Amusing comment from Cuaron

[fourjays22]

--- In HPFGU-Movie at yahoogroups.com, ResQgal <resqgal at g...> wrote:
> What clinched it for me was the whole farewell scene.  When Lupin is
> packing up his belongings.  His whole speech has homosexual
> undertones.  I suppose the real question is:  Are they trying to
> portray Lupin as a homosexual, or are they just trying to parallel 
the
> prejudice against homosexuals in our world and lycanthropy in the
> wizarding world.

An article in my local paper -- San Francisco Chronicle -- made the 
same point about the farewell scene, noting the changes made to the 
dialogue from the book.  

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/10/DDGGG72QOK1.DTL

JKR has said Lupin's character is meant to showcase prejudice against 
the disabled.  It's interesting that Cuaron's interpretation includes 
a homosexual subtext as well.  

Here's the passage from the article:

"In the film, Lupin's close friendship with Black harbors a subtext 
made explicit by a vindictive (and somewhat queeny) Professor Severus 
Snape (Alan Rickman), who accuses the two men of being "like an old 
married couple" (a line not found in Rowling's text). Adding to 
Lupin's woes is his physical infirmity: Once a month, as regular as 
menses, he turns into a werewolf. As such, he is a pitiable creature -
- outcast, neither wolf nor man, as unlovable as the most misfit 
teenager. Cuaron emphasizes this by rendering the werewolf as a 
hairless monstrosity that can't decide whether to walk on two legs or 
four. 

The movie's penultimate scene finds Lupin hurriedly leaving Hogwarts. 
Harry wants to know why. Here, again, Cuaron pushes the envelope. In 
Rowling's "Azkaban," Lupin simply explains that Snape has outed him 
as a werewolf; in Cuaron's version, Harry's mentor replies 
ambiguously. "Someone let slip to the staff and students the nature 
of my condition," he says. "By tomorrow morning the owls will be 
arriving from parents who don't want ... well, someone like me 
teaching their children." 

The confession opens up a hundred metaphors of scapegoated otherness, 
but within the context of the film, the first that springs to mind is 
queerness: Lupin has violated the wizarding world's social norms with 
a "condition" that dare not speak its name."