Part One: Oscar Wilde: A Story That Was Way More Important Than I Realized

Margaret talks with Chelsey Weber-Smith about the gay anarchist Irish dandy who proved to be not shallow at all.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, which
is a podcast and it's about the things it says
it's about. And I'm Margaret Kiljoy and I'm the host
of the podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. But
I have a guest today, which is good because I
wouldn't be able to keep up vamping by myself for
very long. And my guest is Chelsea Weber Smith, the

(00:25):
host of American Hysteria.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Hello, Margaret, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
I'm always it's always a joy to get to see
your face.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah, I said thanks instead of you're welcome. It's like
when you go to the grocery store and you and
you have the wrong interaction. Do you ever have the
wrong interaction with the person who's checking you out where
they're like, have a good day and you're or they're
like nope, I can't even do it right on the
top of my head, I've completely failed at this.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
No, I'm perfect and have never had an embarrassing public.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Thanks for your purchase, and you go you too, Yeah, yeah, exactly,
that's what I was going for.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
And Hi, Sophie, it's really nice to see you.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Saving me today is Sophie, you're the producer.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I just produced you.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, I'm saved. That is what a producer's job is
on podcast if they're on MIC, is basically to save
the host. And I am very grateful to you too.
Did the bit twice, well done, Thank you. Our audio
engineer is danel Hi, danel Hey, dan Hi, and our

(01:32):
theme music was written for us by unwoman So American Hysteria.
Would you say that it is a podcast that is
sometimes about moral panics.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
I would say that that's very accurate. Yes, we do
moral panics. We've been really on a big urban legends
kick lately, so we have like folks call in and
tell us about urban legends they heard growing up, and
we do like massive deep dives on those. We just
did like a gang initiation in season. If you remember
the story of the gang members who would murder anyone

(02:06):
who flashed their lights at them when they were driving
on the highway, you know, so we kind of dove
into that and the implications of that on the criminal
justice system, you know, lies about gang members and antique
gang legislation. So yeah, we just kind of will use
kind of these fun stories to get into deeper parts

(02:27):
of culture and politics.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I actually started listening to that particular episode of the
gang Initiations and then this is a terrible part of
the story. I had a friend who was murdered in
a gang initiation.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
No way, okay, all right, yeah it happens.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, he was a squatter, someone killed him. And so
I had this like moment of like, I'm going to
listen to this tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah that's completely fair.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, but yes, moral panics. I was like, what if
we talked this week about a moral panic? But then
and I found one that's not American.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Oh interesting, Okay, it.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Turns out we're not unique.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Oh no, we are not as much as we think
we are.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Ye to say, which goes against everything I've been taught.
The one thing I think we're unique about is her
belief in her uniqueness.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Absolutely, So today we're going to talk about one of
the greatest moral panics in English history, and one that
we're seeing some frightening echoes of today we are talking
about I'm curious when you'll figure ot what we're talking about.
We're I'm gonna talk about the wittiest and perhaps the
most aggressively misquoted man in the history of the English language.

(03:36):
Oscar Wilde, Oscar Wild fun fun, all right, Yeah, I
think that that, like the runner up is Einstein. If
someone says something, if you want to quote to sound smart,
you pretend like Einstein said it. And if you want
it to sound witty, you pretend like Oscar Wild said.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
It, or like pretentious. Maybe that is true.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Too, Yes, yes, that is a thing that one could fairly.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Say, Oh, this is gonna be fun.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
I'm really excited. Yeah, Oscar Wilde. And this is how
I kind of came up knowing about Oscar Wild. Oscar
Wild is painted by most history. Yeah, okay, what do
you know of Oscar Wild before I get into it?

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Okay? Sure, amazing writer, terrible poet, and I Picture of
Dorian Gray was one of my favorite books in high school,
for sure. And I know that he was kind of
one of the outspoken figures in the earliest, you know,

(04:37):
queer movement. I don't know if he would like to
be called that, but you know, he was very much
a decadent who loved to admire beautiful things as a
somewhat rich individual, and eventually he'd go to trial pretty
much for being gay and creating. I believe of scene content.

(05:00):
I guess we'll find out.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
So what I love about that is all of that
is true. He's also just the surface.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Okay, love it.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
And although except the one thing I would say that actually,
after jail he wrote a really good poem.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Oh okay, all right, The Ballad.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Of Reading Jail is I think an amazing poem. I
think he probably had to suffer. He actually probably would
agree with this. We'll talk about this. He actually probably
had to suffer before he could write poetry.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Oscar Wilde is painted by most history as sort of
an irreverent quip machine who is good for quote books
and not much else. And you know, I mean people
like the picture of Dorian Gray and people like the
importance of being earnest right, Oh yeah. The movement he's
most notably attached to is the aesthetic movement, and this
movement and he are criticized as being all style with

(05:52):
no substance. That is the primary thing that we hear
about Oscar wild That's not true, or that is not all.
Oscar Wilde was a politically and theologically engaged. He was
politically and theologically engaged as an Irish intellectual living in
the heart of Empire while playing the pop star. With

(06:13):
a single essay, he contributed massively to anarchist socialist theory.
He contributed financially to those committed who were committing direct action.
He was put up on charges for consentially fucking other
men and was sentenced to two years of hard labor,
which destroyed his health. He soon died, and in doing
so he became a martyr to the cause of queer
rights and a bit tangentially, he became a martyr to

(06:35):
Irish nationalism in the anarchist movement.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Aw, you're already blowing my mind.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah, no, I like and even I knew like the
cliffs notes of this. People are like, oh, Oscar wild
like once called himself an anarchist. Isn't that cool? And
we're like, yeah, cool, we'll take him whatever. Yeah, I
didn't really believe it. No, I've read a lot about
it now and I'm going to make that case, all right.

(07:01):
He wasn't just a gay man on trial. He was
homosexuality on trial in England. This is the moral panic
that I'm referring to. He was every gay man before
and every gay man to come. On top of that,
his trial was framed by many as a condemnation of
not just his homosexuality, but also his irishness and his rebellious,
untamable spirit that was influencing culture away from colonial Victorian ideals.

