I don't think it'll be Remus, for reasons stated above. I do think it's quite likely that there'll be a passing reference to a minor character's homosexuality, just a reference, it not being a big deal.

JKR certainly doesn't care about sales revenue by this point, and she'd probably love to stick it to all those crazy American neocons who called the books WITCHCRAFT OMG!

from one who EXPECTED to love Movie!Remus

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

As I said in my long screed about the film, I think it would be entirely in character for JKR as a writer to have Remus be *both* literally and figuratively gay. It's like the way the books are allegory and psychological fiction at the same time. I also think of it as a version of "copia," which was a rhetorical term for something a lot of Renaissance writers liked, which was to be inclusive, to have a bit of everything. Like she likes to have every magical creature you've ever heard of, all mixed together. Like there are 12 kinds of meat at every meal. And that superabundance carries over into her stylistic choices. Sirius' incarceration in Azkaban symbolized his depression, but he was also depressed...

Anyway, I rilly rilly rilly hope she does it. I think it would be mighty excellent, and I love Cuaron for pushing it so hard.

[pedantic-celia.livejournal.com]

I want there to be a gay character in the books. I'm sick of subtext. I'm sick of metaphor. I'm sick of people telling me that my own sexuality is not suitable for children, that gay people ought not to be around children, lest children get any funny ideas. Oh, sure, people say things like "It would be confusing". Yeah, right. Children will be so confused, they might start thinking it's okay. We can't have that, can we. People also say "well, who would let their child read a book that was full of gay stuff?" because all homosexuality is to some of you is a rampant bunch of hornies having a bunch of sex for pornographic purposes. Gay people apparently don't have relationships like straight people do, because heterosexuality is fine and dandy for a kid's book, but homosexuality has to be shrouded in some cheap metaphor, so that the writer can say "Look, I addressed the gay issue too!" without actually adressing any shit, because if anyone complained, she could just say "What are you talking about, it's just a story about a werewolf" and therefore nothing is challenged, no-one has their prejudices addressed and we all go home vaguely dissatisfied. Fun for all the pseudo-liberal family!

I loathe the idea of lycanthropy as a metaphor for homosexuality. I think it's vile. Yes, absolutely, gay people are a danger to children, yes, they have to be prevented from attacking children, yes, they all have a contagious disease FUCK RIGHT OFF. Don't give me any of that "but Remus isn't like that" shit. If he doesn't take his potion, he is. If that's a metaphor for homosexuality, it smacks of "Take this course of pseudo-scientific therapy and learn to control your sinful urges" shit. It works much, much better as a metaphor for a psychotic illness, right up to the prejudices of others. To a fucking T.

The issue of homosexuality seems pathetically easy to address. There's a group that's obsessed with the purity of the magical race. They want only pure-blooded magical people in their world. So they'll certainly be wanting to breed more purebloods, won't they? And do you know who doesn't do much in the way of breeding (traditionally)? Gay people! That's right, the Death Eaters also crack down on "inverts", which is the cue for some gay character to speak out about how worried they are. It's got potential, and I am so revolted by people who think that, in books which supposedly purport to address issues of inequality, that the slashy subtext is more important than showing actual gay characters because, heavens, we like our hot boyz kissing, but we wouldn't let our children hear about that kind of perversion.

[pauraque]

I've no idea who you are, but you're being rude. Chill.

If you're interested at all, I addressed some of what you bring up here in a previous comment:

I understand why a lot of people don't like to see him as allegorically queer for these reasons. But it somehow doesn't read like queer-is-scary to me -- I end up separating the fantasy/plotty elements from the allegorical/emotional ones, if that makes any sense.

I'm queer, by the way.

Re: from one who EXPECTED to love Movie!Remus

[pauraque]

I remembered you saying that, and I actually brought it up in my talk with keladryb. I didn't want to cite you here because I didn't remember exactly what you'd said or where. I do get what you mean, though, the simultaneous symbolism and literalism.

[pauraque]

I almost mentioned Dean Thomas, actually. I didn't intend to say that diversity-for-the-sake-of-it is bad -- I was merely contrasting it with making a character gay for narrative purposes. Dean Thomas isn't black for any specific narrative reason, but acknowledging that people from various ethnic backgrounds go to Hogwarts is a nice touch that does add something to the created world.

[pauraque]

Nope, don't mind at all. Thanks for your input -- I've heard of those books, actually, but they'd slipped my mind. Maybe I'll take a look at them.

[pauraque]

I was 14-ish when the Disney Hunchback came out, and I was quite stunned by the frankness of its sexual subtext -- I remember it vividly. I wanted to talk about it, but I didn't really have the vocabulary, and my mom either wasn't interested or was too uncomfortable discussing it. It would be interesting to see it again.

[tagore.livejournal.com]

It's fascinating to see such a politically charged (and really, you can't get away from the politics in the thing) issue from another perspective.

From reading above, I assume you're a gay man, and that you really wouldn't care if there happened to be an explicitly gay character in the HP universe. My gay friends who read HP, on the other hand, would be thrilled if Rowling were to write an out/proud gay man into this blockbuster of a book. I mean, from their POV, let the delicate sensibilities of her reading audience be damned, you know?

So it's good to see another side of the story.