J.K. Rowling Tells Fans Upset Over Dumbledore’s Straightwashing to ‘Be Quiet or Be Blocked’
J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter book series and the related prequel film franchise Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, has responded to fans upset about the recent revelation that Albus Dumbledore, a character which Rowling described as gay, will “not explicitly” be gay in the second upcoming Fantastic Beasts film. The Rowling response to angry fans basically boils down to, “You know nothing, STFU or I will block you.”
Yesterday, David Yates, director of the upcoming film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, said that his film wouldn’t explicitly depict Dumbledore as gay. Dumbledore is a master wizard and prominent figure in the original Harry Potter book series.
In October 2007, Rowling announced that Dumbeldore was gay and that he’d been in love with Grindelwald, a wizard who’d later become the magical equivalent of Hitler. Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald in a great wizarding war, and the fact that his first romantic feelings ended tragically led Dumbledore never to express his same-sex attractions ever again, explained Rowling.
LGBTQ fans felt divided about Rowling’s claim, with some happy to have a major gay character in a massively popular fantasy book series and others feeling “queer-baited” by a supposedly gay character without any explicit text to prove it.
So when Yates basically confirmed that Dumbledore’s sexuality would remain mostly hidden despite the film being about him and Grindelwald, fans were upset and voiced their dissatisfaction on Twitter.
Here’s one fan’s response:
I'm a huge fan of J.K. Rowling, but her efforts at retroactively shoehorning "diversity" into her works continue to dismay me. If it is not on the page (or on the screen), then what is the point? https://t.co/ooq91qNE0K
— Brooks Sherman (@byobrooks) January 31, 2018
And here’s the Rowling response:
Being sent abuse about an interview that didn't involve me, about a screenplay I wrote but which none of the angry people have read, which is part of a five-movie series that's only one instalment in, is obviously tons of fun, but you know what's even *more* fun? pic.twitter.com/Rj6Zr8aKUk
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 31, 2018
In response, Rowling issued the above tweet which read: “Being sent abuse about an interview that didn’t involve me, about a screenplay I wrote but which none of the angry people have read, which is part of a five-movie series that’s only one installment in, is obviously tons of fun, but you know what’s even *more* fun?”
She then posted a GIF of a man pushing ‘MUTE’ on a TV remote control, suggesting that she’d block angry messages.
It’s possible that the upcoming Fantastic Beasts film will have homoerotic subtext or that Dumbledore will come out in a later installment of the five-film series.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Dumbledore had killed Grindelwald.
