Hmm. Your post is intermittently interesting, but it's often silly. I'm afraid I can't help but get the impression that you'd like to rewrite history here.
The film 'Wilde' is about the life of Oscar Wilde. Now, sure, you *could* have made it about an Irish writer who wrote some funny stuff and was entertaining at parties - but I don't see much drama in that. It would also have been completely dishonest to overlook the extremely dramatic and significant events surrounding his sex life.
Therefore, a film about the man's tragic destruction is EXTREMELY appropriate and respectful to his memory. Especially given its accord with the substance of his work.
To take your points:
>>>I don't think he ever even was a homosexual.
Well, he was attracted to men, had sex with men, and fell in love with at least one man. He also had a relationship with a woman. The furthest you could get away from 'homosexual' here is to say he was bisexual.
>>>He loved his family dearly
Gay people are also capable of this.
>>>and I recall a quote where he said something regarding his wife being his one and only true love.
He also denounced his homosexuality in writing at one point, when he was under signficant pressure to do so - before shacking up with Bozie again. So I think you are perhaps being selective and leaning too heavily on a single quotation here.
>>>The homosexual activities were more a bit on the side
This may have been the case - but given that these relationships HAD to be secret and illicit, we'll never know whether Wilde would have jacked in his marriage and moved in with Bosie if he'd had a free choice in the matter within a society allowing him to do so without terrible punishment and stigma.
It's true, the only significant relationship developed therein being the one with Lord Douglas that got him convicted - but this relationship got him put in prison. Emerging from prison he resumed this relationship, and it broke up - but Wilde died within three years of his release. This does not allow us to say that he had gone back to heterosexuality. The only thing we can say is that he appears to have made his choice about his identity. This really wasn't just the odd shag.
>>>but not defining of an absolute sexuality.
Yes, this is an interesting point - especially as Wilde's significance as an icon of homosexuality is not one he had very much control over.
I'd also agree that:
>>>It's extremely odd that, someone who has some encounters with homosexuality is seen as homosexual while the majority of their life is spent as a heterosexual.
...but only if we're questioning the usefulness of labels at all. If Oscar liked men, he clearly wasn't *just* heterosexual, he was more than that. If he retained an interest in women, he clearly wasn't *just* homosexual. But let's not suggest the homosexual part of his life isn't significant. It destroyed him - or rather, society destroyed him because of it.
>>>It's like saying a man is completely gay because he kissed a man once after 80 years of heterosexual activity.
Well, of course, the man in your example might disagree. He might say 'blimey, I've been gay all this time but I had no idea.' Not that it's ever happened to me, but I'm led to believe that a person can find they've never fully understood their identity until quite late on, until they've had the right experience - and only then do they realise this about themselves.
>>>The problem is the desperate need to find anything remotely, or vaguely homosexual in history.
Here your argument gets silly.
Oscar did it with boys. That's not vague or remote.
And... EVEN IF he hadn't so much as waved his william at a telegraph boy in the whole of his life, the fact that he was tried, convicted, and imprisoned for homosexuality would make the subject of utmost significance to his life story.
>>>You are right in saying that the true genius of the man is forgotten
You can still buy his plays, his poetry, his novels. Yes, he's become an icon and a hero for the cause of homosexual rights - but none of this gets in the way of his work unless you put it in the way.
>>>To assume that a person's sexual activities over-ride completely his gift to humanity is a slap in Oscar Wilde's face
Well that's rubbish.
Let's try a thought experiment. Imagine you and I could interview Oscar Wilde right now.
Imagine we asked him: "what is your opinion, based on your experiences, of the laws and attitudes of 1890s Britain towards homosexuality?" - do you reckon he'd have an opinion, or just think it wasn't worth discussing?
Do we reckon he might, perhaps, have a STRONG opinion on laws that destroyed the lives of people for their sexual and emotional impulses (with the obvious qualification that all parties were consenting adults)? Do you reckon he might think it was something worth discussing, or indeed shouting from the rooftops? Do you think he maybe thought that it had an impact on his life, making it a major part of his life and story?
So, the 'slap in his face' thing - ridiculous. The other part of what you said, the 'over-ride completely his gift to humanity'... well... What? What are you talking about?
