Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, which
Speaker 2: is a podcast and it's about the things it says
Speaker 2: it's about. And I'm Margaret Kiljoy and I'm the host
Speaker 2: of the podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. But
Speaker 2: I have a guest today, which is good because I
Speaker 2: wouldn't be able to keep up vamping by myself for
Speaker 2: very long. And my guest is Chelsea Weber Smith, the
Speaker 2: host of American Hysteria.
Speaker 1: Hello, Margaret, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: I'm always it's always a joy to get to see
Speaker 1: your face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I said thanks instead of you're welcome. It's like
Speaker 2: when you go to the grocery store and you and
Speaker 2: you have the wrong interaction. Do you ever have the
Speaker 2: wrong interaction with the person who's checking you out where
Speaker 2: they're like, have a good day and you're or they're
Speaker 2: like nope, I can't even do it right on the
Speaker 2: top of my head, I've completely failed at this.
Speaker 1: No, I'm perfect and have never had an embarrassing public.
Speaker 2: Thanks for your purchase, and you go you too, Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: that's what I was going for.
Speaker 1: And Hi, Sophie, it's really nice to see you.
Speaker 2: Saving me today is Sophie, you're the producer.
Speaker 1: I just produced you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm saved. That is what a producer's job is
Speaker 2: on podcast if they're on MIC, is basically to save
Speaker 2: the host. And I am very grateful to you too.
Speaker 2: Did the bit twice, well done, Thank you. Our audio
Speaker 2: engineer is danel Hi, danel Hey, dan Hi, and our
Speaker 2: theme music was written for us by unwoman So American Hysteria.
Speaker 2: Would you say that it is a podcast that is
Speaker 2: sometimes about moral panics.
Speaker 1: I would say that that's very accurate. Yes, we do
Speaker 1: moral panics. We've been really on a big urban legends
Speaker 1: kick lately, so we have like folks call in and
Speaker 1: tell us about urban legends they heard growing up, and
Speaker 1: we do like massive deep dives on those. We just
Speaker 1: did like a gang initiation in season. If you remember
Speaker 1: the story of the gang members who would murder anyone
Speaker 1: who flashed their lights at them when they were driving
Speaker 1: on the highway, you know, so we kind of dove
Speaker 1: into that and the implications of that on the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system, you know, lies about gang members and antique
Speaker 1: gang legislation. So yeah, we just kind of will use
Speaker 1: kind of these fun stories to get into deeper parts
Speaker 1: of culture and politics.
Speaker 2: I actually started listening to that particular episode of the
Speaker 2: gang Initiations and then this is a terrible part of
Speaker 2: the story. I had a friend who was murdered in
Speaker 2: a gang initiation.
Speaker 1: No way, okay, all right, yeah it happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a squatter, someone killed him. And so
Speaker 2: I had this like moment of like, I'm going to
Speaker 2: listen to this tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's completely fair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yes, moral panics. I was like, what if
Speaker 2: we talked this week about a moral panic? But then
Speaker 2: and I found one that's not American.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Okay, it.
Speaker 2: Turns out we're not unique.
Speaker 1: Oh no, we are not as much as we think
Speaker 1: we are.
Speaker 2: Ye to say, which goes against everything I've been taught.
Speaker 2: The one thing I think we're unique about is her
Speaker 2: belief in her uniqueness.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So today we're going to talk about one of
Speaker 2: the greatest moral panics in English history, and one that
Speaker 2: we're seeing some frightening echoes of today we are talking
Speaker 2: about I'm curious when you'll figure ot what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: We're I'm gonna talk about the wittiest and perhaps the
Speaker 2: most aggressively misquoted man in the history of the English language.
Speaker 2: Oscar Wilde, Oscar Wild fun fun, all right, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think that that, like the runner up is Einstein. If
Speaker 2: someone says something, if you want to quote to sound smart,
Speaker 2: you pretend like Einstein said it. And if you want
Speaker 2: it to sound witty, you pretend like Oscar Wild said.
Speaker 1: It, or like pretentious. Maybe that is true.
Speaker 2: Too, Yes, yes, that is a thing that one could fairly.
Speaker 1: Say, Oh, this is gonna be fun.
Speaker 2: I'm really excited. Yeah, Oscar Wilde. And this is how
Speaker 2: I kind of came up knowing about Oscar Wild. Oscar
Speaker 2: Wild is painted by most history. Yeah, okay, what do
Speaker 2: you know of Oscar Wild before I get into it?
Speaker 1: Okay? Sure, amazing writer, terrible poet, and I Picture of
Speaker 1: Dorian Gray was one of my favorite books in high school,
Speaker 1: for sure. And I know that he was kind of
Speaker 1: one of the outspoken figures in the earliest, you know,
Speaker 1: queer movement. I don't know if he would like to
Speaker 1: be called that, but you know, he was very much
Speaker 1: a decadent who loved to admire beautiful things as a
Speaker 1: somewhat rich individual, and eventually he'd go to trial pretty
Speaker 1: much for being gay and creating. I believe of scene content.
Speaker 1: I guess we'll find out.
Speaker 2: So what I love about that is all of that
Speaker 2: is true. He's also just the surface.
Speaker 1: Okay, love it.
Speaker 2: And although except the one thing I would say that actually,
Speaker 2: after jail he wrote a really good poem.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right, The Ballad.
Speaker 2: Of Reading Jail is I think an amazing poem. I
Speaker 2: think he probably had to suffer. He actually probably would
Speaker 2: agree with this. We'll talk about this. He actually probably
Speaker 2: had to suffer before he could write poetry.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 2: Oscar Wilde is painted by most history as sort of
Speaker 2: an irreverent quip machine who is good for quote books
Speaker 2: and not much else. And you know, I mean people
Speaker 2: like the picture of Dorian Gray and people like the
Speaker 2: importance of being earnest right, Oh yeah. The movement he's
Speaker 2: most notably attached to is the aesthetic movement, and this
Speaker 2: movement and he are criticized as being all style with
Speaker 2: no substance. That is the primary thing that we hear
Speaker 2: about Oscar wild That's not true, or that is not all.
Speaker 2: Oscar Wilde was a politically and theologically engaged. He was
Speaker 2: politically and theologically engaged as an Irish intellectual living in
Speaker 2: the heart of Empire while playing the pop star. With
Speaker 2: a single essay, he contributed massively to anarchist socialist theory.
Speaker 2: He contributed financially to those committed who were committing direct action.
Speaker 2: He was put up on charges for consentially fucking other
Speaker 2: men and was sentenced to two years of hard labor,
Speaker 2: which destroyed his health. He soon died, and in doing
Speaker 2: so he became a martyr to the cause of queer
Speaker 2: rights and a bit tangentially, he became a martyr to
Speaker 2: Irish nationalism in the anarchist movement.
Speaker 1: Aw, you're already blowing my mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I like and even I knew like the
Speaker 2: cliffs notes of this. People are like, oh, Oscar wild
Speaker 2: like once called himself an anarchist. Isn't that cool? And
Speaker 2: we're like, yeah, cool, we'll take him whatever. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: didn't really believe it. No, I've read a lot about
Speaker 2: it now and I'm going to make that case, all right.
Speaker 2: He wasn't just a gay man on trial. He was
Speaker 2: homosexuality on trial in England. This is the moral panic
Speaker 2: that I'm referring to. He was every gay man before
Speaker 2: and every gay man to come. On top of that,
Speaker 2: his trial was framed by many as a condemnation of
Speaker 2: not just his homosexuality, but also his irishness and his rebellious,
Speaker 2: untamable spirit that was influencing culture away from colonial Victorian ideals.
