Wilde and idle thoughts
Jan. 20th, 2006 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileGot around to watching "Wilde" this evening. Thought it was very good, although it may have been better if Wilde had written the screenplay, except then it would have been dreadfully inaccurate. Stephen Fry very Wildean as Wilde; Jude Law utterly despicable as Bosie; Orlando Bloom hysterically recognizable as Orlando Bloom as a rentboy in a dippy hat.
There are a lot of things I admire about Wilde and would love to be a fraction as good at--his writing is almost invariably superbly clever, he's extremely quotable, he's the undisputed master of paradox (in all its useful forms, from avoiding answering questions altogether to saying very serious things in a silly fashion, and sometimes both at the same time), he's a masterful storyteller, a skilled poet, and a lovely essayist, he's utterly and fantastically unconventional, the Aestheticism movement amuses the hell out of me even though I fully agree with it, and he basically got to travel all over the US and Europe and say ridiculous things and is remembered a hundred years later for it.
But Wilde made one mistake that, although a common one, scares me and upsets me greatly when I realized I've come anywhere close to it, and that was his abysmal lack of judgment about Bosie's character. Bosie was a spoilt little child who only liked Wilde when he was amusing, but never, ever thought of anything outside of his own amusement. The film featured a number of (hopefully exaggerated, but I really don't know) scenes of Bosie blowing up over the most idiotic things, getting mad at Wilde for not going into debt over him when he'd spent every penny he could afford on him (and Wilde had a wife and three kids to support, so this was generous), refusing to get him a glass of water when he was sick because he wasn't amusing sick, and eventually, it was ENTIRELY Bosie's fault that Wilde went to jail, because Bosie was trying to get back at his (admittedly rather crazy) daddy. Yeah, sacrifice your devoted boyfriend and mentor so you can piss your dad off one last time--that's really considerate. Wilde loved him anyway.
I don't want to love terrible people. I want to have people to love, people to truly care about and be loyal and devoted to, and I don't think love should be based on a selfish idea of "what does this person do for me," but I don't like getting stuck loving people who are selfish, childish, narcissistic, vindictive, and treat other people--including me--badly. I like the nice-sounding idea of loving without expecting anything in return, but I abhor the idea of loving people and getting beaten or toyed with as a result. There seems sometimes to be a distressingly fine line between judging people, which we all know is Bad, and being any sort of judge of character, in which case it would seem that being a good judge of character is good and being a bad judge of character causes all sorts of dreadful things to happen, although cases such as Wilde's (or King Lear's) are a bit extreme. I am also torn between the warm and fuzzy idea that, all people being equal, all people are deserving of love, and the feeling that people who have more and stronger redeeming qualities than negative ones are better choices for me to love than people who have more and stronger negative qualities than redeeming ones. In addition to potentially getting hurt, I feel ashamed and delusional when I realize I have been holding people in a higher opinion than they merit, as I hate being wrong and I hate finding myself guilty of bad taste. And I fear I'm rather dreadfully snobbish about people in general, but I really do want to be able to love people for who they are, rather than despite it.
There are a lot of things I admire about Wilde and would love to be a fraction as good at--his writing is almost invariably superbly clever, he's extremely quotable, he's the undisputed master of paradox (in all its useful forms, from avoiding answering questions altogether to saying very serious things in a silly fashion, and sometimes both at the same time), he's a masterful storyteller, a skilled poet, and a lovely essayist, he's utterly and fantastically unconventional, the Aestheticism movement amuses the hell out of me even though I fully agree with it, and he basically got to travel all over the US and Europe and say ridiculous things and is remembered a hundred years later for it.
But Wilde made one mistake that, although a common one, scares me and upsets me greatly when I realized I've come anywhere close to it, and that was his abysmal lack of judgment about Bosie's character. Bosie was a spoilt little child who only liked Wilde when he was amusing, but never, ever thought of anything outside of his own amusement. The film featured a number of (hopefully exaggerated, but I really don't know) scenes of Bosie blowing up over the most idiotic things, getting mad at Wilde for not going into debt over him when he'd spent every penny he could afford on him (and Wilde had a wife and three kids to support, so this was generous), refusing to get him a glass of water when he was sick because he wasn't amusing sick, and eventually, it was ENTIRELY Bosie's fault that Wilde went to jail, because Bosie was trying to get back at his (admittedly rather crazy) daddy. Yeah, sacrifice your devoted boyfriend and mentor so you can piss your dad off one last time--that's really considerate. Wilde loved him anyway.
I don't want to love terrible people. I want to have people to love, people to truly care about and be loyal and devoted to, and I don't think love should be based on a selfish idea of "what does this person do for me," but I don't like getting stuck loving people who are selfish, childish, narcissistic, vindictive, and treat other people--including me--badly. I like the nice-sounding idea of loving without expecting anything in return, but I abhor the idea of loving people and getting beaten or toyed with as a result. There seems sometimes to be a distressingly fine line between judging people, which we all know is Bad, and being any sort of judge of character, in which case it would seem that being a good judge of character is good and being a bad judge of character causes all sorts of dreadful things to happen, although cases such as Wilde's (or King Lear's) are a bit extreme. I am also torn between the warm and fuzzy idea that, all people being equal, all people are deserving of love, and the feeling that people who have more and stronger redeeming qualities than negative ones are better choices for me to love than people who have more and stronger negative qualities than redeeming ones. In addition to potentially getting hurt, I feel ashamed and delusional when I realize I have been holding people in a higher opinion than they merit, as I hate being wrong and I hate finding myself guilty of bad taste. And I fear I'm rather dreadfully snobbish about people in general, but I really do want to be able to love people for who they are, rather than despite it.
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Date: 2006-01-21 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 03:51 pm (UTC)But it was still not half as skillfully done as Ed Wood, which is the best biopic ever.
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Date: 2006-01-21 03:55 pm (UTC)What's wrong with re-reading Dorian Gray? =P
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Date: 2006-01-21 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 01:38 pm (UTC)FRIENDS MEEEE.
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Date: 2006-01-22 05:38 pm (UTC)is that your senior pic?!?!?
i want i want i want!!!
(ps it's a sezy pic)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 08:04 pm (UTC)