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I'm pretty sure he's strait considering he seems to be in love with astrid.

I personally did not figure dumbledor to be gay from the films (not read the books). However, even if you saw him out with his partner in the local town that does not detract from thr character. Indeed, he is an extremely positive role model and so makes a very good character to make gay for that very reason, to show gay people can be great people too... just like everyone else.

 Slarg232 wrote:
Sorry for veering off topic, but I don't really think this deserves a new topic.

You know one thing I hate? Making characters in movies/books/tv gay for no actual reason.

This has been bothering me since Harry Potter, and it's being agitated by How to Train Your Dragon 2. Since I can't have actually seen HtTYD2, I'll just try to explain with Harry Potter.

What is the point of making Dumbledor gay? What does it add to his character? If he was straight, he'd be a powerful wizard, a great mentor to Harry, and a headmaster loved by everyone. He's gay, and his character is a powerful wizard, a great mentor to Harry, and a Headmaster loved by everyone... him being gay doesn't do anything to change that, and it's basically a pointless, unneeded characterization.

You know who would have been better as the gay Harry Potter character? Neville. Think about it; his parents were murdered, he's lived with an Aunt (I don't remember there ever being mention of an uncle; no father figure), he's nervous as all hell because he doesn't know his place in the world, and he idolizes people who barely know he exists. Out of the entire cast of characters, Neville is the one who grows the most in the books, to what we see by the seventh. If you made him gay, it's one more hurdle he has to pass in his growth of a character, and it still makes perfect sense with his character.

One thing that just pisses me off about a lot of the entertainment industry, had to get that off my chest.....

The problem is you're assuming straight (and probably white, male) is a neutral default state when it isn't. You don't need a reason to make a character gay or female or asian or whatever. It's fine for any character to be those things and for it to not be relevant at all, just like it's fine for characters to be straight white dudes when nothing in their story arc has anything to do with being straight, white or a dude.

 Slarg232 wrote:
What is the point of making Dumbledor gay? What does it add to his character? If he was straight, he'd be a powerful wizard, a great mentor to Harry, and a headmaster loved by everyone. He's gay, and his character is a powerful wizard, a great mentor to Harry, and a Headmaster loved by everyone... him being gay doesn't do anything to change that, and it's basically a pointless, unneeded characterization.

What is the point of making Dumbledore's eyes blue? What does it add to his character? If he was brown-eyed, he'd be a powerful wizard, a great mentor to Harry, and a headmaster loved by everyone. He's blue-eyed, and his character is a powerful wizard, a great mentor to Harry, and a Headmaster loved by everyone... him being blue-eyed doesn't do anything to change that, and it's basically a pointless, unneeded characterization.

Does that explain it? Some people are gay. It isn't important or meaningful that they are gay, it doesn't explain anything about them, it doesn't present a challenge to be overcome, it doesn't mean anything. They're just gay. Just like in real life.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

The problem is you're assuming straight (and probably white, male) is a neutral default state when it isn't. You don't need a reason to make a character gay or female or asian or whatever. It's fine for any character to be those things and for it to not be relevant at all, just like it's fine for characters to be straight white dudes when nothing in their story arc has anything to do with being straight, white or a dude.

This right here.... As a, IMHO, great example was Michael Clark Duncan's portrayal of Kingpin in the Daredevil movie. Say what you will about the rest of the movie, but that part was well played by the actor. And while I had misgivings about him playing the part because, well, Kingpin had to that point always been an extremely obese/large white guy.

The thing that bothers me about the "requirement" to have the gay friend is when a channel creates a "new" hit sitcom they "force" the issue of whatever else the makeup of the group there is that one guy/gal who is gay or acts very much like they are. I get they want to "reach" the biggest possible audience, but at this point, sitcoms are all the same.

I am fine with making characters gay for no reason. Its just their sexual orientation its not that big of a deal what their orientation is. Some people are defined by their sexuality, but most are not defined by that. Dumbldore was gay but so what? A bunch of characters have been gay. But who cares about sexuality?

Just my two cents.

 Slarg232 wrote:
You know one thing I hate? Making characters in movies/books/tv gay for no actual reason.

You know one thing I hate? Making characters in movies/books/tv straight for no actual reason.

nkelsch wrote:

 Slarg232 wrote:
Sorry for veering off topic, but I don't really think this deserves a new topic.