Speaker 2: And so it's his socialism and his irishness are also part.
Speaker 1: Of this.
Speaker 2: Western imperial civilization itself went on like was on the
Speaker 2: line with the trial of Oscar Wilde. The spoiler, Western
Speaker 2: imperial civilization won that particular trial. Yes, shocking, And he wrote,
Speaker 2: especially at the end of his life, he wrote unique
Speaker 2: queer anarchist Christian mystic theory that still inspires wonder and
Speaker 2: the reader today. And yeah, he was really fucking votable.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And not only did he practice the love that dare
Speaker 2: not speak its name, his trash fire of a lover
Speaker 2: coined the Love that dare not speak its name about
Speaker 2: fucking him.
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow.
Speaker 2: So the love that dare not speak its name is
Speaker 2: fucking Oscar wild Wow, which many people got to do.
Speaker 1: It's hot, Yeah, it's very hot.
Speaker 2: So Oscar wild or rather Oscar Fingalo flaerty Willis Wilde.
Speaker 1: I can see why why he may have shortened it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had three middle names. He was born in
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty four in Dublin in Ireland. He had Protestant
Speaker 2: parents who were deeply involved in Irish nationalism. Just to
Speaker 2: get one Bingo square out of the way right away.
Speaker 2: It's a new Bingo square, but it's been coming up
Speaker 2: a lot. Irish nationalism was not Catholic versus Protestant, and
Speaker 2: only the colonial force of England and the theological authoritarians
Speaker 2: in Rome wants you to believe it is all right.
Speaker 2: He had too many middle names. They are all references
Speaker 2: to various Irish nationalist things because his parents. His parents
Speaker 2: are bougie as shit, don't get me wrong. He comes
Speaker 2: from an important family, like with a capital I and
Speaker 2: the other way that you indicate an important family, which
Speaker 2: is clickable links of your parents' names in Wikipedia. Yes,
Speaker 2: and as well as one of his great grandfathers one
Speaker 2: of his like sec like cousins once removed, and his
Speaker 2: great uncle was Charles Maturin, who wrote Melmoth the Wanderer,
Speaker 2: which is like one of the early Gothic novels. I've
Speaker 2: actually not read Melmouth the Wanderer. His rich ass parents
Speaker 2: were kind of interesting. Okay, So usually what happens on
Speaker 2: the show is I'll like cover a man, and then
Speaker 2: they're the end of reading it, I'll be like, wait,
Speaker 2: this man sucked and he was terrible. This does not
Speaker 2: happen to Oscar Wilde. H hey, it does happen to
Speaker 2: his parents. Wow, I had this whole thing written about
Speaker 2: how amazing and interesting his parents are and then and
Speaker 2: maybe we'll talk about it. Uh huh. His father was
Speaker 2: Sir William Wilde, which is a kind of sick name.
Speaker 2: I got a name, like, there's all Sir Willy Wilde.
Speaker 2: He actually his brother's name Willy Wilde, and actually goes
Speaker 2: by Willie. Sir William Wilde's a knight. He's knighted in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty four when Oscar's ten, so he doesn't start
Speaker 2: off knighted, and he's knighted because he's like a really
Speaker 2: really good surgeon. William did the thing that you can
Speaker 2: do when you're rich and like, which is you can
Speaker 2: do a million different things with your life because who's
Speaker 2: going to stop you? And this is what you should do. Well,
Speaker 2: actually what you should do if you're riches give all
Speaker 2: of your money away and live like everyone else. But
Speaker 2: if you're not going to do that, at least be
Speaker 2: fucking interesting, boring rich people are the terrible why would you, yeah,
Speaker 2: like do something. Yeah, I know his parents, they decide
Speaker 2: to be interesting. Sir Billy, who did not go by
Speaker 2: that to my knowledge, was an eye and ear surgeon
Speaker 2: who wrote the books on those things, and apparently like
Speaker 2: some of the things are still called like the wild
Speaker 2: Cone and things like that. I'm not an ant and
Speaker 2: I didn't bother asking my E and T friend about
Speaker 2: this because I only learned this part very recently. He
Speaker 2: was also a folklorist and he was like super like
Speaker 2: down with helping people like he would. He was a doctor,
Speaker 2: and he was like a doctor to like the fabulously
Speaker 2: rich and stuff. But he also you could just like
Speaker 2: call him and be like I don't have any money,
Speaker 2: and you'd be like, tell me a good story.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay.
Speaker 2: And so he collected folklore in exchange for doing medical work.
Speaker 1: That is really cool. That's really really cool. And I mean,
Speaker 1: as someone who dreams to be in the folkal or lineage,
Speaker 1: I always appreciate someone who collects stories because if you
Speaker 1: don't collect the stories, they're going to disappear.
Speaker 2: So I love that, I know. And it's like whenever
Speaker 2: I read the Irish stories I'm like, oh, it's cool
Speaker 2: if someone went around and rescued all these stories in
Speaker 2: the late nineteenth century. I wish someone had done it
Speaker 2: before the Catholic Church changed it dramatically.
Speaker 1: Yes, that would have been nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean some of that exists too. But like, anyway,
Speaker 2: one time, Sir William went on pilgrimage to the Holy
Speaker 2: Land and he like while he was there, two porpoises
Speaker 2: jumped on board of the ship, so he like dissected them,
Speaker 2: and then he wrote a two volume book on the
Speaker 2: nursing habits of porpoises, just to like get an idea
Speaker 2: of this man. Yes, he also he was an amateur Egyptologist.
Speaker 2: And now we get into the like kind of sketchy
Speaker 2: you know, like sure or the stuff that sure don't
Speaker 2: look good. He was obsessed with Egypt like everyone in
Speaker 2: Western Europe at the time, and.
Speaker 1: He like Domania. Isn't that what it's called?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this man was probably smoking some mummy ashes, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the style at the time as they did. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he like explored tombs and you know, unearthed
Speaker 2: the mummy, and he collected embalmed ibises. He also fucked
Speaker 2: around all and what I first read was that he
Speaker 2: did this in pops. The best way that one could
Speaker 2: do that in that he he fucked around a lot.
Speaker 2: He had a bunch of kids out of wedlock, and
Speaker 2: the big reason he was immoral by the standards of
Speaker 2: the time is that he cared about his bastard children
Speaker 2: and he like let them come over and he didn't
Speaker 2: exclude them from the family, and they were like at
Speaker 2: the family events and stuff. You know, wow, what a monster,
Speaker 2: I know. And he didn't cut the mothers out of
Speaker 2: his life either. There's like this whole thing where like
Speaker 2: one of the mothers of his children like came veiled
Speaker 2: at his bedside as he was dying or whatever, and like.
Speaker 1: So queer coded.
Speaker 2: Honestly, that's true. And he died in eighteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: when Oscar's around eighteen. So there's like that version of
Speaker 2: him where he's just like eccentric, a little bit orientalist, like,
Speaker 2: you know, cares about poor people. He was accused of
Speaker 2: drugging a woman and raping her while she was under chloroform,
Speaker 2: uh boy, in his capacity as a doctor, and historians
Speaker 2: like to argue about that because it went to court
Speaker 2: and stuff, and Oscar Wilde's mother, who otherwise looks amazing,
Speaker 2: defended him in that case, and historians seem like genuinely
Speaker 2: mixed about that. And I don't have enough information to opine,
Speaker 2: but it don't look his mother besides, possibly this one
Speaker 2: very not small oversight in her otherwise impeccable morals, was
Speaker 2: really cool. Jane Wilde. This is who Oscar wild takes after.