(07:25):
And so it's his socialism and his irishness are also part.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Of this.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Western imperial civilization itself went on like was on the
line with the trial of Oscar Wilde. The spoiler, Western
imperial civilization won that particular trial. Yes, shocking, And he wrote,
especially at the end of his life, he wrote unique
queer anarchist Christian mystic theory that still inspires wonder and

(07:56):
the reader today. And yeah, he was really fucking votable.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
And not only did he practice the love that dare
not speak its name, his trash fire of a lover
coined the Love that dare not speak its name about
fucking him.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Wow. Wow.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
So the love that dare not speak its name is
fucking Oscar wild Wow, which many people got to do.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
It's hot, Yeah, it's very hot.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
So Oscar wild or rather Oscar Fingalo flaerty Willis Wilde.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
I can see why why he may have shortened it.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, he had three middle names. He was born in
eighteen fifty four in Dublin in Ireland. He had Protestant
parents who were deeply involved in Irish nationalism. Just to
get one Bingo square out of the way right away.
It's a new Bingo square, but it's been coming up
a lot. Irish nationalism was not Catholic versus Protestant, and
only the colonial force of England and the theological authoritarians

(08:59):
in Rome wants you to believe it is all right.
He had too many middle names. They are all references
to various Irish nationalist things because his parents. His parents
are bougie as shit, don't get me wrong. He comes
from an important family, like with a capital I and
the other way that you indicate an important family, which
is clickable links of your parents' names in Wikipedia. Yes,

(09:21):
and as well as one of his great grandfathers one
of his like sec like cousins once removed, and his
great uncle was Charles Maturin, who wrote Melmoth the Wanderer,
which is like one of the early Gothic novels. I've
actually not read Melmouth the Wanderer. His rich ass parents
were kind of interesting. Okay, So usually what happens on

(09:42):
the show is I'll like cover a man, and then
they're the end of reading it, I'll be like, wait,
this man sucked and he was terrible. This does not
happen to Oscar Wilde. H hey, it does happen to
his parents. Wow, I had this whole thing written about
how amazing and interesting his parents are and then and
maybe we'll talk about it. Uh huh. His father was

(10:05):
Sir William Wilde, which is a kind of sick name.
I got a name, like, there's all Sir Willy Wilde.
He actually his brother's name Willy Wilde, and actually goes
by Willie. Sir William Wilde's a knight. He's knighted in
eighteen sixty four when Oscar's ten, so he doesn't start
off knighted, and he's knighted because he's like a really

(10:26):
really good surgeon. William did the thing that you can
do when you're rich and like, which is you can
do a million different things with your life because who's
going to stop you? And this is what you should do. Well,
actually what you should do if you're riches give all
of your money away and live like everyone else. But
if you're not going to do that, at least be
fucking interesting, boring rich people are the terrible why would you, yeah,

(10:51):
like do something. Yeah, I know his parents, they decide
to be interesting. Sir Billy, who did not go by
that to my knowledge, was an eye and ear surgeon
who wrote the books on those things, and apparently like
some of the things are still called like the wild
Cone and things like that. I'm not an ant and
I didn't bother asking my E and T friend about

(11:13):
this because I only learned this part very recently. He
was also a folklorist and he was like super like
down with helping people like he would. He was a doctor,
and he was like a doctor to like the fabulously
rich and stuff. But he also you could just like
call him and be like I don't have any money,
and you'd be like, tell me a good story.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Wow, okay.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
And so he collected folklore in exchange for doing medical work.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
That is really cool. That's really really cool. And I mean,
as someone who dreams to be in the folkal or lineage,
I always appreciate someone who collects stories because if you
don't collect the stories, they're going to disappear.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
So I love that, I know. And it's like whenever
I read the Irish stories I'm like, oh, it's cool
if someone went around and rescued all these stories in
the late nineteenth century. I wish someone had done it
before the Catholic Church changed it dramatically.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yes, that would have been nice.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, and I mean some of that exists too. But like, anyway,
one time, Sir William went on pilgrimage to the Holy
Land and he like while he was there, two porpoises
jumped on board of the ship, so he like dissected them,
and then he wrote a two volume book on the
nursing habits of porpoises, just to like get an idea
of this man. Yes, he also he was an amateur Egyptologist.

(12:30):
And now we get into the like kind of sketchy
you know, like sure or the stuff that sure don't
look good. He was obsessed with Egypt like everyone in
Western Europe at the time, and.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
He like Domania. Isn't that what it's called?

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah, this man was probably smoking some mummy ashes, you know.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Oh yeah, the style at the time as they did. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, So he like explored tombs and you know, unearthed
the mummy, and he collected embalmed ibises. He also fucked
around all and what I first read was that he
did this in pops. The best way that one could
do that in that he he fucked around a lot.

(13:10):
He had a bunch of kids out of wedlock, and
the big reason he was immoral by the standards of
the time is that he cared about his bastard children
and he like let them come over and he didn't
exclude them from the family, and they were like at
the family events and stuff. You know, wow, what a monster,

(13:30):
I know. And he didn't cut the mothers out of
his life either. There's like this whole thing where like
one of the mothers of his children like came veiled
at his bedside as he was dying or whatever, and like.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
So queer coded.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Honestly, that's true. And he died in eighteen seventy six,
when Oscar's around eighteen. So there's like that version of
him where he's just like eccentric, a little bit orientalist, like,
you know, cares about poor people. He was accused of
drugging a woman and raping her while she was under chloroform,

(14:08):
uh boy, in his capacity as a doctor, and historians
like to argue about that because it went to court
and stuff, and Oscar Wilde's mother, who otherwise looks amazing,
defended him in that case, and historians seem like genuinely
mixed about that. And I don't have enough information to opine,

(14:29):
but it don't look his mother besides, possibly this one
very not small oversight in her otherwise impeccable morals, was
really cool. Jane Wilde. This is who Oscar wild takes after.
Jane Wilde. Wears weird clothes and does weird stuff and
is just like, I'm gonna be a weird lady. That's

(14:49):
my thing. She spoke ten languages by the time she
was eighteen. She wasn't actually raised as wealthy as her
husband was and as her kids were, but I don't
think she was raised poor. And she also liked to
claim she was Italian, even though she wasn't. And she
also claimed to be descended from Dante of Dante's Inferno.
This is not true, she just like to say it.

