Dumbledore was gay, Stardust was wonderful...

[annwfyn]

I've just finished reading this. It appears that JK Rowling has announced that Dumbledore was gay all along. There's been this odd spectrum of responses - ranging from 'go JK! That's so great', to 'now I'm creeped out by all the time Dumbledore spent with Harry', to 'this is a cop out. She writes one gay character who lives his life in celibacy and never even admits it in the books'.

Personally, I think it would be nice if it had been mentioned in the books, but I'm glad it has been mentioned now. Essentially, I'd rather have JK Rowling mention afterwards that Dumbledore was gay all along (although I did have my suspicions when reading the Deathly Hallows book) than never say it, and let Hogwarts be (very much as my school was) Conformity High.

I was also strangely cheered to discover that Neville does get married and winds up living above the Leaky Cauldron. For various odd reasons Neville was always my favourite Harry Potter character - he was just so sweet, and I so desperately wanted him to live, to do well. I'm ridiculously happy that it all worked out for him in the end.

In other news, I had a wonderful night at the cinema last night. I went to see Stardust, with an assortment of people, and adored it. It made me feel as if I had been filled to the brim with stars and magic. I wasn't expecting to like it - Stardust is one of the Neil Gaiman books I've never been able to read.

As many of you will know, I have this love/hate relationship with Gaiman. He's the first comic writer I ever read. A lot of his stories are wonderful. Then every now and then I'll go through a phase of being massively irritated by him. I get irritated by his self consciousness (I find you never forget you're being told a story by Neil Gaiman. You never lose yourself in his world. He's always there). I get annoyed by the tweeness of parts of his stories, and sometimes I just feel like he's horribly overrated. Stardust triggered all my 'Argh! Gaiman!' buttons. I tried to read it as a novel and couldn't get past the first three chapters - it didn't feel like a real world. It felt like Neil Gaiman telling me about how he - Neil Gaiman - had this lovely lyrical fairy story to write. And did I know that this was all about Neil Gaiman and how imaginative he was?

The film swept away all of that. It was exciting, beautiful, sweet natured, innocent, and incredibly hopeful. I even forgave Clare Danes for having been beautiful and having become peroxide'd and stretched thin. I just loved it, and I want to be a lightning catcher, sailing up in the skies.

One thing that did trigger a bit of a discussion on the way home was which other films are comparable to it. The obvious comparison was the Princess Bride, with ksirafai commenting that the main difference was that the Princess Bride was original, whereas Stardust is now (mostly coz Princess got there first) a bit on the derivative side. I vaguely disagreed, because I'm sure the Princess Bride wasn't completely an original. There must have been slightly tongue in cheek fairy stories put to film before.

I suggested Star Wars, which to my mind is a fairy tale romp, that just happens to have been set in space. pierot disagreed and said that Star Wars was space opera, which was different. I also suggested Labyrinth, but I think others felt that that was different.

Am I wrong?

What other films would you put into the same broad category of 'rollicking fairy story' that Stardust and Princess Bride fit into? Is it a category, or are there only a few films which ever fill that niche?

Opinions?

Comments

[adze.livejournal.com]

Cynically, and I'll admit that I've not read the later novels (I read the first two and gave up) so I've not been aware of any hints that may have been dropped there, Rowling's announcement felt very much like a plea for more column inches, to me - "Quick, it's been a few months since the book came out - I'll make something up and get back into the papers again!"

[pmp.livejournal.com]

It does seem to be a ploy to grab a few more headlines. After all, like in the real world, what the hell does it matter about Dumbledore's sexuality???


As for Star Wars, well there's a definite fairy tale theme to it, there's magic, there's unrequited love with the "prince" dashing off to save the fair damsel and so on. To me, there term "space opera" means a sci-fi fairy tale anyway!

[headinclouds.livejournal.com]

I've always been much less convinced by Neil Gaiman's novels than by his short stories and comics, but I never really understoon why they made Satrdust into a conventional novel, because it works so much better in its original format. Did you read it as a conventional novel, or did you read the illustrated storybook version?

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I read it as a novel, which I've been told might be the problem. I should probably try and poke the illustrated version.

[castorpollux23.livejournal.com]

I'm actually not that surprised that Dumbldore wasn't outed sooner.

The books are written from the perspective of Harry. And despite some things in the news, usually children don't actually think of their headmaster or know personal details like that about their teachers.

How would Harry know? And I don't think there was anything dodgy about Harry and Dumbledore hanging out, he was a mentor. It's definitely possible to be gay, mentor a child and not have any pervy intentions.

Ah well, had to comment on it!

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I don't think there was anything dubious at all about Harry and Dumbledore spending time together. It just seemed to be a quite common response on a load of communities/web sites, which in some ways was quite sad. It shouldn't be the first response to knowing someone is gay, but it was for quite a few people. :(

[melsner.livejournal.com]

"Harry, welcome to your first year at Hogwarts. I going to train you to fight the Dark Arts and, oh, by and by, I fancy men."

[quisalan.livejournal.com]

WRT going back and being 8 years old and starstruck... have you seen this trailer yet :)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK6MDIEQjMg

I got goosebumps :)

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Oh god! It looks wondrous. Really, really amazing.

I want to be a witch! So very very very badly. All I want in my life...

[melsner.livejournal.com]

I never thought of Dumbledore as gay, just English. Those two are very close together.

Somewhere, Richard Harris is rolling over in his grave.

Is the theory that he and the Dark Wizard before Voldemort were lovers?

Much like the Princess Bride, there's some big differences between the books and the movies.

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

"I never thought of Dumbledore as gay, just English.Those two are very close together"

Erm WTF?! :P

I believe the theory, without spoilering Deathly Hallows, was that Grindlewald was the object of Dumbledore's affections but it is implied only the manner of Grindle being Albus' best friend in allll the wwooorrrllldddd and thus very influential on the young Albus.

I leave it to fanboys to write horrendous prose waxing lyrical about various boy on boy pairings.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Grindewald is the one JK Rowling has mentioned may have been the love of Dumbledore's life, and he's the one I wondered about when reading the book. There seemed to be a lot of big emotion floating around the relationship between the two of them.

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

*nodnod* there was emotion there, but it COULD have been simple hero-worship but with the confirmation from JK then bob's your uncle :P

[lawrencegillies.livejournal.com]

Fairy tale films - how about Legend? It may have Tom Cruise in it, but I still thought it was very good!

Dumbledore's sexuality is pretty unimportant. As she says it does explain his friendship with Grindlewald, but it doesn't really affect anything significantly.

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

and also crucially, why Albus a 'good-guy' was so terribly tempted towards being considerably less so.....

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

oh and legend has two version, uk and US and they are really quite different but yes fairy-tale tastic.


I would say Willow fitted the same bill.

[lawrencegillies.livejournal.com]

I think I've only seen the UK version. How is the US different? and is it superior?

Re LEgend

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

I wold say they should splice the two together as per my tyrannical will, to make the best movie from both. the US version and Uk versions do differ significantly and for example, Lily is refered to as a LAdy in UK and a Princess in US, it's all a bit more twee in the us version but also some scenes are better, for example the interaction betwenn Meg and Jack is better in the US version,.

However, in the US version, Lily sings to the unicorns and that raises the twee value considerably. Because you know, Princesses ( she also comes across considerably less favourably in the US version - spoiled brat +5 )have to sing to unicorns...it can;t justbe her innate innocence/naivete oh no...

The major difference is the soundtrack is completely different.