Speaker 2: Jane Wilde. Wears weird clothes and does weird stuff and
Speaker 2: is just like, I'm gonna be a weird lady. That's
Speaker 2: my thing. She spoke ten languages by the time she
Speaker 2: was eighteen. She wasn't actually raised as wealthy as her
Speaker 2: husband was and as her kids were, but I don't
Speaker 2: think she was raised poor. And she also liked to
Speaker 2: claim she was Italian, even though she wasn't. And she
Speaker 2: also claimed to be descended from Dante of Dante's Inferno.
Speaker 2: This is not true, she just like to say it.
Speaker 2: She was a prolific writer, and both her and her
Speaker 2: husband were Irish nationalists, like you know, Irish revolutionaries who
Speaker 2: believed it should be free from England, and she outlived
Speaker 2: her husband by blessed decades. She wrote a bunch of
Speaker 2: books on Irish folklore. She kind of continued her husband's
Speaker 2: work and like actually like really got it published and
Speaker 2: stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That's cool.
Speaker 2: She was also part of the Young Ireland movement of
Speaker 2: the eighteen forties, which was the more radical side of
Speaker 2: Irish independence movement at the time. And this later becomes
Speaker 2: the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which sort of becomes the IRA
Speaker 2: which causes the freedom from Ireland and then causes the troubles,
Speaker 2: and well, I'll blame England, actually have the trouble, the
Speaker 2: troubles be blamed on England. But so she's part of
Speaker 2: like many generations back of a direct line of the
Speaker 2: people who freed Ireland. Okay, she took up a pen
Speaker 2: name when she wrote, which is Speranza, which is Italian
Speaker 2: for hope. Italian nationalism. I was like trying to figure
Speaker 2: out what the Italian thing was once she's like likes
Speaker 2: claiming that she's Italian. But the other thing is that
Speaker 2: Italian nationalism was like the nationalism it was like seen
Speaker 2: as like the original European nationalism, which is means a
Speaker 2: completely different thing, and it does right now. It means
Speaker 2: the whatever you're thinking, it means the opposite opposite. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's so many things that are going to come up
Speaker 2: in this episode that are exactly the like things that
Speaker 2: don't make any that seem the opposite now, you know,
Speaker 2: or like are just sketchy to talk about.
Speaker 1: Sure, But.
Speaker 2: She wrote poetry, she translated from French and German, and
Speaker 2: she wrote essays with themes like what if we all
Speaker 2: got a bunch of guns and shot the British until
Speaker 2: they left us alone?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: This got her in some trouble, or rather it got
Speaker 2: men around her in trouble.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: The main journal of the Young Ireland movement was called
Speaker 2: The Nation, which was put together by two Catholics and
Speaker 2: one Protestant see the aforementioned footnote. Jane Wilde, or rather
Speaker 2: Speranza wrote for it and got the paper in some trouble,
Speaker 2: and just to say about what Irish nationalism meant at
Speaker 2: the time, because I actually think is really relevant to
Speaker 2: what's going on in Ireland right now, where people I
Speaker 2: think are misrepresenting Irish nationalism to mean racism. Charles Duffy,
Speaker 2: who started The Nation, which was one of the very
Speaker 2: important papers of all of this, is quoted as saying
Speaker 2: that the nationalism that they were building, would just as
Speaker 2: easily embrace quote the stranger who is within our gates
Speaker 2: as quote the irishmen of one hundred generations.
Speaker 1: This was not a.
Speaker 2: Universally held opinion among Irish nationalism, but it was a
Speaker 2: mainstream opinion among Irish nationalism. This is not the out
Speaker 2: their paper when I said that they're the more radical side.
Speaker 2: There's people more radical than them.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The Nation also regularly published a fuckt ton of women.
Speaker 2: Speranza was one of three the Graces because of course
Speaker 2: they still have to become like weirdly misogynistic about how
Speaker 2: they name the women who write for it.
Speaker 1: But it is kind of a badass monarch.
Speaker 2: I know, I don't mind being one of the Graces. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then there's like four or five women mentioned as
Speaker 2: writing for it besides these three who wrote for it,
Speaker 2: like all the fucking time, who are the Graces? In
Speaker 2: the eighteen forties, the Irish were fighting landlords. The Irish
Speaker 2: were always fighting landlords, so the Nation had a pretty
Speaker 2: militant tone. Speranza wrote, some of that militant shit, there's
Speaker 2: like I want to see a sea of muskets pointing
Speaker 2: towards the sky, listening you know she's a poet, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's a poet. Yeah, which is very helpful. I
Speaker 1: think in these types of situations.
Speaker 2: It really is you gotta yeah, you gotta make it sexy.
Speaker 1: You gotta have that rhetoric. Man. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In eighteen forty eight, which is a year into the
Speaker 2: Potato genocide, revolutions are sweeping Europe and I can't believe
Speaker 2: we haven't covered the revolutions of eighteen forty eight yet.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of those topics. It's like so
Speaker 2: big that I'm like, ooh, it's like the Russian Revolution.
Speaker 2: I haven't covered the Russian Revolution yet, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, you're gonna need a few episodes for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And she wrote that Ireland should join that
Speaker 2: wave of revolutions. So Charles Duffy, the editor, was put
Speaker 2: on trial for her words, and now they put him
Speaker 2: on trial. I think I've also read the videos on
Speaker 2: trial for some other shit and then this stuff happened.
Speaker 2: But I've read both and they're like, all right, who's
Speaker 2: Beranza And he's like, I'm not fucking telling you that.
Speaker 2: They're like, we're gonna throw you in prison. He's like,
Speaker 2: I'm not fucking telling you that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So he went to trial because they couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out who she was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically, okay.
Speaker 1: Well not to say he wouldn't have also been on trial,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like he took her place. He just
Speaker 1: didn't give her up.
Speaker 2: Okay, right, that's the I mean. I've read two different accounts,
Speaker 2: Like one was that he was went on trial for
Speaker 2: publishing those words, and one was that all of the
Speaker 2: stuff happened while he was on trial for anyway, and
Speaker 2: I don't know which which I believe. So while this
Speaker 2: is happening, she's in court supporting him, and finally she's
Speaker 2: just like she just stands up and she's like, I
Speaker 2: did it, I wrote it.
Speaker 1: That was me.
Speaker 2: And the court ignored her. I think because she was
Speaker 2: a woman.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I think they were like, now we're good, we're gonna
Speaker 2: fuck because they also were just trying to shut down
Speaker 2: this paper, right right, and they do, they shut down
Speaker 2: the nation. And then Jane Wilde just started it right
Speaker 2: the fuck back up again and is now the editor
Speaker 2: of it. And Crow's feminism more aggressively into the mix,
Speaker 2: and we're talking about the like eighteen forty eight, that
Speaker 2: is some early feminism.