(15:13):
She was a prolific writer, and both her and her
husband were Irish nationalists, like you know, Irish revolutionaries who
believed it should be free from England, and she outlived
her husband by blessed decades. She wrote a bunch of
books on Irish folklore. She kind of continued her husband's
work and like actually like really got it published and
stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
That's cool.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
She was also part of the Young Ireland movement of
the eighteen forties, which was the more radical side of
Irish independence movement at the time. And this later becomes
the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which sort of becomes the IRA
which causes the freedom from Ireland and then causes the troubles,
and well, I'll blame England, actually have the trouble, the
troubles be blamed on England. But so she's part of

(15:56):
like many generations back of a direct line of the
people who freed Ireland. Okay, she took up a pen
name when she wrote, which is Speranza, which is Italian
for hope. Italian nationalism. I was like trying to figure
out what the Italian thing was once she's like likes
claiming that she's Italian. But the other thing is that

(16:17):
Italian nationalism was like the nationalism it was like seen
as like the original European nationalism, which is means a
completely different thing, and it does right now. It means
the whatever you're thinking, it means the opposite opposite. Yes, yeah,
there's so many things that are going to come up
in this episode that are exactly the like things that

(16:39):
don't make any that seem the opposite now, you know,
or like are just sketchy to talk about.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Sure, But.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
She wrote poetry, she translated from French and German, and
she wrote essays with themes like what if we all
got a bunch of guns and shot the British until
they left us alone?

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (17:00):
This got her in some trouble, or rather it got
men around her in trouble.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
The main journal of the Young Ireland movement was called
The Nation, which was put together by two Catholics and
one Protestant see the aforementioned footnote. Jane Wilde, or rather
Speranza wrote for it and got the paper in some trouble,
and just to say about what Irish nationalism meant at
the time, because I actually think is really relevant to
what's going on in Ireland right now, where people I

(17:29):
think are misrepresenting Irish nationalism to mean racism. Charles Duffy,
who started The Nation, which was one of the very
important papers of all of this, is quoted as saying
that the nationalism that they were building, would just as
easily embrace quote the stranger who is within our gates
as quote the irishmen of one hundred generations.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
This was not a.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Universally held opinion among Irish nationalism, but it was a
mainstream opinion among Irish nationalism. This is not the out
their paper when I said that they're the more radical side.
There's people more radical than them.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
You know.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
The Nation also regularly published a fuckt ton of women.
Speranza was one of three the Graces because of course
they still have to become like weirdly misogynistic about how
they name the women who write for it.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
But it is kind of a badass monarch.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
I know, I don't mind being one of the Graces. Yeah,
and then there's like four or five women mentioned as
writing for it besides these three who wrote for it,
like all the fucking time, who are the Graces? In
the eighteen forties, the Irish were fighting landlords. The Irish
were always fighting landlords, so the Nation had a pretty
militant tone. Speranza wrote, some of that militant shit, there's

(18:42):
like I want to see a sea of muskets pointing
towards the sky, listening you know she's a poet, right.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, she's a poet. Yeah, which is very helpful. I
think in these types of situations.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
It really is you gotta yeah, you gotta make it sexy.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
You gotta have that rhetoric. Man. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
In eighteen forty eight, which is a year into the
Potato genocide, revolutions are sweeping Europe and I can't believe
we haven't covered the revolutions of eighteen forty eight yet.
I think it's one of those topics. It's like so
big that I'm like, ooh, it's like the Russian Revolution.
I haven't covered the Russian Revolution yet, you.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Know, Yeah, you're gonna need a few episodes for that.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah, exactly. And she wrote that Ireland should join that
wave of revolutions. So Charles Duffy, the editor, was put
on trial for her words, and now they put him
on trial. I think I've also read the videos on
trial for some other shit and then this stuff happened.
But I've read both and they're like, all right, who's
Beranza And he's like, I'm not fucking telling you that.

(19:41):
They're like, we're gonna throw you in prison. He's like,
I'm not fucking telling you that.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
Okay, So he went to trial because they couldn't figure
out who she was.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yeah, basically, okay.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
Well not to say he wouldn't have also been on trial,
but it wasn't like he took her place. He just
didn't give her up.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
Okay, right, that's the I mean. I've read two different accounts,
Like one was that he was went on trial for
publishing those words, and one was that all of the
stuff happened while he was on trial for anyway, and
I don't know which which I believe. So while this

(20:19):
is happening, she's in court supporting him, and finally she's
just like she just stands up and she's like, I
did it, I wrote it.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
That was me.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
And the court ignored her. I think because she was
a woman.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
I think they were like, now we're good, we're gonna
fuck because they also were just trying to shut down
this paper, right right, and they do, they shut down
the nation. And then Jane Wilde just started it right
the fuck back up again and is now the editor
of it. And Crow's feminism more aggressively into the mix,
and we're talking about the like eighteen forty eight, that

(20:58):
is some early feminism.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
That's a big deal. Oh yeah, yeah, that's like sixty
years early.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah. And this is all before she gets married and
has Oscar. But the other thing that you should do
before you get married and give birth to a witty
and misunderstood man is consume the products that advertise on
this show as though they are sacrament, as though they

(21:25):
are holy or unholy whatever. Your preference is the thing
that will bring you closer to dads. And we're back.

(21:48):
So she starts off married life pretty wealthy, and you know,
she marries rich doctor guy, and then the rich doctor
man dies young and it turns out there's not so
much money after all.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
I was like, I was like, I was like, scam
all right.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
I know, for a moment, I'm like, well, how does
he die? Like maybe you know, like, oh my rapist husband,
Oh we fell down the stairs. Now I think I
think he dies naturally. And and the family actually struggles
a lot, but in that like aristocratic struggle way, like
they are not homeless. They are not going to be homeless.

