Oscar wilde who is morrissey

Kewpie said:. Goinghome wouldn't you care to contribute 'a little something' to the creative writing thread? I like your style. Anaesthesine Angel of Distemper. Hey GH - you know this is my favorite topic. How am I supposed to get any serious work done when you post stuff like this? Maybe the relevant issue is no longer Wilde's influence on Morrissey we all know what Morrissey has had to say about it over the years - many of us can site his references chapter and verse.

No, the more interesting subject in my mind is how Morrissey became deliberately or not the Oscar Wilde of the post-punk generation. I discovered Oscar Wilde at roughly the same time in my life that Morrissey did - I was about nine or ten years old. OW had the same effect on me that he had on Morrissey; I was a bookish, shy, socially withdrawn child, and Oscar Wilde was a bolt-out-of-the-blue.

Suddenly there was someone who made sense to me, who experienced and explained the world in terms that I could relate to and understand. He was my totem and my guide. I emulated him, but I did not imitate him - Oscar Wilde introduced me to myself. In my own small way, I'm carrying his influence with me still, into a future that still desperately needs it.

When The Smiths came along, I have to admit that I rolled my eyes sacrilege as that may be. I recognized Morrissey as being Of The Tribe; the man was clearly one of us. He had Oscar Wilde written all over him, although it was combined with so many other influences unique to Morrissey that he dazzled everyone with his originality.

There are just so many things both obvious and elusive that connect the two. On a night when Morrissey is still particularly graceful, charismatic and clever, I feel not only a little closer to Oscar Wilde, but I feel a little closer to a certain timeless, universal, essentially artistic archetype that Oscar Wilde and Morrissey both embody, but by no means define.

They are two priceless peas in a pod, no doubt about it. Anaesthesine said:. I've yet to discover Wilde. It is strange that someone of ten can appreciate Wilde. To what extent did you actually comprehend it? I am a Ghost said:. What the hell is that supposed to mean?!?!?

Hello Dr. Jekyll - it's been a while. Oscar Wilde is very popular with children - have you not read his melancholic fairy tales? I fell hopelessly, passionately in love as girls at that age tend to do with his character. Eventually I ripped into his more accessible writings, and began to toss my head and quip in what I assume was an extremely irritating manner.

My comprehension at such an early age was a bit unsophisticated, I must admit. As for full comprehension of Oscar Wilde, that took me a bit longer - it may take me a few years still. I had to live and suffer and sing and make plenty of painful mistakes before works like The Ballad of Reading Goal really hit home. Stephane has certainly done very good detective work, thanks, Kewpie.

That tale about the nightingale, and the one about the devoted friend, also strike me as shockingly hard-hitting, leaving an impression quite opposite to that formed from stories like The Little Prince or The Selfish Giant. Here is one quote that I think approaches the reason for the overall appeal: - In an interview given to the NME in Morrissey said " And that's the final judgement of all artists.

I've read practically everything by and about him and I have a vast collection of first editions, one signed by Ellen Terry, an old chick of Oscar's Although he was the most intelligent [person] he simplified everything, therefore practically anybody could read Oscar Wilde and understand. He wasn't complicated yet he still left you lying on the bed panting because it was so real and truthful. The Picture of Dorian Grey was critically ridiculed on release.

One example of typical reviews came from the St. James Gazette : "The writer airs his cheap research among the garbage of the French Decadents like any drivelling pedant". Wilde defended himself in a letter, saying the book was being misunderstood, and the charge of wickedness by the media would only increase sales. From his writings there is no sense that Oscar Wilde would have been cruel or harbouring any intention to corrupt.

On the contrary, it is easy to imagine that his gentleness, generosity and playfulness would have meant that the boys on the rack would have welcomed his visits compared to other clients, whatever else was entailed.

I believe it was evidence from some of these that decided the trial outcome? Take a look below and see how you get on. Latest Music. Dr Dre facts you need to know about. Related Reviews and Shortlists Books. Space, time travel or dystopia? Take your pick with the best sci-fi books. For those about to rock, we salute you. We know that Wilde led certain 'vessels' astray, but Morrissey and Fry have kept their affairs, in every sense of the word, as secret as possible.

They revel in the myth of the self, the heroic, distant poetic figure. It is no surprise that when Johnny Rogan's biography of The Smiths Morrissey and Marr: The Severed Alliance , a fine tome threatened to cast light upon the goings on of his band, Morrissey said he hoped that Rogan would die in a motorway pile-up. Another similarity between these men lies in their disappearances, then. Morrissey wanted to hide himself, much like David Bowie in his many disguises, behind the protective veil of his heroes: his Wilde, his Elvis, his James Dean.

His art and life needed to be separated like theirs. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth". In the mind of the fanatic, Wilde did not become fat and lose the plot in prison, Elvis did not exist in his bloated later state, and James Dean did not crash and lose the beauty so fundamental to his appeal.

They were preserved in their art and in that crucial image. So, his mask removed, Morrissey has disappeared now, escaping media attention totally after the court case where a judge famously ruled that he was "truculent and unreliable".

How does the heroic aesthete and lyricist emerge from such a judgement pure and untainted? He does not, he resigns entirely.

Fry too has taken some knocks. His disappearance from the stage play "Cell Mates" was ridiculed and his name tarnished. His public appearances since have notably been fewer, while in his latest novel, The Stars' Tennis Balls see our review the main character is catapulted away from real society to live in contemplation while the world believes him mad or dead.

They have different laws and move on different lines". For men who confront the world's pettiness and vulgarity with their intelligence, sensitivity, non-conformity and beauty, the fall must be greater and absolute.

Morrissey said during his time in The Smiths that, "Television still has this mystical ability to separate you from the world and confer importance upon you". This is the precise problem they face. Fry, Morrissey and Wilde are all extremely well-known faces. So, they are distanced from reality by their inability to act normally within it. Their very anonymity is taken from them. These bookish recluses then become more like themselves, and like Dorian Gray start to become their own pictures from the past - incapable of changing.

However, there lies their success. As Wilde said, "He who stands most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best". The controversies, mostly sexual that have surrounded the lives of these men is unfortunate but typical of the British public and media. It is typical of Wilde's contemporaries that they would not accept his relationship with his young lover, Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas and found a way to throw him into jail for perversion.

Many found Fry's exaggerated peek into public school life in The Liar consisting of buggery and flattery, essentially hard to stomach.

English tabloid newspaper, The Sun, effectively forced a ban of The Smiths' early material particularly "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" and "Reel Around the Fountain" from the radio by describing Morrissey as "sick", "evil" and all the rest for apparent references to child abuse in his songs. This is, of course, from the paper that prints photos of girls as young as 16 daily. Naturally, all three writers have courted controversy in their time, but it hardly stands to reason that they therefore deserve to be vilified as perverts.

The infamous picture of Wilde dressed as a woman turned out to be of someone else entirely. But still, the implication is there: as Wilde wrote in The Importance of Being Earnest that, "All women become like their mothers - that is their tragedy. No man does. That is his. Of course, as Wilde says in Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young , "Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others".

There are differences too, of course, between these wits. Wilde is dead. Fry is an actor. Morrissey is a heterosexual probably. Wilde hated sport; Morrissey says "I never wanted to get off P.

Fry and Wilde wrote novels; Morrissey never wrote anything longer than a lyric. Morrissey and Fry were journalists; Wilde hated hacks. Fry and Wilde were Cambridge and Oxford graduates respectively; Morrissey. People write books about Wilde and Morrissey; Fry writes them about himself. Oh, there are differences all right. But they clues are all there. Fry and Morrissey wanted to be Wilde and became exaggerated versions of themselves.