Speaker 1: That's a big deal. Oh yeah, yeah, that's like sixty
Speaker 1: years early.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this is all before she gets married and
Speaker 2: has Oscar. But the other thing that you should do
Speaker 2: before you get married and give birth to a witty
Speaker 2: and misunderstood man is consume the products that advertise on
Speaker 2: this show as though they are sacrament, as though they
Speaker 2: are holy or unholy whatever. Your preference is the thing
Speaker 2: that will bring you closer to dads. And we're back.
Speaker 2: So she starts off married life pretty wealthy, and you know,
Speaker 2: she marries rich doctor guy, and then the rich doctor
Speaker 2: man dies young and it turns out there's not so
Speaker 2: much money after all.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, I was like, scam
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: I know, for a moment, I'm like, well, how does
Speaker 2: he die? Like maybe you know, like, oh my rapist husband,
Speaker 2: Oh we fell down the stairs. Now I think I
Speaker 2: think he dies naturally. And and the family actually struggles
Speaker 2: a lot, but in that like aristocratic struggle way, like
Speaker 2: they are not homeless. They are not going to be homeless.
Speaker 2: Well at the end of their life, that's different. Sure,
Speaker 2: So those are his parents. Oscar Wilde is a mama's boy.
Speaker 2: And here's I know, here's some stuff. That's some people
Speaker 2: who don't like Oscar wild will read too much into
Speaker 2: and those of us who do like Oscar wild will
Speaker 2: also read too much into. Right, his mother had wanted
Speaker 2: a girl, and so while all little boys at the
Speaker 2: time in Dublin were wearing dresses, right like that was
Speaker 2: just what you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a great photo of Fdr too wearing just
Speaker 1: a gorgeous little gown with the ringlet.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah yeah, Oscar Wilde was dressed in like particularly feminine,
Speaker 2: like frilly, lacey dresses and stuff like.
Speaker 1: Note, we're like notably yeah, Like.
Speaker 2: People are like noticing, like, okay, because Jane Wild's a
Speaker 2: little bit weird, you know, and this is like among
Speaker 2: the weird things that she's doing.
Speaker 1: Certified eccentric.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, until she has another kid. She has a daughter. Finally,
Speaker 2: he has an older brother named Willie, and is a
Speaker 2: bunch of older half siblings, including two half sisters who
Speaker 2: die tragically in a fire, which happened way more often
Speaker 2: back in the day. You usually walking around a night
Speaker 2: clothes and everything's lit by candles, and then you're on
Speaker 2: fire and die.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and then the whole city birds.
Speaker 2: I know. Yeah, so he ends up with a younger
Speaker 2: sister named a Sola, and Sola is going to die
Speaker 2: of a fever when she's ten, and Oscar Wild never
Speaker 2: really gets over this, and he keeps a lock of
Speaker 2: all his hair and a satchel in his pocket for
Speaker 2: the rest of his life. He lives at home as
Speaker 2: a rich kid until he's nine, and he has French
Speaker 2: and German servants that have various servant names like wet
Speaker 2: nurse and governess and stuff. I don't know whatever, fucking
Speaker 2: rich kid and French and German servants are teaching him
Speaker 2: languages and shit, and then he's off to school. He
Speaker 2: is a voracious speed reader. He claims that he can
Speaker 2: read both facing pages of a book at the same time.
Speaker 2: What I don't believe.
Speaker 1: Him, No, absolutely not, but I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like people, he can read really fast and he
Speaker 2: is a weirdo fucking goth kid at school. From the jump,
Speaker 2: it's not just a dandy. He's like the dandy. He
Speaker 2: is the archetype of dandy, from which all, he's not
Speaker 2: the first dandy, but like he is the dandy right.
Speaker 2: One of his affectations his whole life is he always
Speaker 2: acts like he's like lounging around and living an idle
Speaker 2: life and he never does any work. In reality, whenever
Speaker 2: people aren't watching, he is working. Oh he is. He
Speaker 2: is reading, he is writing. He like practices his witticisms
Speaker 2: in the mirror.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he puts in the hours. Like all the photos
Speaker 2: of him are like him, like very lounged out. Right.
Speaker 1: We see him on a fainting couch in imagination. Yes,
Speaker 1: his wrist just limply like hanging down. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He's a perfect man, yes, completely perfect. But I like
Speaker 2: him quite a lot.
Speaker 1: Yes, I like him quite a lot as well.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and I really like that this is he
Speaker 2: actually just at the end of the day, he's like, no,
Speaker 2: he's he's working. He is reading constantly. He speaks a
Speaker 2: bunch of languages. But it's not he's smart. But he
Speaker 2: has to put in the work too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: His biography, for someone who's very well documented, is really messy.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of scholarly arguments about the accuracy of
Speaker 2: his various biographies, and he was not above embellishing the truth,
Speaker 2: much like his mother. I don't think he would mind
Speaker 2: that he's so often misquoted. He also, like every now
Speaker 2: and then someone would like say something witty around him,
Speaker 2: and then they'd be like, fuck, you're gonna steal that,
Speaker 2: aren't you, And he's like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am. It's what I do. Being a podcaster.
Speaker 1: He would definitely had a podcast.
Speaker 2: And it would have been good. That's the thing. Most
Speaker 2: people in history who would have had podcasts it would
Speaker 2: have been absolute shit. His would have been fucking good,
Speaker 2: really good. I am not confident enough of a scholar
Speaker 2: to peace out everything about his early life. What is
Speaker 2: true and what is uh embellished and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: So some of the stories I hear about it, I'm like,
Speaker 2: uh huh okay, But overall people are pretty consistent. He
Speaker 2: went off to boarding school, and then he goes to
Speaker 2: Trinity College in Dublin, and then he gets a scholarship
Speaker 2: to Oxford. And he is a fucking weirdo in school.
Speaker 2: He wears his Sunday best every day of the week.
Speaker 2: He wears like a big silk top hat. He's six
Speaker 2: foot two in a time when people aren't as tall
Speaker 2: as they are now.
Speaker 1: He wears his tall I didn't know. Yeah, that seems
Speaker 1: like really important for some reason to know he was.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, Okay, he is he is not a small man,
Speaker 2: and he wears his hair long and he wears like
Speaker 2: green ties, and he always looks wild to nominative determinant him.
Speaker 2: So at one point, he's like a young teen and
Speaker 2: he's reading a poem to the class and it's this
Speaker 2: like super earnest poem and as you point it out,
Speaker 2: he's like, he doesn't start off a great poet, right,
Speaker 2: that is like not as immediate skill set, and the
Speaker 2: class bully makes fun of him. So Oscar wild walks
Speaker 2: up and slaps the bully in the face. Yes, So
Speaker 2: the bully is like, all right, we got fight. And
Speaker 2: there's very nothing's ever changed about boys in school. So
Speaker 2: they're like, all right, we're gonna meet behind the playground
Speaker 2: after school. We're gonna throw down, you know. And everyone
Speaker 2: shows up and they're like, yeah, we're gonna watch probably
Speaker 2: Oscar Wow, the weird nerdy kid. None of us like
Speaker 2: get beat up. Oscar takes him down with one punch
Speaker 2: and then beats the shit out of him always.
Speaker 1: Wow wow on half of the whole school really, I imagine.
Speaker 2: Like and this is where they're like, oh, you didn't
Speaker 2: notice that that man is very tall? Like, yeah, one
Speaker 2: of my favorite genres of horrible live video that you
Speaker 2: can see on the internet is there'll be like a
Speaker 2: trans woman or a drag queen walking around and someone
Speaker 2: will harass her and she'll start off being like, hey,
Speaker 2: don't mess with me, you know, and then like finally
Speaker 2: just like stands to full height and it's like you
Speaker 2: a fucking problem, And it just makes my heart leap
Speaker 2: with joy.
