Interesting debate
Oct. 30th, 2007 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gategrrlThere's an interesting debate happening on John Scalzi's blog called What Authors Know About Their Characters. It was sparked off by JK Rowling's answer to a question about one of her characters, the now famous "Dumbledore is gay" answer. The main point in contention seems to be, who is in control of the characters in a book - the author, or the readers? Who dictates the characters' realities? And what role does the reader play in the writer/reader collaboration?
I admit I tend toward Scalzi's point-of-view. I think the writer, whether the answer is there explicitly in the text or not, has the final say as to what a character is, or is not: what the character will be, or will not be. (I'm not including television in this - TV/movies are more of a collaborative effort in production)
Letter number 2 takes a POV that I only semi agree with. Sure, when I read a book (any book) the mythos and characters and settings and wonderment of being in that author's mind become my own while I am reading; and even if I write fanfic, or read fanfic, or imagine my own adventures for those characters, they still aren't *mine*. They're the author's. The one who imagined it all up is the one who gets to say definitively what those characters are like. And a reader may change them however to suit them in their own imagination - but it's not going to ever be the way the original author/creator considered and "grew" them.
Anyhow, opinions, anyone?
I admit I tend toward Scalzi's point-of-view. I think the writer, whether the answer is there explicitly in the text or not, has the final say as to what a character is, or is not: what the character will be, or will not be. (I'm not including television in this - TV/movies are more of a collaborative effort in production)
Letter number 2 takes a POV that I only semi agree with. Sure, when I read a book (any book) the mythos and characters and settings and wonderment of being in that author's mind become my own while I am reading; and even if I write fanfic, or read fanfic, or imagine my own adventures for those characters, they still aren't *mine*. They're the author's. The one who imagined it all up is the one who gets to say definitively what those characters are like. And a reader may change them however to suit them in their own imagination - but it's not going to ever be the way the original author/creator considered and "grew" them.
Anyhow, opinions, anyone?
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Date: 2007-10-31 12:26 am (UTC)I started reading this blog and the bit with Edward Rothstein misses an important point: this is about whether JKR succeeded in portraying Dumbledore as gay in the text. This about the nature of her characters. If in her mind Dumbledore was gay, then he's gay. It's part of his persona and his backstory. Not everything about a character will come into play. That is why it is called backstory. The nature of his sexuality wasn't a naecessary plot point to propel the story forward.
(Though I argue she could have cut a ton of other stuff, but that's a different rant.)