(22:24):
Well at the end of their life, that's different. Sure,
So those are his parents. Oscar Wilde is a mama's boy.
And here's I know, here's some stuff. That's some people
who don't like Oscar wild will read too much into
and those of us who do like Oscar wild will
also read too much into. Right, his mother had wanted

(22:44):
a girl, and so while all little boys at the
time in Dublin were wearing dresses, right like that was
just what you do.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah, there's a great photo of Fdr too wearing just
a gorgeous little gown with the ringlet.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Oh yeah yeah, Oscar Wilde was dressed in like particularly feminine,
like frilly, lacey dresses and stuff like.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Note, we're like notably yeah, Like.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
People are like noticing, like, okay, because Jane Wild's a
little bit weird, you know, and this is like among
the weird things that she's doing.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Certified eccentric.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah yeah, until she has another kid. She has a daughter. Finally,
he has an older brother named Willie, and is a
bunch of older half siblings, including two half sisters who
die tragically in a fire, which happened way more often
back in the day. You usually walking around a night
clothes and everything's lit by candles, and then you're on
fire and die.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah yeah, and then the whole city birds.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
I know. Yeah, so he ends up with a younger
sister named a Sola, and Sola is going to die
of a fever when she's ten, and Oscar Wild never
really gets over this, and he keeps a lock of
all his hair and a satchel in his pocket for
the rest of his life. He lives at home as

(24:05):
a rich kid until he's nine, and he has French
and German servants that have various servant names like wet
nurse and governess and stuff. I don't know whatever, fucking
rich kid and French and German servants are teaching him
languages and shit, and then he's off to school. He
is a voracious speed reader. He claims that he can

(24:27):
read both facing pages of a book at the same time.
What I don't believe.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Him, No, absolutely not, but I like it.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, like people, he can read really fast and he
is a weirdo fucking goth kid at school. From the jump,
it's not just a dandy. He's like the dandy. He
is the archetype of dandy, from which all, he's not
the first dandy, but like he is the dandy right.

(24:59):
One of his affectations his whole life is he always
acts like he's like lounging around and living an idle
life and he never does any work. In reality, whenever
people aren't watching, he is working. Oh he is. He
is reading, he is writing. He like practices his witticisms
in the mirror.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Oh that's cute.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, he puts in the hours. Like all the photos
of him are like him, like very lounged out. Right.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
We see him on a fainting couch in imagination. Yes,
his wrist just limply like hanging down. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
He's a perfect man, yes, completely perfect. But I like
him quite a lot.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yes, I like him quite a lot as well.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
And yeah, and I really like that this is he
actually just at the end of the day, he's like, no,
he's he's working. He is reading constantly. He speaks a
bunch of languages. But it's not he's smart. But he
has to put in the work too.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
His biography, for someone who's very well documented, is really messy.
There's a lot of scholarly arguments about the accuracy of
his various biographies, and he was not above embellishing the truth,
much like his mother. I don't think he would mind
that he's so often misquoted. He also, like every now
and then someone would like say something witty around him,

(26:22):
and then they'd be like, fuck, you're gonna steal that,
aren't you, And he's like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, I am. It's what I do. Being a podcaster.
He would definitely had a podcast.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
And it would have been good. That's the thing. Most
people in history who would have had podcasts it would
have been absolute shit. His would have been fucking good,
really good. I am not confident enough of a scholar
to peace out everything about his early life. What is
true and what is uh embellished and stuff like that,

(26:56):
So some of the stories I hear about it, I'm like,
uh huh okay, But overall people are pretty consistent. He
went off to boarding school, and then he goes to
Trinity College in Dublin, and then he gets a scholarship
to Oxford. And he is a fucking weirdo in school.
He wears his Sunday best every day of the week.
He wears like a big silk top hat. He's six

(27:18):
foot two in a time when people aren't as tall
as they are now.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
He wears his tall I didn't know. Yeah, that seems
like really important for some reason to know he was.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Okay, Yeah, Okay, he is he is not a small man,
and he wears his hair long and he wears like
green ties, and he always looks wild to nominative determinant him.
So at one point, he's like a young teen and
he's reading a poem to the class and it's this
like super earnest poem and as you point it out,

(27:51):
he's like, he doesn't start off a great poet, right,
that is like not as immediate skill set, and the
class bully makes fun of him. So Oscar wild walks
up and slaps the bully in the face. Yes, So
the bully is like, all right, we got fight. And
there's very nothing's ever changed about boys in school. So

(28:13):
they're like, all right, we're gonna meet behind the playground
after school. We're gonna throw down, you know. And everyone
shows up and they're like, yeah, we're gonna watch probably
Oscar Wow, the weird nerdy kid. None of us like
get beat up. Oscar takes him down with one punch
and then beats the shit out of him always.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
Wow wow on half of the whole school really, I imagine.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Like and this is where they're like, oh, you didn't
notice that that man is very tall? Like, yeah, one
of my favorite genres of horrible live video that you
can see on the internet is there'll be like a
trans woman or a drag queen walking around and someone
will harass her and she'll start off being like, hey,

(28:57):
don't mess with me, you know, and then like finally
just like stands to full height and it's like you
a fucking problem, And it just makes my heart leap
with joy.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Makes me think of like when you put your whole
like palm on someone's face and just push them down
until they're on their knees. Yeah, I get them. Yeah
that I haven't watched a lot of those videos, but
that will be what I will be doing right after this.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah, there's a really good British one, all right. I
think it's rent free in my head. And so he
goes on to have like almost no interest in sports
in school, with two notable exceptions. He tries to get
into rowing, but everyone is mad because he just like
gets in the rowboat and like kind of leisurely rows
around like enjoy the lake. So like, why aren't you

(29:43):
and her?

Speaker 1 (29:44):
And he's like to say, rowing is like boat boys
are usually like a major red flag.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
Oh interesting, Yeah, well, they don't like him on the
rowing team.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Well that that that that's good. Yeah, yeah, we're back, Oscar,
We're back. He's like nap on a rowboat kind of man.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, exactly, there's one sport he's good at boxing.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
No way. Yeah, you're already blown my mind? All right?
Yeah awesome.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Somewhere along the way he gets into asceticism. And this
is a growing but roundly mocked movement of the time.
This is the art movement equivalent of the Oscar Wild,
the nerd that everyone is making fun of. Right But
if this is the case once again, Oscar Wild is
going to prove stronger than his bullies, because soon enough
he is the most famous Irishman in England. Even though

(30:35):
he is the representative of this art movement that everyone
claims to hate, he is a complete and utter pop
star of his time. It is like can't apparently kind
of can't be overstated?