Speaker 1: Makes me think of like when you put your whole
Speaker 1: like palm on someone's face and just push them down
Speaker 1: until they're on their knees. Yeah, I get them. Yeah
Speaker 1: that I haven't watched a lot of those videos, but
Speaker 1: that will be what I will be doing right after this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a really good British one, all right. I
Speaker 2: think it's rent free in my head. And so he
Speaker 2: goes on to have like almost no interest in sports
Speaker 2: in school, with two notable exceptions. He tries to get
Speaker 2: into rowing, but everyone is mad because he just like
Speaker 2: gets in the rowboat and like kind of leisurely rows
Speaker 2: around like enjoy the lake. So like, why aren't you
Speaker 2: and her?
Speaker 1: And he's like to say, rowing is like boat boys
Speaker 1: are usually like a major red flag.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, Yeah, well, they don't like him on the
Speaker 2: rowing team.
Speaker 1: Well that that that that's good. Yeah, yeah, we're back, Oscar,
Speaker 1: We're back. He's like nap on a rowboat kind of man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, there's one sport he's good at boxing.
Speaker 1: No way. Yeah, you're already blown my mind? All right?
Speaker 1: Yeah awesome.
Speaker 2: Somewhere along the way he gets into asceticism. And this
Speaker 2: is a growing but roundly mocked movement of the time.
Speaker 2: This is the art movement equivalent of the Oscar Wild,
Speaker 2: the nerd that everyone is making fun of. Right But
Speaker 2: if this is the case once again, Oscar Wild is
Speaker 2: going to prove stronger than his bullies, because soon enough
Speaker 2: he is the most famous Irishman in England. Even though
Speaker 2: he is the representative of this art movement that everyone
Speaker 2: claims to hate, he is a complete and utter pop
Speaker 2: star of his time. It is like can't apparently kind
Speaker 2: of can't be overstated?
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, So.
Speaker 2: He gets into asceticism. What is asceticism, you might ask, Well,
Speaker 2: it's a word that Margaret pronounces differently than other people
Speaker 2: and doesn't feel bad about it. Aesthetics asthetics. Well, I
Speaker 2: don't freaking care. It is an art movement that stands
Speaker 2: against everything Victorian England was four. It is art for
Speaker 2: art's sake, not for upholding the moral values of mainstream society. Literally,
Speaker 2: the slogan art for art's Sake comes from this movement,
Speaker 2: and I think maybe the guy who coined the phrase
Speaker 2: was Walter Pater, a gay academic and artist who is
Speaker 2: one of Oscar's mentors at school. And when I talk
Speaker 2: about the fact that he's a gay mentor in school,
Speaker 2: I want to make the following point. It is worth
Speaker 2: noting that Oscar Wild ends up gay, probably not even
Speaker 2: by modern centers, bisexual, and he specifically ends up believing
Speaker 2: in a Greek that gets quotes. It's how he viewed it.
Speaker 2: Greek style homosexuality were older men date younger men, but
Speaker 2: not children at least as was understood at the time
Speaker 2: in England, and he ends up, you know, into this
Speaker 2: style of homosexuality, he dates younger men. The general scholarly
Speaker 2: consensus is that he was probably not fucking these these
Speaker 2: professors at school. He was not fucking men at all
Speaker 2: at that time until a good bit later. And one
Speaker 2: of the reasons that we I tend to believe this
Speaker 2: particular claim is that once he starts fucking men. He
Speaker 2: does not look back, and also like he doesn't have
Speaker 2: a lot to hide. He went to prison and it
Speaker 2: basically killed him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, like he would have owned it, you
Speaker 1: think if if it happened.
Speaker 2: Probably. Yeah, it's complicated. We'll talk about when we get
Speaker 2: to the end of his life. But yeah, while he's
Speaker 2: in school, he also takes an interest in it besides
Speaker 2: a stheticism in Catholicism, and his dad is like, you
Speaker 2: do that shit, You're out of the fucking will no
Speaker 2: fucking papists in my house.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: In eighteen seventy seven, when he's twenty three, he somehow
Speaker 2: gets a private meeting with the fucking Pope, who tells
Speaker 2: him quote, I hope that you may take a journey
Speaker 2: in life in order to arrive at the City of
Speaker 2: God and spoiler alert, that's among the things he does,
Speaker 2: okay without stopping being gay.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So he's in school and he loves the aesthetic movement,
Speaker 2: and I think it's a movement that is actually still
Speaker 2: a little bit understood. It's critics call it useless in
Speaker 2: shadow all style and no substance, but their goal was beautification,
Speaker 2: to make life richer. One of Wild's professors, did this
Speaker 2: whole art thing that wildlike volunteered for, even a Wild
Speaker 2: hated manual labor and waking up early. Apparently they all
Speaker 2: just like went around and planted flowers next to the
Speaker 2: road to make the road pretty.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with that?
Speaker 2: Fucking nothing's wrong with that.
Speaker 1: In fact, the opposite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And Walter Pater said, not the fruit
Speaker 2: of experience, but experience itself is the end. And I
Speaker 2: believe that with every fiber of my being. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: does not stop me from being politically engaged, and it
Speaker 2: did not stop Oscar Wild. So this is part of
Speaker 2: why I think that astheticism in Oscar's astheticism is misunderstood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's kind of I mean, it makes me
Speaker 1: think almost of like the bread and Roses slogan, where
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, that's like you need, you know, political help,
Speaker 1: you need to be out of poverty, but you also
Speaker 1: need to experience beauty and be able to access beauty.
Speaker 1: So it feels like by planting flowers by the roadside,
Speaker 1: you're actually making beauty accessible to people, and that's something
Speaker 1: that we need. We need beautiful things. They don't have
Speaker 1: to be like rich richuly manufactured things, but they can
Speaker 1: be you know, wildflowers.
Speaker 2: Oh his, you're going to love his socialism when we
Speaker 2: start talking about all right, let's do it, because that
Speaker 2: is that is the page he's on, all right. And
Speaker 2: so even while he's still in school, once he's in Oxford,
Speaker 2: he is like famous and he's known as like a
Speaker 2: man about town even though he hasn't done anything. He's
Speaker 2: invited to all the parties. He proves he's this amazingly
Speaker 2: witty conversationalist. At the end of the day, this is
Speaker 2: the main thing he's remembered for as being fucking witty.
Speaker 2: He used to practice conversation and study it like an art.
Speaker 2: He winds up the face of the aesthetic movement even
Speaker 2: though he hasn't done and like people are a little
Speaker 2: bit like, wait what by being the face of the
Speaker 2: aesthetic movement, it's in there's like characters making fun of
Speaker 2: the aesthetic movement that are based on him, like plays
Speaker 2: and shit. So people who actually are making art are
Speaker 2: making art making fun of this artist who hasn't done
Speaker 2: anything yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, yeah, And people are.
Speaker 2: A little bit like, okay, but what has this guy done?
Speaker 2: You know? Yeah, he wears weird clothes. He goes to
Speaker 2: all the parties, and at some point during all of this,
Speaker 2: a bunch of bros pick on him again, so he
Speaker 2: beats up four of them at the same time, and
Speaker 2: then invites the crowd to go raid those guys like
Speaker 2: dorm room to steal all their liquor.
