There is a trend among some critics to focus on artists instead of, and at the expense of, art itself. For this reason I rarely introduce a work of literature with an author bio, instead preferring to use biography to supplement the works we read. I am not anti-biography, of course. As we have discussed at length, there is no denying that Oscar Wilde's life illuminates his work.So as we wind down our discussion of Wilde, I wanted to let you know, in case you don't know already, that there is a movie/biopic based on Wilde's life. It is simply called WILDE, and it stars Stephen Fry as Wilde. Jude Law plays Alfred Douglas, and Jennifer Ehle plays Wilde's wife. (If you've ever seen the 6-part BBC/A&E version of Pride and Prejudice, Ehle plays Elizabeth Bennett). The film doesn't shy away from Wilde's sexuality, which is admirable (I hardly think you could have a biopic on Wilde without exploring this). It is, in fact, largely about his relationship with Douglas. Thus, it is very much a film about him, not his work. Some of Wilde's more famous lines do pop up from time to time, however. And the acting is superb.
For Friday, please read the article that I uploaded to Blackboard: "Satiric Strategy in The Importance of Being Earnest," by Otto Reinert. It's short, it's lucid, and it makes some very good observations about the play. It also references An Ideal Husband, which we talked about in class today. And having just read the Craft article, I think you'll find Reinert refreshing. Let's forego the 1-page reading response for Friday and talk about Reinert's piece on the blog instead.
-D
I that I'm putting my comment in the right place for our class discussion.
ReplyDeleteI found reading what Reinert had to say was much easier than the Craft essay. Reinert brought some things into a little more focus for me concerning the play. He actually gave more depth to Wilde's play when he said that essentially all of the Victorians led "double lives, one respectable and one frivolous." I didn't catch on to that when I was reading the play. In that sense I think it was clever way for Wilde to comment upon Victorian society. Now that it has been pointed out to me, it seems an obvious part of the play.
I guess I should have added this to my previous comment. I also thought it interesting when Reinert brought up the resolution of dichotomies in the play: life and art, science and sentiment. Algernon was a kind of pendulum swinging between the binaries, and then by the end of the play has found a middle, stable ground.
ReplyDeleteI keep wondering if I am posting in the right place.
Is anybody out there...
You are definitely in the right place, Brandon. I'm sure others will follow your lead. Thanks for starting the dialogue!
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that Reinert was correct on the matter, that this play was a satire of victorian society, victorian morals. However, I'm going to push that idea further and say that perhaps every high society of people of any generation of time was full of bunburyist/ing. I think that is why the play resonates today. Think about our Presidents...the face of our nations. For heaven sakes, it seems like every President has a modeled face for the nation, especially as we become more media obsessed, and then a Bunbury hiding in the next room. However, I think the question is, does the play condemn bunburying, praise bunburying, or was it simply a social observation of Wilde that he thought would be fun to exploit? I'm not sure where I stand yet.
ReplyDeleteI bought the movie this evening and am going to watch it after the schlocky B-horror movie I got at the same time. Priorities.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the article, Reinert is definitely on to something. The more I read about the play (including the play itself, as well as revisiting other Wilde works), the more I see how similar it is to Woody Allen, especially in his early works. Not only Allen's work, for that matter, but also his private life; this image that he constructed of the nebbish, the neurotic Jewish pseudoromantic obsessed with sex and death. Anyway, I think that most artists (as well as, as Jeph noted, politicians) create an identity for themselves that functions as either a buffer between their audience (if they indeed have a substantial identity), or a way for their audience to understand and quantify them as an idea. Seems like Wilde did that, to one extent or another.
While the play seems to (mostly) condemn Bunburying as a practice of the vain, Wilde himself seems to have, at least on a cursory level, lived in a similar fashion. I think that the movie, which, from what I understand, is fairly accurate, will tell me more about that (and seeing Stephen Fry is always a treat).
In any case, it seems that Wilde isn't willing to use blanket statements or overarching criticisms of a social norm; "earnestness," as we define it contemporarily, seems to be both a virtue and a waste, in Wilde's eyes. Earnestness itself is not praiseworthy without context.
And did anyone else think that "earnesty" was a word, only to find out that it's "earnestness"? Maybe I'm just stupid.
I liked how Foster pointed out the hypocrisy of ignoring hypocrisy in Wilde’s play. Foster attributes “Wilde’s basic formula for satire is their assumption of a code that represents the reality that Victorian convention pretends to ignore.” Conventional society then, seems to know of its own double sidedness and prefers it to be such. However to openly except hypocrisy would not be earnest, so to eliminate the double vision people close one eye, or the other, depending on which image best suits them at the time. As Foster points out “To register shock at indecency is indecently to call attention to something people realize the existence of but refuse to recognize…what the accumulation of paradox adds up to is an exposure both of hypocrisy and of the unnatural convention that necessitates hypocrisy.”
ReplyDeleteIf "bunburyist" can be a word, why not "earnesty"?
ReplyDeleteIt seems like some of you are picking up on Wilde's use of ambiguity in addition to irony and paradox. It is fascinating how what often appear to be short, matter-of-fact statements of opinion are often ambiguous enough to inspire debate and diversity of interpretation. As he says in one of his aphorisms, "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
Come to think of it, I think I'll post some of Wilde's aphorisms on the blog.
Are the consistency (for the most part) of the characters make this play any better? I’m not sure if I would agree with Reinart or not. While “consistency” does denote a character’s personality and traits, it can also be defined as character growth and reaction. Most blockbusters are pieces of fluff, easily viewed and easily forgotten, oftentimes the characters are stereotypical and are the same throughout the entire movie (take the previous Indiana Jones movies, for example).
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reasons the makes The Importance of Being Ernest so great is the ability it lends to a reader to read it on differing levels: a mere farce, a witty exchange of characters, a criticism of society’s flaws, and more. One new layer I came across after reading it again was a possible poke against society’s inability to “properly punish” those guilty of bunburying. People are lied to, scandals are incorporated, and sometimes lives are ruined—but only if the crime is brought out in the “open.” Without the proper “proof,” any objection of wrongdoing seems to be swept under the rug, while those who should be acting merely raise their hands and mutter, “How scandalous!” and “It’s a good thing nothing of that sort happens here!”