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Wow, Okay, So.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
He gets into asceticism. What is asceticism, you might ask, Well,
it's a word that Margaret pronounces differently than other people
and doesn't feel bad about it. Aesthetics asthetics. Well, I
don't freaking care. It is an art movement that stands
against everything Victorian England was four. It is art for
art's sake, not for upholding the moral values of mainstream society. Literally,

(31:14):
the slogan art for art's Sake comes from this movement,
and I think maybe the guy who coined the phrase
was Walter Pater, a gay academic and artist who is
one of Oscar's mentors at school. And when I talk
about the fact that he's a gay mentor in school,
I want to make the following point. It is worth
noting that Oscar Wild ends up gay, probably not even

(31:36):
by modern centers, bisexual, and he specifically ends up believing
in a Greek that gets quotes. It's how he viewed it.
Greek style homosexuality were older men date younger men, but
not children at least as was understood at the time
in England, and he ends up, you know, into this
style of homosexuality, he dates younger men. The general scholarly

(31:56):
consensus is that he was probably not fucking these these
professors at school. He was not fucking men at all
at that time until a good bit later. And one
of the reasons that we I tend to believe this
particular claim is that once he starts fucking men. He
does not look back, and also like he doesn't have
a lot to hide. He went to prison and it

(32:16):
basically killed him.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Yeah, you know, like he would have owned it, you
think if if it happened.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Probably. Yeah, it's complicated. We'll talk about when we get
to the end of his life. But yeah, while he's
in school, he also takes an interest in it besides
a stheticism in Catholicism, and his dad is like, you
do that shit, You're out of the fucking will no
fucking papists in my house.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
In eighteen seventy seven, when he's twenty three, he somehow
gets a private meeting with the fucking Pope, who tells
him quote, I hope that you may take a journey
in life in order to arrive at the City of
God and spoiler alert, that's among the things he does,
okay without stopping being gay.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
So he's in school and he loves the aesthetic movement,
and I think it's a movement that is actually still
a little bit understood. It's critics call it useless in
shadow all style and no substance, but their goal was beautification,
to make life richer. One of Wild's professors, did this
whole art thing that wildlike volunteered for, even a Wild
hated manual labor and waking up early. Apparently they all

(33:25):
just like went around and planted flowers next to the
road to make the road pretty.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
What's wrong with that?

Speaker 2 (33:31):
Fucking nothing's wrong with that.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
In fact, the opposite.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And Walter Pater said, not the fruit
of experience, but experience itself is the end. And I
believe that with every fiber of my being. Yeah, it
does not stop me from being politically engaged, and it
did not stop Oscar Wild. So this is part of
why I think that astheticism in Oscar's astheticism is misunderstood.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, and it's kind of I mean, it makes me
think almost of like the bread and Roses slogan, where
it's like, yeah, that's like you need, you know, political help,
you need to be out of poverty, but you also
need to experience beauty and be able to access beauty.
So it feels like by planting flowers by the roadside,
you're actually making beauty accessible to people, and that's something

(34:15):
that we need. We need beautiful things. They don't have
to be like rich richuly manufactured things, but they can
be you know, wildflowers.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Oh his, you're going to love his socialism when we
start talking about all right, let's do it, because that
is that is the page he's on, all right. And
so even while he's still in school, once he's in Oxford,
he is like famous and he's known as like a
man about town even though he hasn't done anything. He's

(34:46):
invited to all the parties. He proves he's this amazingly
witty conversationalist. At the end of the day, this is
the main thing he's remembered for as being fucking witty.
He used to practice conversation and study it like an art.
He winds up the face of the aesthetic movement even
though he hasn't done and like people are a little
bit like, wait what by being the face of the
aesthetic movement, it's in there's like characters making fun of

(35:07):
the aesthetic movement that are based on him, like plays
and shit. So people who actually are making art are
making art making fun of this artist who hasn't done
anything yet.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Okay, okay, yeah, And people are.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
A little bit like, okay, but what has this guy done?
You know? Yeah, he wears weird clothes. He goes to
all the parties, and at some point during all of this,
a bunch of bros pick on him again, so he
beats up four of them at the same time, and
then invites the crowd to go raid those guys like

(35:41):
dorm room to steal all their liquor.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Wow, folk hero, that's folk hero status for sure.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah, he is bashing back as a queer before he's
figured out he's queer.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yep. Hey, it's it's within us all yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
And the story feels apocryphal to me, but it is.
It's in character for him, and it seems pretty documented.
I actually saw that one referenced more often than I
saw the one on one fight.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
And even if it is like apocryphal story, I think
the fact that it even exists means that the spirit
was behind, you know, to storry, Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
After graduating, he goes back to Dublin for a minute
and he starts courting this lady named Florence. But then
she's like, you know what, what if instead I marry
this guy, Bram Stoker, the Dracula guy.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Oh wow?

Speaker 2 (36:35):
So she does and hees yeah wow, and he's like,
all right, well, I'm gonna go back to London and
be a trust fund kid with my inheritance because either're like, oh,
they like don't have any money. He's like living off
of this no money that they have, so right of
course it's a it's a scale.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Thing tales old's time. Yeah, yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
So Oscar Wilde like grows up interested in political stuff,
but he doesn't quite know where he's gonna land for
a while. He's never reactionary. He just flirts between. We
starts off more interested in like democratic republicanism, and then
later is going to end up an anarchist. But his
mother's fiery politics were always with him. His early art
is pretty universally panned. He's a bit of a late

(37:17):
bloomer after college. His first two plays were both about
killing royalty. The first was called Vira and it's about
Russian nihilists trying to do an explosion on the Czar,
which is actually the first episode of this I ever recorded,
was Nihlist trying to do an explosion on the Czar.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
All comes back around.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Exactly, and he puts out a self published book of
poetry just to give you an idea of where he's
at in his career and people are like, yeah, this
isn't it. And he actually gets some like plagiarism accusations.
And there's a satire magazine called Punch that's like a
very important literary satire magazine or whatever, and they wrote,

(37:59):
the poet is wild, but his poetry's tame ah, just
pretty clover. You know.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
He really sounds like an it girl. Oh yeah, absolutely,
like what I would call him, kind of just iilly,
Like what exactly does he do? No one knows, and
yet everyone knows who he is.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yeah, yeah, no, And I love it because he's like
an it girl who like does right?