Do show me the examples of his artisitic legacy being overwritten. Certainly, people find gay experience in his work - hardly surprising, he had gay experiences - but I'm not aware of any of his texts being rewritten to impose such an interpretation on a reader.
In any case - Oscar's passion was Beauty. 'The artist is the creator of beautiful things', remember? 'Some of us are looking at the stars', remember?
Alternatively, consider his apparently facetious quip about the case of violence in US society - he said he thought it was because of the ugliness of the wallpaper. Definitely a quip, but actually consistent with his beliefs about beauty, and about the idea that a beautiful environment produces a better state of mind in people (anticipating the Broken Windows theory by a century).
The film 'Wilde' tells a story not of Oscar's desperate need to get his end away, but of a man destroyed by his love of beauty - even showing that love of beauty as heedless, as he is enchanted by the beauty of somebody as worthless as Lord Alfred.
As I said in an earlier post, that is not merely a story about Wilde, it is a very *Wildean* story, about Wildean ideas and themes. By telling this story it tells you a hell of a lot more about Oscar Wilde's perception of the world than you would get from whatever neutered and trivial narrative would result without this emphasis on his 'sex' life.
I mean, flipping hell. The Balad of Reading Gaol. Read that and forget about Wilde's experiences if you wish - but given that he had it attributed to his prison number rather than his name but I think it's pretty clear that you're slapping him in the face yourself if you do so.
Consider Wilde's work generally - replete as it is with social transgression, respectable men leading double-lives, men with socially abhorrent secrets and indiscretions.
While he certainly describes female characters as being physically 'lovely', it takes no effort whatever to think of the one character who, more than anybody else in the entirety of Wilde's work, epitomises a paragon of human physical beauty. And it aint a chick.
Furthermore, the characters who are most entranced by Dorian Gray's beauty are an artist, and a scandalous society wit - both of whom appear to be representative of Wilde himself.
I think it is absurd to suggest that Wilde would be offended by our remembering him as somebody devoted to beauty - wherever that beauty was to be found, and absolutely not excluding young men.
Usefully, you go on to say:
>>>He enjoyed time with a man, but would you define Albert Einstein by his enjoyment of a sandwich or Buddha's enjoyment of sleeping? We all have enjoyments but you don't define somebody by that.
This is specious. Einstein's work defines itself, and was very specifically about the universe outside of him, and outside of us. Where artists are concerned, and especially where Wilde is concerned, the work is concerned with the universe *inside* of us, and inside of the artist.
It is therefore not merely reasonable, but entirely sensible and expected to suppose that Wilde's life and experiences may be in some way relevant to his work. Indeed, this is a perfectly usual assumption about artists - and you surely can't be suggesting that the line gets drawn only where homosexuality comes up.
>>>To assume that his works are "gay" is ludicrous as well, because it lends to the idiocy that there are some things that are "gay" in nature and not heterosexual.
I'll agree with this inasmuch as I think that if a work speaks of humanity then it is surely accessible to anybody who is human. If a love story about two men is well-told then it ought to resonate with anybody who's been in love, not just with men who've been in love with men.
But if you're suggesting that there is nothing 'gay' about Dorian Gray, I'll laugh in your face. It may indeed be difficult to fully appreciate the novel if you discount what we know of Wilde's life.
>>>If we were to call something straight, then we'd be seen as homophobic and breaking acts of equality in the process.
No you wouldn't. Romeo & Juliet is a 'straight' love story. Do now call the police on me if you wish to prove that last point. As to homophobic, it would of course depend on how you said it and who you said it to.
Thing is - this shouldn't actually be a big deal. The film Wilde makea a perfectly obvious and sensible choice as to what part of Wilde's life could be made into a film. You have a problem with it, and I fear that the impression this gives is that you'd just rather they didn't talk about homosexuality.
I'd love to know what you think *should* be talked about when
As to Wilde's gift to humanity... I think the knowledge that this brilliant, funny, often kind, silly and unwise, deeply fascinating man was criminalised, brutally punished, and utterly crushed by a set of social values that could not tolerate his private life... I think that's a deeply human and humane story that only serves to underline and enhance his work - even before you consider that it informs it.
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