Speaker 1: Wow, folk hero, that's folk hero status for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is bashing back as a queer before he's
Speaker 2: figured out he's queer.
Speaker 1: Yep. Hey, it's it's within us all yeah.
Speaker 2: And the story feels apocryphal to me, but it is.
Speaker 2: It's in character for him, and it seems pretty documented.
Speaker 2: I actually saw that one referenced more often than I
Speaker 2: saw the one on one fight.
Speaker 1: And even if it is like apocryphal story, I think
Speaker 1: the fact that it even exists means that the spirit
Speaker 1: was behind, you know, to storry, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: After graduating, he goes back to Dublin for a minute
Speaker 2: and he starts courting this lady named Florence. But then
Speaker 2: she's like, you know what, what if instead I marry
Speaker 2: this guy, Bram Stoker, the Dracula guy.
Speaker 1: Oh wow?
Speaker 2: So she does and hees yeah wow, and he's like,
Speaker 2: all right, well, I'm gonna go back to London and
Speaker 2: be a trust fund kid with my inheritance because either're like, oh,
Speaker 2: they like don't have any money. He's like living off
Speaker 2: of this no money that they have, so right of
Speaker 2: course it's a it's a scale.
Speaker 1: Thing tales old's time. Yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 2: So Oscar Wilde like grows up interested in political stuff,
Speaker 2: but he doesn't quite know where he's gonna land for
Speaker 2: a while. He's never reactionary. He just flirts between. We
Speaker 2: starts off more interested in like democratic republicanism, and then
Speaker 2: later is going to end up an anarchist. But his
Speaker 2: mother's fiery politics were always with him. His early art
Speaker 2: is pretty universally panned. He's a bit of a late
Speaker 2: bloomer after college. His first two plays were both about
Speaker 2: killing royalty. The first was called Vira and it's about
Speaker 2: Russian nihilists trying to do an explosion on the Czar,
Speaker 2: which is actually the first episode of this I ever recorded,
Speaker 2: was Nihlist trying to do an explosion on the Czar.
Speaker 1: All comes back around.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and he puts out a self published book of
Speaker 2: poetry just to give you an idea of where he's
Speaker 2: at in his career and people are like, yeah, this
Speaker 2: isn't it. And he actually gets some like plagiarism accusations.
Speaker 2: And there's a satire magazine called Punch that's like a
Speaker 2: very important literary satire magazine or whatever, and they wrote,
Speaker 2: the poet is wild, but his poetry's tame ah, just
Speaker 2: pretty clover. You know.
Speaker 1: He really sounds like an it girl. Oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: like what I would call him, kind of just iilly,
Speaker 1: Like what exactly does he do? No one knows, and
Speaker 1: yet everyone knows who he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, And I love it because he's like
Speaker 2: an it girl who like does right?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, much girl, like take note, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Much like you too can do right by consuming things
Speaker 2: that are advertised to you regardless of what they are.
Speaker 2: Just no discretion is necessary because I've handpicked. No, I
Speaker 2: can't even make that joke. I have no idea what
Speaker 2: fucking adds are about to play, but here they.
Speaker 1: Are, be decadent.
Speaker 2: And we're back. And so then it gets his big
Speaker 2: break and it is weird. Theater is big business right
Speaker 2: because they haven't invented Marvel movies yet. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: The scripted that joke.
Speaker 2: I practiced it. I didn't practice reading. I'm not quite
Speaker 2: as hard working as that's sketchy if I'm not as
Speaker 2: hard working as Oscar Wild. So there's a theater duo,
Speaker 2: Gilbert and Sullivan, and they put on a ton of
Speaker 2: plays and they're like the very big deal, the Hollywood
Speaker 2: before Hollywood, and they want to bring They had this
Speaker 2: play that makes fun of the aesthetic movement, and they
Speaker 2: want to put it on in America. But there's a problem.
Speaker 2: No one in America has heard of the aesthetic movement.
Speaker 2: So how do they solve this? They hire Oscar Wilde.
Speaker 2: They sponsor Oscar Wild's speaking tour around America to talk
Speaker 2: about the esthetic movement, so that America is primed to
Speaker 2: watch a play called Patience making fun of the aesthetic movement.
Speaker 1: Wow, Wow, Wow, that's like quite the pr campaign. I
Speaker 1: know it doesn't worked, Yeah, I don't doubt it at all.
Speaker 2: It's like my publisher ak Press sometimes sends books to
Speaker 2: like Alex jonesy type people just to get them to
Speaker 2: talk about on the show, being like how mad they
Speaker 2: are about these books. So in eighteen eighty two, Oscar
Speaker 2: wild heads to America. His tour doesn't just break even.
Speaker 2: It is a huge success. It's supposed to be four
Speaker 2: months long, it lasts a year, and he makes a
Speaker 2: fuck ton of money doing it. He talks all over
Speaker 2: the place. He starts off kind of like not this
Speaker 2: is like where he learns really this craft. This you know,
Speaker 2: he's been practicing, he's doing new parties and stuff, but
Speaker 2: now he's a speaker and he gets really fucking good
Speaker 2: at it, and he talks about how life imitates art
Speaker 2: and not the other way around. And he's just like
Speaker 2: clever as fuck, and people like him, they also mock him.
Speaker 2: And speaking of things that are complicated about history that
Speaker 2: I usually avoid trying to get into on this show.
Speaker 2: Usually when I point out that the Irish people in America,
Speaker 2: people are like, oh, the Irish weren't white, and that's
Speaker 2: like kind of true, and like usually you're like, look, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Irish weren't white in America, but they were treated
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot better than like black and
Speaker 2: indigenous people were the way that Oscar Wild was treated
Speaker 2: when people made fun of him, they put on blackface
Speaker 2: to do it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And the caricatures of Oscar Wild were monkeys. Wow. He
Speaker 2: was not white in America. Wow.
Speaker 1: That is so strange. I know.
Speaker 2: It caught me by surprise because everything else I've ever
Speaker 2: read has put like ethnic European whites into a category below,
Speaker 2: but very distinctly below white below, like why Protestants and
Speaker 2: stuff right way above people who are like, you know,
Speaker 2: darker skinned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the first waves of immigrant hatred like
Speaker 1: that kind of right, would you say?
Speaker 2: So? Yeah, well it's a there's been like nativist as
Speaker 2: you know, the people who hate immigrants. There's some of
Speaker 2: that going back, at least as far as I've read
Speaker 2: about like the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties and stuff,
Speaker 2: and you get like the Whig Party and chure, sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: but this is like when you yeah, you really have
Speaker 2: like this is I think around the time you have
Speaker 2: a lot more of Italians and Irish Catholics and stuff
Speaker 2: coming into the country. And so he's going around and
Speaker 2: he's talking about like art and beauty and interior design,
Speaker 2: but he's also giving talks at the like he did
Speaker 2: a talk at the bottom of a mine to talk
Speaker 2: to the miners, and he brought Irish revolutionists around with
Speaker 2: him to some of his talks, and he openly supported
Speaker 2: armed insurrection and the assassination of English colonial forces in Ireland.