You know one thing I hate? Making characters in movies/books/tv gay for no actual reason.

This has been bothering me since Harry Potter, and it's being agitated by How to Train Your Dragon 2. Since I can't have actually seen HtTYD2,

It makes perfect sense in HtTYD2. That character is totally gay. You see it even more in the cartoon series. There is nothing wrong with it, but to does flesh out the character more. While there is no reason to explicitly make it an issue in the series, there is no reason to hide it either.

Dunno, I've only watched the first movie, it just seems out of the blue to me (And everyone else I've talked to about it.)

And as for Dumbledor being gay, it's not that Rowling made a character, Dumbledor or otherwise gay that urks me or causes me to say "WTH....", it's that there was no record of it in the books, never was mentioned, never was touched upon..... until after the seventh book was already out and Rowling said "Yup..... Dumbledor's gay". If it were actually touched on in the books it would have been fine. The way it was handled seems like she just said "Oh crap, one of the characters should be gay, let's throw a dart at the wall and see who it lands on".

 Peregrine wrote:

 Slarg232 wrote:
You know one thing I hate? Making characters in movies/books/tv gay for no actual reason.

You know one thing I hate? Making characters in movies/books/tv straight for no actual reason.

Assuming the standard as standard seems like a pretty good reason to me.

 Slarg232 wrote:
And as for Dumbledor being gay, it's not that Rowling made a character, Dumbledor or otherwise gay that urks me or causes me to say "WTH....", it's that there was no record of it in the books, never was mentioned, never was touched upon..... until after the seventh book was already out and Rowling said "Yup..... Dumbledor's gay". If it were actually touched on in the books it would have been fine. The way it was handled seems like she just said "Oh crap, one of the characters should be gay, let's throw a dart at the wall and see who it lands on".

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, you're right, She totally did not set it up, and it really does seem like a last second Hail Mary to make up for the fact that she didn't include any gay characters in the story.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

The problem is you're assuming straight (and probably white, male) is a neutral default state when it isn't. You don't need a reason to make a character gay or female or asian or whatever. It's fine for any character to be those things and for it to not be relevant at all, just like it's fine for characters to be straight white dudes when nothing in their story arc has anything to do with being straight, white or a dude.

This right here.... As a, IMHO, great example was Michael Clark Duncan's portrayal of Kingpin in the Daredevil movie. Say what you will about the rest of the movie, but that part was well played by the actor. And while I had misgivings about him playing the part because, well, Kingpin had to that point always been an extremely obese/large white guy.

The thing that bothers me about the "requirement" to have the gay friend is when a channel creates a "new" hit sitcom they "force" the issue of whatever else the makeup of the group there is that one guy/gal who is gay or acts very much like they are. I get they want to "reach" the biggest possible audience, but at this point, sitcoms are all the same.

Sorry, I haven't seen the Daredevil movie so I can't comment on it. But I think it's actually really important to have people in media who kinda represent you without it being the defining part of their identity. Sometimes it's good, but it should be okay to have stories where it's just incidental and doesn't matter, too.

I think it used to be a trope in stories that gay characters had to be tragic - their stories had to end badly, they could never just find happiness and live happily ever after. But the example that comes to mind for me right now is women in stories. In a lot of stories you have the female characters struggling against institutionalised or personalised sexism and eventually overcoming it. On its own, that's sort of cool. It's nice to see a story like that and go, yeah, that speaks to me. But when all stories are like that, when you can't just have a female character who is awesome and doesn't ever have to deal with it, you're sort of just transmitting the same cultural threat that appears every day. You should be able to have a female character who overcomes sexism, but you shouldn't have to. And gay characters should be the same way. If Dumbledore is too busy being awesome to find a great guy to settle down with then that's a good and worthy story too.

That said, if the complaint is changed to more - there's no way to even tell in the story that any character at all was gay, then yeah, maybe that's reasonable. Most people at least had a boyfriend or girlfriend at some point!

 Asherian Command wrote:
I am fine with making characters gay for no reason. Its just their sexual orientation its not that big of a deal what their orientation is. Some people are defined by their sexuality, but most are not defined by that. Dumbldore was gay but so what? A bunch of characters have been gay. But who cares about sexuality?