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yeah yeah, much girl, like take note, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Much like you too can do right by consuming things
that are advertised to you regardless of what they are.
Just no discretion is necessary because I've handpicked. No, I
can't even make that joke. I have no idea what
fucking adds are about to play, but here they.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Are, be decadent.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
And we're back. And so then it gets his big
break and it is weird. Theater is big business right
because they haven't invented Marvel movies yet. Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
The scripted that joke.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
I practiced it. I didn't practice reading. I'm not quite
as hard working as that's sketchy if I'm not as
hard working as Oscar Wild. So there's a theater duo,
Gilbert and Sullivan, and they put on a ton of
plays and they're like the very big deal, the Hollywood
before Hollywood, and they want to bring They had this
play that makes fun of the aesthetic movement, and they

(39:37):
want to put it on in America. But there's a problem.
No one in America has heard of the aesthetic movement.
So how do they solve this? They hire Oscar Wilde.
They sponsor Oscar Wild's speaking tour around America to talk
about the esthetic movement, so that America is primed to
watch a play called Patience making fun of the aesthetic movement.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Wow, Wow, Wow, that's like quite the pr campaign. I
know it doesn't worked, Yeah, I don't doubt it at all.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
It's like my publisher ak Press sometimes sends books to
like Alex jonesy type people just to get them to
talk about on the show, being like how mad they
are about these books. So in eighteen eighty two, Oscar
wild heads to America. His tour doesn't just break even.

(40:34):
It is a huge success. It's supposed to be four
months long, it lasts a year, and he makes a
fuck ton of money doing it. He talks all over
the place. He starts off kind of like not this
is like where he learns really this craft. This you know,
he's been practicing, he's doing new parties and stuff, but
now he's a speaker and he gets really fucking good
at it, and he talks about how life imitates art

(40:57):
and not the other way around. And he's just like
clever as fuck, and people like him, they also mock him.
And speaking of things that are complicated about history that
I usually avoid trying to get into on this show.
Usually when I point out that the Irish people in America,
people are like, oh, the Irish weren't white, and that's
like kind of true, and like usually you're like, look, yeah,

(41:19):
the Irish weren't white in America, but they were treated
a hell of a lot better than like black and
indigenous people were the way that Oscar Wild was treated
when people made fun of him, they put on blackface
to do it.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
And the caricatures of Oscar Wild were monkeys. Wow. He
was not white in America. Wow.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
That is so strange. I know.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
It caught me by surprise because everything else I've ever
read has put like ethnic European whites into a category below,
but very distinctly below white below, like why Protestants and
stuff right way above people who are like, you know,
darker skinned.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah, it's like the first waves of immigrant hatred like
that kind of right, would you say?

Speaker 2 (42:13):
So? Yeah, well it's a there's been like nativist as
you know, the people who hate immigrants. There's some of
that going back, at least as far as I've read
about like the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties and stuff,
and you get like the Whig Party and chure, sure, yeah,
but this is like when you yeah, you really have
like this is I think around the time you have
a lot more of Italians and Irish Catholics and stuff

(42:36):
coming into the country. And so he's going around and
he's talking about like art and beauty and interior design,
but he's also giving talks at the like he did
a talk at the bottom of a mine to talk
to the miners, and he brought Irish revolutionists around with
him to some of his talks, and he openly supported

(42:57):
armed insurrection and the assassination of English colonial forces in Ireland.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
And he was talking about this on the tour. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Wow, I'll get into one of the specific quotes about it,
because it's like an incident that I'll bring up later
that he's defending. And like most of the time apparently
when he like went and talked to the miners at
the bottom of the mind, he like tucked his hair
up and kind of didn't wear his trill clothes and stuff,
you know. But and so he comes back from this

(43:28):
year long tour and now he's bona fide famous, and
he's not just the weird guy who dresses weird and
his talk's clever. He's like, oh, he was a huge
deal in America, maybe he's a huge deal here too.
He comes to love the history of the Paris Commune,
and when he walks around Paris past some spots that
the commune yards had burned, he said, quote, there is

(43:51):
not there one little black and stone which is not
to me a chapter in the Bible of democracy. Wow.
And this kind of gets it. Like he writes constantly
about rebels being Christ's so he's clearly doing a Christian
version of these things. He's also there's like some word
antinomian that I had to look up for the purpose

(44:13):
of Whenever people talk about him, it's basically like, hey,
you don't have to like specifically do all the moral stuff.
The church says, it's fine, you can still be religious,
and that's like his thing.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
And do you think, and maybe you'll get into this,
but do you think that he was an actual believer
in like the miracles of the Bible or more like,
here's a great hero's journey structure to talk about living people.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
I don't know whether I would know specifically about his
belief in like sort of a literal interpretation of a
lot of the Bible stuff. But he's very actively especially
near the end of his life. But he's very actively
theologically engaged. He's very actively interested in what religion has
to say about the meaning of life.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Okay, Okay.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
In eighteen eighty four, he marries a woman named Constance Lloyd,
and later he is gay as fuck, but he genuinely
cares for Constance at first. Okay, here's like the one. Okay, Well,
so they have two kids together, Cyril and Vivian, and
Vivian is spelled coolest shit is v y v y
a m cool really, and he is a devoted and

(45:22):
loving father by all accounts, including the accounts of his kids,
which are the accounts that I care the most about. Yes,
he was politically devoted to feminism, but he did this
whole thing where like after his wife had some kids,
he's like, oh, she's just not beautiful anymore. Mmmm hm,
and like fuck him for that. That is like my
biggest Yeah, there's one other mark that we'll get to later.

(45:43):
But I also suspect the fact that he's gay.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
We at cool people to do cool stuff. Have a
three strikes in your out role and those are only two. Yeah, exactly,
so exactly right, We're good.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
That's no. Actually, there's a lot of people who like
it's one strike and it's bad enough. That's fair.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
That's completely fair. There there, you've burned down the field rule. Yeah,
total different degrees of strikes. Yeh.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Like his dad might be out for the one strike.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
Oh his dad is out. His dad is perpetently suspended.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Yeah, yeah, like one strike was the weird orientalism, but
then there was the one anyway, so.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah, we got it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, So Oscar Wilde he's doing all this stuff and
then he suddenly becomes gay as hell, anarchist, hell as hell,
prolific and successful, and just starts fucking taking off. It
is easy to be a b gay do crimes gay
person in Victorian England, because be gay counts as one

(46:51):
of those crimes. In eighteen eighty six, he is twenty
nine years old and he meets a seventeen year old
boy or manned and on how you want to think
about it, named Robert Ross. This is the other Like
some of the people he is sleeping with are perceived
as adults by the society, but would not be perceived
as adults by us. Robert Ross is already out as gay.