Speaker 1: And he was talking about this on the tour. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, I'll get into one of the specific quotes about it,
Speaker 2: because it's like an incident that I'll bring up later
Speaker 2: that he's defending. And like most of the time apparently
Speaker 2: when he like went and talked to the miners at
Speaker 2: the bottom of the mind, he like tucked his hair
Speaker 2: up and kind of didn't wear his trill clothes and stuff,
Speaker 2: you know. But and so he comes back from this
Speaker 2: year long tour and now he's bona fide famous, and
Speaker 2: he's not just the weird guy who dresses weird and
Speaker 2: his talk's clever. He's like, oh, he was a huge
Speaker 2: deal in America, maybe he's a huge deal here too.
Speaker 2: He comes to love the history of the Paris Commune,
Speaker 2: and when he walks around Paris past some spots that
Speaker 2: the commune yards had burned, he said, quote, there is
Speaker 2: not there one little black and stone which is not
Speaker 2: to me a chapter in the Bible of democracy. Wow.
Speaker 2: And this kind of gets it. Like he writes constantly
Speaker 2: about rebels being Christ's so he's clearly doing a Christian
Speaker 2: version of these things. He's also there's like some word
Speaker 2: antinomian that I had to look up for the purpose
Speaker 2: of Whenever people talk about him, it's basically like, hey,
Speaker 2: you don't have to like specifically do all the moral stuff.
Speaker 2: The church says, it's fine, you can still be religious,
Speaker 2: and that's like his thing.
Speaker 1: And do you think, and maybe you'll get into this,
Speaker 1: but do you think that he was an actual believer
Speaker 1: in like the miracles of the Bible or more like,
Speaker 1: here's a great hero's journey structure to talk about living people.
Speaker 2: I don't know whether I would know specifically about his
Speaker 2: belief in like sort of a literal interpretation of a
Speaker 2: lot of the Bible stuff. But he's very actively especially
Speaker 2: near the end of his life. But he's very actively
Speaker 2: theologically engaged. He's very actively interested in what religion has
Speaker 2: to say about the meaning of life.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty four, he marries a woman named Constance Lloyd,
Speaker 2: and later he is gay as fuck, but he genuinely
Speaker 2: cares for Constance at first. Okay, here's like the one. Okay, Well,
Speaker 2: so they have two kids together, Cyril and Vivian, and
Speaker 2: Vivian is spelled coolest shit is v y v y
Speaker 2: a m cool really, and he is a devoted and
Speaker 2: loving father by all accounts, including the accounts of his kids,
Speaker 2: which are the accounts that I care the most about. Yes,
Speaker 2: he was politically devoted to feminism, but he did this
Speaker 2: whole thing where like after his wife had some kids,
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, she's just not beautiful anymore. Mmmm hm,
Speaker 2: and like fuck him for that. That is like my
Speaker 2: biggest Yeah, there's one other mark that we'll get to later.
Speaker 2: But I also suspect the fact that he's gay.
Speaker 1: We at cool people to do cool stuff. Have a
Speaker 1: three strikes in your out role and those are only two. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so exactly right, We're good.
Speaker 2: That's no. Actually, there's a lot of people who like
Speaker 2: it's one strike and it's bad enough. That's fair.
Speaker 1: That's completely fair. There there, you've burned down the field rule. Yeah,
Speaker 1: total different degrees of strikes. Yeh.
Speaker 2: Like his dad might be out for the one strike.
Speaker 1: Oh his dad is out. His dad is perpetently suspended.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like one strike was the weird orientalism, but
Speaker 2: then there was the one anyway, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Oscar Wilde he's doing all this stuff and
Speaker 2: then he suddenly becomes gay as hell, anarchist, hell as hell,
Speaker 2: prolific and successful, and just starts fucking taking off. It
Speaker 2: is easy to be a b gay do crimes gay
Speaker 2: person in Victorian England, because be gay counts as one
Speaker 2: of those crimes. In eighteen eighty six, he is twenty
Speaker 2: nine years old and he meets a seventeen year old
Speaker 2: boy or manned and on how you want to think
Speaker 2: about it, named Robert Ross. This is the other Like
Speaker 2: some of the people he is sleeping with are perceived
Speaker 2: as adults by the society, but would not be perceived
Speaker 2: as adults by us. Robert Ross is already out as gay.
Speaker 2: Every account I've read says that Robert Ross had read
Speaker 2: a ton of Wild's poetry and was like, Oh, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go fuck that guy, and seduced Oscar Wild, which
Speaker 2: is a convenient way to frame it, but I also
Speaker 2: think it's true. So Robert and Oscar meet and they
Speaker 2: start fucking, and Oscar Wild is like, oh shit, being
Speaker 2: gay fucking rules. This is the best thing ever, and
Speaker 2: he just his career just takes off. He starts producing
Speaker 2: all of the work he's famous for. Him and Robbie
Speaker 2: don't last super long, like romantically or sexually. They are
Speaker 2: historically close friends. They are best friends and life partners
Speaker 2: in so many ways. Like there's this joke I use
Speaker 2: on this show where two women will like live together
Speaker 2: and be obviously ganget buried next to each other, and
Speaker 2: then society's like, hmm, we have no idea whether they
Speaker 2: were into each.
Speaker 1: Other an intimate friendship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but that's Oscar and Robbie. They did fuck,
Speaker 2: but then they probably stopped fucking and they're fucking buried
Speaker 2: next to each other. Like gosh, wow, this kid or man,
Speaker 2: I want to look at it. Who you know Oscar
Speaker 2: is sleeping with ends up the executor of Oscar Wilde's
Speaker 2: will and and is with him as he dies. Spoiler alert,
Speaker 2: Oscar wild dies. He's not a vampire? Where is he?
Speaker 1: So let me ask a question real quick. Yes, so
Speaker 1: at this time, this is the eighteen eighties where we're
Speaker 1: at ish Yeah, okay, So are they categorizing themselves as
Speaker 1: the identity of homosexual or are they sort of like
Speaker 1: we do homosexual things right, Because this is kind of
Speaker 1: time when that, I like, the identity category is forming, right.
Speaker 2: I know that is actually something that's like yeah, so
Speaker 2: homosexuality and heterosexuality come around this decade. I know a
Speaker 2: little bit about how society is viewing it. I know
Speaker 2: that they end up calling it the love that cannot
Speaker 2: be named overall. Oscar Wild like uses like Greek love
Speaker 2: as the way that he refers to it. He's like
Speaker 2: obsessed with calling everything Greek if it means I want
Speaker 2: to like touch that man's penis, right, you know, But.
Speaker 1: That sounds like he wasn't saying I am a homosexual.
Speaker 1: It's like this love is do you know what I'm
Speaker 1: kind of saying, Like.
Speaker 2: No, I know, and I'm sad that I don't know
Speaker 2: the answer.
Speaker 1: Well, that's all right.
Speaker 2: My instinct is that a little bit of is like
Speaker 2: I do this Greek love thing rather than like I
Speaker 2: am a gay man.
Speaker 1: I think that would track with sort of the culture too.
Speaker 1: It was like almost there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's my impression. Someone sure, someone knows.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: One thing that I kind of find interesting is that
Speaker 2: I feel like it's some ways they like queered friendship
Speaker 2: by having this friendship that was theoretically not romantic or sexual,
Speaker 2: but it was absolutely a partnership, but was also too
Speaker 2: gay man. You know, it's like it's really interesting to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fair like Emma Goldman, but like before totally.
Speaker 2: Although Ima Goldman is a really good quote about Oscar
Speaker 2: Wild that we'll get to.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, all right, I'll over to that.
Speaker 2: Overall, I would say that twenty nine year olds probably
Speaker 2: shouldn't fuck seventeen year olds, right, especially not their fans. Well,
Speaker 2: I don't even really have to do it, especially there.
