One reporter reacts to JKR's revelations

[Carol]

Carol earlier:
> > 
> > (Do you see DD differently now that she's made that announcement?
I suspect that you do. I don't see how any adult could read her 
answer to the DD in love question and not rethink both DD himself and
the DD/GG relationship, both of which we previously interpreted solely
based on what's in the books--unless we factored in "the epitome of
goodness" and accepted or rejected it, as we can't so easily reject
information that she presents as "fact.")
> > 

Carol earlier:
> > Does JKR mean that readers should question authority unless
*she's* the authority, in which case, we should regard the characters
as hers instead of the general public's or the world's? Or does she
mean question authority, period, in which case her own pronouncements
are also subject to question?
> > 
Pippin responded:
> > This reminds me of a Talmudic debate,<snip> The Law has been 
given to man, man must interpret it, and God's opinion is no longer
binding. That has been the position of Jewish law ever since, but you
know, no one has gone so far as to tell God to stop expressing His
opinions, though there are those that wish people would stop asking
Him.<g>

Carol again:
Exactly. JKR created the characters and has the right to express her
*opinions* about them. What she doesn't have the right (or the
ability) to do is to force others to see them as she does or to accept
her interpretation just because she's the author. (See my previous
posts on the problems involved in using authorial intention, to the
extent that it has been stated or can be determined, to interpret a
text.) And the "he's my character" (read, "I'm right about DD or any
given character because this is how I, the author, imagined him or her
even though I didn't put it into the books") attitude doesn't help. I
find it alienating, myself. She simply doesn't understand either the
writing process or the process of reading and interpretation. Doesn't
she realize that movie!Dumbledore or videogame!Harry or fanfic!Snape
are not the way she visualized them? Or an Umbridge who dresses like a
Muggle and doesn't look at all toadlike? Why deny literary critics and
readers the same freedom that she granted the filmmakers and videogame
manufacturers? I'm surprised that she didn't suppress the publication
of "The Great Snape Debate," frankly--except that the publicity
generated by that book probably helped to drum up sales and keep the
pre-DH excitement at fever pitch.

> 
Susan wrote: 
> Folks, the problem with this is that many, many gay men have sired
children and many, many lesbian women have borne children....Sir Ian 
may experience regret about never having had children..but in these
days he could have adopted children. Many of us have adopted 
children. And many lesbians have done artificial insemination.
<snip>

Carol responds:

I don't see the relevance of this comment to this discussion. Neither
Pippin nor I was talking about DD's ability to sire children, which
certainly has nothing to do with the canonical Dumbledore, who stands
in loco parentis to every student at Hogwarts. The point is not
whether DD is gay or not, it's whether JKR has the right to impose
after-the-fact, noncanonical information on the reader (the "he's my
character" idea). And now she's suing the Lexicon for copyright
infringement for a book version of the site that she formerly praised.
It reminds me of a kid's football game: "It's my ball and we play by
my rules or I'll take my ball and go home." And my response is exactly
what it would be to a teenager who behaved in that childish manner:
Grow up, JKR.

The question is not the revelation itself as her idea that her
imagined Dumbledore (or Harry or Snape or Hermione or even Nagini) is
the definitive interpretation of that character. She may *want* to
impose her reading on us, and she has certainly influenced the reading
of every person who read the article whether that reader wants to be
influenced or not, but she seems not to understand that each reader
envisions and interprets the characters and incidents differently and
not to respect the right of readers to imagine them differently than
she does. 

This is not about homosexuality. It's about the readers' right to
interpret canon differently from the author, especially when her
imagined view of a character never makes it into the books.

Let's take the case of Dean Thomas. Canonically, he doesn't know
whether he's Muggle-born or not. In her website, however, she gives a
backstory that never made it into the books: his father was a wizard
who was killed by DEs (IIRC). We're free to accept that story or not;
it doesn't contradict canon, but we certainly would not have inferred
it from what's on the page if she hadn't revealed the story on her
website. But she also revealed characters who never made it into the
story or were written out. Is Mafalda Weasley, the Slytherin cousin,
canonical or not? I'd say not. The same with Hermione's little sister,
whose existence is never mentioned or hinted at in the books. Still,
if fanfic writers want to believe in them and write about them,
they're free to do so. OTOH, Hermione's father witnessing the events
in Godric's Hollow was firmly rejected and is not canonical, even
though JKR once imagined it.

Just because a character or incident or a particular view of a
character or incident occurred to JKR, or just because she imagines
them a certain way, does not mean that she is "right" and anyone who
disagrees with her is "wrong." JKR has said that the books are a plea
for "tolerance," a point that a number of posters are now disputing. I
see a number of elements in the books that she has not directly talked
about, and I am certainly not waiting for her pronouncement on those
elements to see whether I'm "right" or not.

Once the Potterverse encyclopedia comes out, I suppose it will have to
be regarded as canonical. But her notes and drafts, such as those that
have already appeared on her website, are really only evidence of the
writing process, which is a process of discovery during which many
ideas are discarded and many unplanned incidents, conversations, and
even characters appear. As for an intended *message,* does she think
she's Aesop writing a fable, in which the moral is the message? Why
not let the reader discover themes and motifs, some of which she
intended and some of which appeared from her subconscious memory of
what she has read and a cultural heritage (the Arthurian legends, the
Bible, Greek mythology, folklore, etc.) shared by many of her readers,
for himself or herself?

JKR is, IMO, hiding her own insecurity under her stated desire to
write the encyclopedia of the Potterverse for posterity. What she
seems really to want is to stifle interpretations of her books and
characters that differ from her own.

If she wanted some "fact" to be canon, whether it's Ron's job or the
new, improved MoM or DD's sexuality or Dean's father's history or
Neville's wife (or, for heaven's sake, Harry becoming Head of the
Auror office at twenty-seven!!), she ought to have included it in the
books. As for her opinions, they are only opinions, and sometimes
they're self-contradictory or inconsistent with the books themselves.

At any rate, since she didn't include these "facts" in the books
themselves, she really has no right to force us to accept that
after-the-fact information as canonical, or to see the same message
that she sees in the books. I am simply saying that any statement made
by JKR that reshapes our thinking of the books ought to have been made
in the books themselves or not at all.

Carol, who is not talking about sexuality here, only about JKR's
attitude toward her "author"ity and her attempt to claim ownership of
characters that now belong to the world