Censoring Earnest
We really shouldn’t trust corporate censors any more than government censors.
For example, Apple’s efforts to regulate the content available on its iPad recently led to the redaction of Tom Bouden’s graphic novel adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
Luckily, in this case, good sense and public embarrassment prevailed, and Apple decided to un-censor the comic.
(For more on the Apple controversy, see the coverage in The Big Money and Gawker.)
Drawing Dorian
As it happens, I have recently written a long, multi-part essay for The Comics Journal about cartoon portrayals of Wilde and graphic adaptations of his works.
In the last installment, I discussed long-standing efforts to obscure Wilde’s homosexuality and pointed to Bouden’s comic as a kind of rebellion against that. I wrote:
“One method of resisting invisibility has been to emphasize or even exaggerate the homoerotic elements of Wilde’s life and work. Neil McKenna surely does so, here and there, in his thoroughly gay-centric biography The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. And Richard Ellmann also did so, inadvertently, by mislabeling a photograph of Alice Guszalewicz, ‘Wilde in costume as Salome.’ Tom Bouden’s all-male comics adaptation of Earnest is, likewise, more gay than the original.”
The entirety of my essay, “Pictures of Dorian Gray, Images of Oscar Wilde” — in nine parts — is archived at The Comics Journal.
Here’s a quick guide, in case you don’t want to read the whole thing:
Part One, “The Power of Image” is a short introduction to the series.
Part Two, “The Cartoons of Dorian Gray,” reviews four recent comics adaptation of Wilde’s novel.
Part Three, “Beardsley, Russell, and Salome,” compares classic and contemporary illustrations to Wilde’s play, Salome.
Part Four, “The Double Image,” consider the difficulties with illustrating Dorian Gray and looks at some of the strategies for cover design.
Part Five, “Revealing Corruption,” continues that discussion with a look at internal illustrations.
Part Six, “Actor and Image,” applies the analysis to theater and film adaptations.
Part Seven, “Victorian Cameos,” discusses other comics alluding to Dorian Gray, or to Oscar Wilde himself, and more broadly considers Wilde’s influence on the medium.
Part Eight, “The Tribute Mediocrity Pays to Genius,” examines historic caricatures of Wilde.
And Part Nine, “Oscar Wilde: Martyr, Saint, and Superhero,” recounts the re-emergence of Wilde as a figure following the period during which his name was unmentionable.
Writing Wilde
I had written about The PIcture of Dorian Gray previously for The Common Review: “Dorian Gray and the Moral Imagination” (Winter 2010). That essay explicates the moral philosophy suggested by the novel.
And I wrote a long review of Thomas Wright’s Oscar’s Books, which appeared in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed issue 68/69.
Neither of those are available online.