Oscar Wilde's The Star Child's not so stellar ending

[lone_she_wolf]

I love the work of Oscar Wilde. Few realize Oscar Wilde has a collection of faery tales. I think, unfortunately, society in general, still has a negative stigma attached to poor Oscar Wilde in that he was arrested for 'sexual misconduct.' The poor man was thrown in prison for being a homosexual and it ruined him. And sadly society still

Comments

[blue_eye_love]

I didn't get the homosexuality in The Picture of Dorian Gray, but then again, I also read it a very long time ago. I just think that people should stop trying to talk about things they haven't read, because if they think that he dies by looking at the painting, then they obviously have not read the book.

[tallycola]

Oh the Star Child is so sad! I had an illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales and maaan are they sad and awesome. I think the Star Child was supposed to be Jesus - who only preached for three years.

I love the stories but as an adult, the overt religion of a lot of them throws me off. But, it's kind of subtle enough that I don't think you need to be Christian to appreciate them. Anyways, I understand where you're coming from but I still love the Star Child (and I'm atheist!).

I actually like how the stories are so tragic, but I was a pretty morbid kid.

It's weird when you remember that he wrote them specifically for his own children, who he wasn't allowed to see. And they're all tragic, downer stories, the moral of which is generally that humanity is bad and doesn't recognize goodness when it sees it (like in the Infanta, or the Happy Prince - sob sob sob!). Like, thanks Dad.

[lone_she_wolf]

Not all of his stories end tragically. The Canterville Ghost ended as happily as it possibly could.

[makemerun]

Dorian liked men and women. It was subtle because it was a Victorian novel written by a man who, at the time, was trying to stay in the closet.

Oh come on now, it wasn't that subtle. I was neither expecting nor looking for it, but I thought it was fairly clear. I'm not sure what everyone else's problem seems to be. Denial?

[lone_she_wolf]

Ironically Blue eye love, whose comment is about two above yours, didn't catch it at all.

[cweb]

I'm very fond of Wilde myself...I'm currently waiting for Amazon to deliver the fairy tales:)

I don't see how anyone can miss the gay references in Dorian Gray, but then again,maybe I wouldn't have caught them myself 20 years ago when I was more naive.

Please tell me you are leg-pulling when you say someone thinks it's a rip-off of Twilight! Dorian Gray is a well-written work of literature...and uh, Twilight has sparkly vampires. Though i've seen such stupidity before. Some idiot thought The Dark is Rising was written to cash in on Harry Potter...couldn't even be bothered to check Wikipedia. I think the very crappy movie that pretended to be The Dark is Rising (not remotely like the book) was an attempt to cash in on the Potter phenomenon, but the book pre-dated it.

[lone_she_wolf]

I wish I was joking. That's how I reacted too. Some idiot posted the trailer for the new Dorian Gray movie on youtube and their description had called it a Twilight Rip off starring Ben Barnes.

[cweb]

I wonder what one earth they perceived to be enough of a similarity (they're both movies based on books??) to merit the "rip off" label?

[lone_she_wolf]

The trailer has Sibyl calling him perfect and I guess if you're unfamiliar with the story it looks like a vampire film so they saw Dorian with Sibyl and made a flying leap.

[multifacet]

The thing that's cool with lots of the popular love stories (and even "erotica") from the 1800s is that it's really, really subtle. (Well, there IS very explicit literature from the time, but that wasn't as popular and isn't as well known today.)

The real heart of the matter in the stories is usually glanced over or mentioned really subtly. So you could say yeah, Dorian was bi! OR you could say, eh, he just shows his friendship/appreciation in a particular way and is a dandy with a fine sense of style.

Venus in Furs, too, from 1870, is usually regarded as an erotic novel, but nowhere in it is sex explicitly mentioned. I think the two main characters share a bed a few times, and there is a lot of "worshiping", but no explicit sex.

With novels like that, it seems like it's all up to the individual reader's mentality to decide what happened or didn't happen.

[multifacet]

Errr, well disregard the fact that Dorian Gray is neither love story nor erotica; I guess I just mean literature of the time in general seems to be that way. At least, like I said, the more popular stuff and/or the stuff that may contain controversial things.