Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Gone in Six Seconds

If you can remove 6 seconds of dialogue and de-gay a character, is that character really all that gay in the first place? And, if that makes the character only gay in certain countries (not to mention certain books), again how gay is this person in the first place?

The de-gaying of Albus Dumbledore (after his sudden gaying post-Harry Potter books) shows how tokenism and after-the-fact declarations do the LGBTQ+ rights movement no real favors. Warner Bros has censored and removed dialogue from the latest “Fantastic Beasts” film’s release in China. If you ever need a reminder that corporations are only our friends when we make them money, this is it. When we potentially lose them money, goodbye any references to Dumbledore’s queerness! Don’t let the gay door hit you in the gay ass on your way out.

Not that the queer content in “Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore” was overwhelming in the first place. In fact, it only took trimming 6-seconds of dialogue to remove all references to his gayness and past relationship with dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in the 143-minute movie. I know I always say representation matters, but 6 seconds of representation is at best lip service and at worst fairly insulting. The censored seconds include the lines, “I was in love with you” and “the summer Gellert and I fell in love.” And those are the first references to Dumbledore’s queerness in the entire Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts film universes.

I guess in case you needed even more reasons to break up with the HP/FB/JK Rowling Cinematic Universe, this is it. But for me, JK’s rabid embrace of TERFism and unrelenting attacks on trans people have already soured the magic forever. Makes me glad I’m a tad too old to have grown up with the books.

All I know is our stories are worth a damn lot more than 6 seconds, period. Also, lol at the movie’s trailer featuring one of the lines as if the movie was secretly a grand gay love affair when it was only 6 seconds that could easily be excised and leave the characters appearing totally straight afterward.

1 comment:

Panty Buns said...

Thank you for these eye-opening revelations!
Now I will definitely not have any regrets for having never read any of the Harry Potter books
or seen or read JK Rowling's word and thought vomit.
I am sure there are plenty of good books, movies and television shows out there with positive lesbian dominated plots and characters. It is disturbing that it is so difficult to find them on corporate monopolised platforms.