(47:15):
Every account I've read says that Robert Ross had read
a ton of Wild's poetry and was like, Oh, I'm
gonna go fuck that guy, and seduced Oscar Wild, which
is a convenient way to frame it, but I also
think it's true. So Robert and Oscar meet and they
start fucking, and Oscar Wild is like, oh shit, being

(47:37):
gay fucking rules. This is the best thing ever, and
he just his career just takes off. He starts producing
all of the work he's famous for. Him and Robbie
don't last super long, like romantically or sexually. They are
historically close friends. They are best friends and life partners

(47:59):
in so many ways. Like there's this joke I use
on this show where two women will like live together
and be obviously ganget buried next to each other, and
then society's like, hmm, we have no idea whether they
were into each.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Other an intimate friendship.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yeah, yeah, but that's Oscar and Robbie. They did fuck,
but then they probably stopped fucking and they're fucking buried
next to each other. Like gosh, wow, this kid or man,
I want to look at it. Who you know Oscar
is sleeping with ends up the executor of Oscar Wilde's
will and and is with him as he dies. Spoiler alert,

(48:38):
Oscar wild dies. He's not a vampire? Where is he?

Speaker 1 (48:41):
So let me ask a question real quick. Yes, so
at this time, this is the eighteen eighties where we're
at ish Yeah, okay, So are they categorizing themselves as
the identity of homosexual or are they sort of like
we do homosexual things right, Because this is kind of
time when that, I like, the identity category is forming, right.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
I know that is actually something that's like yeah, so
homosexuality and heterosexuality come around this decade. I know a
little bit about how society is viewing it. I know
that they end up calling it the love that cannot
be named overall. Oscar Wild like uses like Greek love
as the way that he refers to it. He's like
obsessed with calling everything Greek if it means I want

(49:26):
to like touch that man's penis, right, you know, But.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
That sounds like he wasn't saying I am a homosexual.
It's like this love is do you know what I'm
kind of saying, Like.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
No, I know, and I'm sad that I don't know
the answer.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Well, that's all right.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
My instinct is that a little bit of is like
I do this Greek love thing rather than like I
am a gay man.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
I think that would track with sort of the culture too.
It was like almost there.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
Yeah, that's that's my impression. Someone sure, someone knows.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
One thing that I kind of find interesting is that
I feel like it's some ways they like queered friendship
by having this friendship that was theoretically not romantic or sexual,
but it was absolutely a partnership, but was also too
gay man. You know, it's like it's really interesting to me.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
Yeah, it's fair like Emma Goldman, but like before totally.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Although Ima Goldman is a really good quote about Oscar
Wild that we'll get to.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Okay, all right, all right, I'll over to that.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Overall, I would say that twenty nine year olds probably
shouldn't fuck seventeen year olds, right, especially not their fans. Well,
I don't even really have to do it, especially there.
If you're twenty nine, don't fuck a seventeen year old.
The reason that I don't want to like commat Oscar
Wild is that no one would have baded an eye
if they had been straight. The age of consent in

(50:43):
England at this time, just the year prior, had been
raised to sixteen from thirteen, and it had only been
raised to thirteen a decade before that. It's not good,
but it's not the way that it will be twisted
and you to describe like the corruption of youth and
groomer and all of these things, right right, It is

(51:04):
a very The age gap in their relationship is very
very normal. Only their sexuality is not normal.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
Well, and even I mean even more so. It's like
the category of what a teenager is doesn't even exist
at this point because it's like you're either a child
or an adult, because you're going to mean, I think
rich people are different because they had the ability to
kind of luxuriate in that period and use that as

(51:33):
a time of growth and change. But it really wasn't
until like the nineteen twenties, after all of the labor
laws had, you know, taken children from like horrible labor
conditions and given them an opportunity to like live in
this in between period. But like a seventeen year old
then had the same type of agency than an adulthood. Again,

(51:53):
not to say it's good, but it is, like it's
just a completely and utterly different way of thinking of
age and what a person when a person has grown
and when they're not.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
So yeahh no, that's so interesting to me. It makes
so much sense. The I love understanding how different people
in history thought of things so completely and fundamentally differently,
and how it impacts the way that we do and
don't see ourselves in their like actions and things like that.
So I love that part of it.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
Thank you, Yeah, me too.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
So in eighteen eighty seven, Oscar Wilde was almost alone
among the London literary crowd when he signed George Bernard
Shaw's a Socialist play Right, signed a petition for the
reprieve of the Chicago Anarchists, the Haymarket Anarchists the very
first episode of this podcast, and who are soon to
become the Haymarket Martyrs. Soon he goes to further side

(52:46):
with the anarchist directly, but the same year, eighteen eighty seven,
he becomes editor of Lady World magazine, which he renamed
Women's World. Okay, and then he set about doing you know,
teen Vogue, like got woke as fuck about like a
decade ago. Yes, Oscar Wilde did that to Women's World.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Nice. Wow.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
He took a fashion in arts magazine and then added
feminism and culture and politics while still talking about fashion
and arts.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Brilliant.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
And this is why when you're like, oh, yeah, he
just just art for art's sake, and you're like yeah,
and also completely fundamentally changed society for art's sake.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, wow. I love that.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
He's still a mamma's boy. He publishes his mother, I mean,
his mother's an amazing writer. He publishes his mother and
his wife in the magazine, which he ran for about
two years, and he is publishing a ton during this
time period, he's publishing kids' stories and plays and essays,
and by eighteen ninety he is openly against the idea
of government. His first kind of writing about this is

(53:57):
inspired by Taoism rather than being inspired fired specifically by
the ideological Western anarchist tradition. He is writing a review
of a book of Daoist philosophy from like two thousand
years ago, but it was like a new edition or
the first in English or something. It's eighteen ninety when
he writes, all modes of government are wrong. They are
unscientific because they seek to alter the natural environment of man.