Just my two cents.

I quoted this to say, I don't want my statement above to suggest I have issues with characters' sexuality on TV or in the movies. I actually don't care that much. I actually hate that sitcoms have become so much a "formula" as much as a "hey, I've got an idea for a show! Let's take a group of people and do X, Y, Z throughout the course of 4 or 5 seasons" It just seems that the producers and powers that be hear that idea and say, "we like it, but where's the gay dude? Our show won't be successful unless we have a gay dude"

I'm rather pissed at Fox because 2 of their recent sitcoms DIDN'T follow that formula, and at least one has already been canned (Brooklyn 99 and Enlisted)

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
...with non-religious reasoning. I never quite understood it, and I have only seen religious reasons used.

Thanks

Does not provide biological offsprings to society.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:


I think it used to be a trope in stories that gay characters had to be tragic - their stories had to end badly, they could never just find happiness and live happily ever after.

That said, if the complaint is changed to more - there's no way to even tell in the story that any character at all was gay, then yeah, maybe that's reasonable. Most people at least had a boyfriend or girlfriend at some point!

Example: Take How to train your dragon...

You live in a village of 200ish people. People roughly 'your age' might be around 20 total. Half male, Half female.

Ok, You are gay. you grew up, you are different, no one really persecutes you, but you basically have 9 people who are even possible available as a mate, and none of them are Gay.

As a character, you are destined for a life of solitude and will be 'different'. You also may lean towards aspects of the society which may not conform to gender roles. That character is going to end up very different from the norm and have issues without the crux of sexuality being rammed down a viewer's throat. And those 'experiences' helped define and make the character who he is.

So can you see why such a character might be a solitary character, or might take more of an active interest in raising the kids than the male counterparts, or the default 'male in charge' when the men go off to war, or even take a special interest in a kid who is suffering through 'growing up different' or having a 'best friend' who is raising his kid alone and providing a support 'wife-like' role for them? We don't need to know where he crams his banana, but it can make a character multi-dimensioned and relate-able.

I would imagine the dilemma with representing gay characters in the media is that unless they are involved in a scene that has a love interest then nobody would know. Now to me that is the right thing as in real life this is how it is. I don't care about someone's sexuality, it's the person that matters. The problem is that due to the fact that there still is so much prejudice out there homosexuality has to be made to stand out, otherwise you have the danger that "ignoring" it becomes an acceptable way of denying it.

Bishop F Gantry wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
...with non-religious reasoning. I never quite understood it, and I have only seen religious reasons used.

Thanks

Does not provide biological offsprings to society.

Being married does not provide biological offspring to society either.

That aside, if the goal of being married is to produce offspring, are you going to prevent people getting married because they dont want or cant have children? Are you going to dissolve marriage if kids dont plop out after a set length of time?

Bishop F Gantry wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
...with non-religious reasoning. I never quite understood it, and I have only seen religious reasons used.

Thanks

Does not provide biological offsprings to society.

You'd need to provide a case for why that's a bad thing, but that aside, gay people can and do have kids (just not usually with their partner) and straight people don't have to have kids, or even be able to have kids, to get married.

friendlycommissar wrote:

 Slarg232 wrote:
And as for Dumbledor being gay, it's not that Rowling made a character, Dumbledor or otherwise gay that urks me or causes me to say "WTH....", it's that there was no record of it in the books, never was mentioned, never was touched upon..... until after the seventh book was already out and Rowling said "Yup..... Dumbledor's gay". If it were actually touched on in the books it would have been fine. The way it was handled seems like she just said "Oh crap, one of the characters should be gay, let's throw a dart at the wall and see who it lands on".

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, you're right, She totally did not set it up, and it really does seem like a last second Hail Mary to make up for the fact that she didn't include any gay characters in the story.

In my opinion, that's the real problem with this. Either write gay characters in, or leave them out, don't just decide after you've written all your books that one of the characters has to be gay.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bishop F Gantry wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
...with non-religious reasoning. I never quite understood it, and I have only seen religious reasons used.

Thanks

Does not provide biological offsprings to society.

I know it's been said already, but they can still reproduce, they can certainly adopt children (something which is really quite useful), and plenty of straight couples don't reproduce anyway.