(54:19):
They are immoral because by interfering with the individual, they
produce the most aggressive forms of egotism. And he said
that governments, by trying to coerce people into being good,
destroy the natural goodness of man.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Wow in eighteen degree, Yeah was that? I said? I
don't disagree?

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Yeah, no, exactly. Like it's like the way he the
nuance with which he talked about this stuff is like
revelatory now, you know.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
Yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
In eighteen ninety one he published one of his most
famous essays. When it was famous at the time too right.
It's called the Soul of Man under Socialism, and it
is fucking interesting as hell. It is translated all over
the place, and in it he basically says the point
isn't to make art in the service of socialism. The
point is to make socialism in the service of art.

(55:09):
He says that quote, the community will supply the useful things,
and the beautiful things will be made by the individual.
It is the only possible way by which we can
get either the one or the other. And the socialists
at the time are trying to be all like pithy
and dismissive of this essay, and it's a very popular

(55:31):
essay and they're a little bit upset by this, and
they're like, woll this essay says a lot, but it
says nothing about socialism because it wasn't their style of socialism.
It didn't use the word anarchism. It was absolutely anarchism
and was respected and understood as much by socialists who
are familiar with anarchism at the time. And it's funny

(55:51):
because like one hundred years later, commentators are still like
individualism and socialism. This is a man of paradox, you know,
all right, guys, come on, I believe in you. And
he describes an aristocratic socialism. I'm using that phrasing. Okay,
we all get to have nice things is basically the argument.

(56:14):
He talks about, how when burglars steal from the rich,
it's fine because they have enough stuff. It's fine whatever,
and no, how you should have nice stuff, but if
you're not actually using your nice stuff, then you should
give it away to someone who will. Yeah, and he says,
quote man will kill himself by overwork in order to
secure property, and really, considering the enormous advantages that property brings,

(56:36):
one is hardly surprised. One's regret is that society should
be constructed on such a basis that man has been
forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop
what is wonderful, fascinating and delightful in him, in which
in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
He's like a gay tyler dirdam.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
He is, Oh God, does that mean like right wing
edge lords are going to take this gay leftist and
just like turn them into some horrible Probably probably, I
hope Elon must don't listen to this shit. Elon must
give away everything you own. Okay, you can keep one

(57:19):
cyber truck and uh, that's it does even one cyber
truck man. If you can't do it, you're doing it wrong.
So the most famous line, the most quoted line in
this at least in the circles that I run in,
is the form of government that is most suitable to
the artist is no government at all. But he actually

(57:41):
refers to how there should be a state. He uses
the word state to describe the society that is like
providing the stuff. And then but the thing it shouldn't
do is govern it. And everyone just uses words. However,
right right, and around this time, he probably should have
gone to France because homosexuality was legal in France and
the art and literary scene in France was predominantly anarchist

(58:04):
at the time. It's like how punk in the nineteen
eighties and nineteen nineties was like anarchists, right, as like
the dominant strain that was the eighteen eighties and eighteen
nineties literary and arts scene in Paris. Instead, he stuck
around London, where neither of the things that he liked

(58:24):
doing were particularly popular, and eventually it's going to kill him.
He starts making statements about his political position. I bring
all this up because people like want I'm claiming this
man for anarchism, and I want to show my work.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
Yeah, show your work.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
In eighteen ninety three, he wrote, in the past, I
was a poet and a tyrant. Now I am an
artist and an anarchist. In eighteen ninety four, he told
a journalist from the theater, we are all of us
more or less socialists. Nowadays our system of government is
largely socialistic. What is the House of Comments but a
socialistic assembly. I am rather more than a socialist. I
am something of an anarchist. I believe and like people

(59:01):
are then and now like. But what does he believe in?
It's impossible to know because he doesn't put this stuff
directly and obliquely in the art he makes. And I
think that that's a conscious choice, but not like afraid
to do it. He has a different way of working.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Well, And it seems like, you know, it's not that
he kept them separate, but he wanted politics to serve art,
and so he didn't want to necessarily make art about politics, right.
He wanted to be able to just make the art
and have the political structure support that.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Create exactly, yeah, exactly. At this point, he puts out
his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The first
version comes out serialized in eighteen ninety, and then a
slightly more sanitized version is published on its own, and
everyone like knows it's a bit gay, like that's what's
sanitized about it with each release. His most famous plays

(01:00:01):
come out in the eighteen nineties, especially the Importance of
Being Earnest, and then after Pride Cometh the Fall and
somehow I'm going to tie it back into boxing and
We'll talk about it on Wednesday. That's part one.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
I loved it. That was great. I'm really enjoying this.
I just had no idea such a shallow, such a
shallow vision I had of a man I love so much.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
No, I know, I picked this one because I've been like,
actually was a little bit like I gotta be done
doing Irish ship for a while. Especially, I was like,
I gotta be done doing Irish Catholic ship for a while,
you know. But I was like, oh, I want to
do a you know, I want to do a moral panic.
And Oscar Wild's been like on my to do list
for a while and then I think the title of
this is going to be basically like Oscar Wild, the
story that's more important than I than even I realized,

(01:00:52):
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
More important than being earnest.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Yeah, totally. So if people want to hear your takes
on moral panics and urban legends, where can they do that?

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
You can find American Hysteria wherever you get your podcasts,
as we say in the industry, Yeah, I guess we're
on Instagram American Hysteria podcast. If you want to do.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
That, cool, you can watch me. I take. I write
a substack and pretty much every week I find a
weird way to tie into thing that I'm deep diving
into whatever else I write, because it's like all I'm
thinking about. I wrote a piece on substack a couple
of weeks ago. As you hear this that you can

(01:01:38):
read more about Oscar Wild. No, it's not more about
Oscar Wild. You're going to get more out of the podcast.
Just go, I'm on substack. Go there. Half of it's
free and whatever, Sophie, what do you got to plug at.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Our cool Zone Media and cool zonemedia dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
All right, I'll see you off. I almost said Thursday,
but I don't know why, Oh, because that's the day
we record. I'll see you Wednesday. Cool People Who Did
Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.