 Slarg232 wrote:
And as for Dumbledor being gay, it's not that Rowling made a character, Dumbledor or otherwise gay that urks me or causes me to say "WTH....", it's that there was no record of it in the books, never was mentioned, never was touched upon..... until after the seventh book was already out and Rowling said "Yup..... Dumbledor's gay". If it were actually touched on in the books it would have been fine. The way it was handled seems like she just said "Oh crap, one of the characters should be gay, let's throw a dart at the wall and see who it lands on".

That's one way to look at it.

The other would be to consider that being gay was just one aspect of his character that she considered when writing him into the story, and she didn't feel any great need to draw attention to it by having him dancing around in paisley shirts and complaining about the curtains.

It would have been far more annoying if she had written in a gay character who subscribed to all the standard Hollywood stereotypes. The very fact that it's not blindingly obvious that he's gay the moment you see him is a good thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bishop F Gantry wrote:
Does not provide biological offsprings to society.

My sister can't have children. Should she have not been allowed to marry?

My sister can't have children. Should she have not been allowed to marry?

Can she cook? More importantly can she cook bacon? More importantly can she cook me five lbs of bacon and ship it to me pronto?


Bacon.

 insaniak wrote:

Bishop F Gantry wrote:
Does not provide biological offsprings to society.

My sister can't have children. Should she have not been allowed to marry?

There are some who say DINKs should not have the right to have tax breaks... (Dual-Income, No Kids)

I'm totally serious about the bacon thing. No bacon, no peace!

 Slarg232 wrote:
What is the point of making Dumbledor gay? What does it add to his character?

I think the story behind it is that the Director of the films wanted to have Dumbledor reminiscing about an old flame (lost love) to round out his character or a scene, and J K Rowling didn't approve, and after some toing-and-froing she stated that he was gay.

Since he isn't actually gay in the stories, you could argue that he isn't gay. Marshall Mcluhan would argue that interpretation is the dominion of the reader, regardless of the author's intentions. Perhaps she thought of him as gay, but in the end his character ends up being rather asexual. It's possible that she just said he was gay to get the director of her case. Or maybe she felt that fiction needed to have more positive gay characters, who are heroic and respected and not stereotypical. OR maybe it was just shock value for publicity.

In any case, just because he is gay doesn't mean he wears leather pants at the weekend and goes cruising on Grinder. Maybe he just enjoys the platonic company of another man, and the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. Not all gay people are into gimp suits and sodomy.

Never stated that they were

 Smacks wrote:
Maybe he just enjoys the platonic company of another man, and the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Neither of those things have any necessary relationship to being gay.

 Manchu wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
Maybe he just enjoys the platonic company of another man, and the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Neither of those things have any necessary relationship to being gay.

Hence the word 'maybe' indicating that it may be the case, but isn't necessarily. I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make here. If you are saying that platonic love can't also be romantic then you are wrong, and if you're saying some of Robert Mapplethorpe's photography isn't classed has homoerotic then you are also wrong.

 Peregrine wrote:
You know one thing I hate? Making characters in movies/books/tv straight for no actual reason.

Other than demographics? 1.5% of the british population... 3.5% in the US.

If you were running a statistical study, you'd actually consider the gay population a statistically irrelevant outlier in both examples.

Thinking about 2 men kills my [MODERATED]. That's all I got.

Thinking about 2 chicks [MODERATED], so it evens out.

Kronk is between no opinion and pro gay marriage. It just isn't on my top 10 things I give 2 feths about.

 Smacks wrote:
If you are saying that platonic love can't also be romantic then you are wrong, and if you're saying some of Robert Mapplethorpe's photography isn't classed has homoerotic then you are also wrong.

I am saying platonic love has nothing to do with homosexuality. I am also saying that Robert Mapplethorpe has taken non-homoerotic pictures and that non-gay people can enjoy either kind.

 Manchu wrote:
I am saying platonic love has nothing to do with homosexuality.

Well clearly it does. If being gay was just about sex, then why are gay people asking for the right to get married? Clearly they feel their love transcends just sex. Some gay people would also like to marry in religious ceremonies before God, that sounds to me like the very definition of 'divine eros'.

 Manchu wrote:
I am also saying that Robert Mapplethorpe has taken non-homoerotic pictures and that non-gay people can enjoy either kind.

I agree.