Speaker 2: If you're twenty nine, don't fuck a seventeen year old.
Speaker 2: The reason that I don't want to like commat Oscar
Speaker 2: Wild is that no one would have baded an eye
Speaker 2: if they had been straight. The age of consent in
Speaker 2: England at this time, just the year prior, had been
Speaker 2: raised to sixteen from thirteen, and it had only been
Speaker 2: raised to thirteen a decade before that. It's not good,
Speaker 2: but it's not the way that it will be twisted
Speaker 2: and you to describe like the corruption of youth and
Speaker 2: groomer and all of these things, right right, It is
Speaker 2: a very The age gap in their relationship is very
Speaker 2: very normal. Only their sexuality is not normal.
Speaker 1: Well, and even I mean even more so. It's like
Speaker 1: the category of what a teenager is doesn't even exist
Speaker 1: at this point because it's like you're either a child
Speaker 1: or an adult, because you're going to mean, I think
Speaker 1: rich people are different because they had the ability to
Speaker 1: kind of luxuriate in that period and use that as
Speaker 1: a time of growth and change. But it really wasn't
Speaker 1: until like the nineteen twenties, after all of the labor
Speaker 1: laws had, you know, taken children from like horrible labor
Speaker 1: conditions and given them an opportunity to like live in
Speaker 1: this in between period. But like a seventeen year old
Speaker 1: then had the same type of agency than an adulthood. Again,
Speaker 1: not to say it's good, but it is, like it's
Speaker 1: just a completely and utterly different way of thinking of
Speaker 1: age and what a person when a person has grown
Speaker 1: and when they're not.
Speaker 2: So yeahh no, that's so interesting to me. It makes
Speaker 2: so much sense. The I love understanding how different people
Speaker 2: in history thought of things so completely and fundamentally differently,
Speaker 2: and how it impacts the way that we do and
Speaker 2: don't see ourselves in their like actions and things like that.
Speaker 2: So I love that part of it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: So in eighteen eighty seven, Oscar Wilde was almost alone
Speaker 2: among the London literary crowd when he signed George Bernard
Speaker 2: Shaw's a Socialist play Right, signed a petition for the
Speaker 2: reprieve of the Chicago Anarchists, the Haymarket Anarchists the very
Speaker 2: first episode of this podcast, and who are soon to
Speaker 2: become the Haymarket Martyrs. Soon he goes to further side
Speaker 2: with the anarchist directly, but the same year, eighteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: he becomes editor of Lady World magazine, which he renamed
Speaker 2: Women's World. Okay, and then he set about doing you know,
Speaker 2: teen Vogue, like got woke as fuck about like a
Speaker 2: decade ago. Yes, Oscar Wilde did that to Women's World.
Speaker 1: Nice. Wow.
Speaker 2: He took a fashion in arts magazine and then added
Speaker 2: feminism and culture and politics while still talking about fashion
Speaker 2: and arts.
Speaker 1: Brilliant.
Speaker 2: And this is why when you're like, oh, yeah, he
Speaker 2: just just art for art's sake, and you're like yeah,
Speaker 2: and also completely fundamentally changed society for art's sake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, wow. I love that.
Speaker 2: He's still a mamma's boy. He publishes his mother, I mean,
Speaker 2: his mother's an amazing writer. He publishes his mother and
Speaker 2: his wife in the magazine, which he ran for about
Speaker 2: two years, and he is publishing a ton during this
Speaker 2: time period, he's publishing kids' stories and plays and essays,
Speaker 2: and by eighteen ninety he is openly against the idea
Speaker 2: of government. His first kind of writing about this is
Speaker 2: inspired by Taoism rather than being inspired fired specifically by
Speaker 2: the ideological Western anarchist tradition. He is writing a review
Speaker 2: of a book of Daoist philosophy from like two thousand
Speaker 2: years ago, but it was like a new edition or
Speaker 2: the first in English or something. It's eighteen ninety when
Speaker 2: he writes, all modes of government are wrong. They are
Speaker 2: unscientific because they seek to alter the natural environment of man.
Speaker 2: They are immoral because by interfering with the individual, they
Speaker 2: produce the most aggressive forms of egotism. And he said
Speaker 2: that governments, by trying to coerce people into being good,
Speaker 2: destroy the natural goodness of man.
Speaker 1: Wow in eighteen degree, Yeah was that? I said? I
Speaker 1: don't disagree?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, exactly. Like it's like the way he the
Speaker 2: nuance with which he talked about this stuff is like
Speaker 2: revelatory now, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety one he published one of his most
Speaker 2: famous essays. When it was famous at the time too right.
Speaker 2: It's called the Soul of Man under Socialism, and it
Speaker 2: is fucking interesting as hell. It is translated all over
Speaker 2: the place, and in it he basically says the point
Speaker 2: isn't to make art in the service of socialism. The
Speaker 2: point is to make socialism in the service of art.
Speaker 2: He says that quote, the community will supply the useful things,
Speaker 2: and the beautiful things will be made by the individual.
Speaker 2: It is the only possible way by which we can
Speaker 2: get either the one or the other. And the socialists
Speaker 2: at the time are trying to be all like pithy
Speaker 2: and dismissive of this essay, and it's a very popular
Speaker 2: essay and they're a little bit upset by this, and
Speaker 2: they're like, woll this essay says a lot, but it
Speaker 2: says nothing about socialism because it wasn't their style of socialism.
Speaker 2: It didn't use the word anarchism. It was absolutely anarchism
Speaker 2: and was respected and understood as much by socialists who
Speaker 2: are familiar with anarchism at the time. And it's funny
Speaker 2: because like one hundred years later, commentators are still like
Speaker 2: individualism and socialism. This is a man of paradox, you know,
Speaker 2: all right, guys, come on, I believe in you. And
Speaker 2: he describes an aristocratic socialism. I'm using that phrasing. Okay,
Speaker 2: we all get to have nice things is basically the argument.
Speaker 2: He talks about, how when burglars steal from the rich,
Speaker 2: it's fine because they have enough stuff. It's fine whatever,
Speaker 2: and no, how you should have nice stuff, but if
Speaker 2: you're not actually using your nice stuff, then you should
Speaker 2: give it away to someone who will. Yeah, and he says,
Speaker 2: quote man will kill himself by overwork in order to
Speaker 2: secure property, and really, considering the enormous advantages that property brings,
Speaker 2: one is hardly surprised. One's regret is that society should
Speaker 2: be constructed on such a basis that man has been
Speaker 2: forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop
Speaker 2: what is wonderful, fascinating and delightful in him, in which
Speaker 2: in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living.
Speaker 1: He's like a gay tyler dirdam.
Speaker 2: He is, Oh God, does that mean like right wing
Speaker 2: edge lords are going to take this gay leftist and
Speaker 2: just like turn them into some horrible Probably probably, I
Speaker 2: hope Elon must don't listen to this shit. Elon must
Speaker 2: give away everything you own. Okay, you can keep one
Speaker 2: cyber truck and uh, that's it does even one cyber
Speaker 2: truck man. If you can't do it, you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 2: So the most famous line, the most quoted line in
Speaker 2: this at least in the circles that I run in,
Speaker 2: is the form of government that is most suitable to
Speaker 2: the artist is no government at all. But he actually
Speaker 2: refers to how there should be a state. He uses
Speaker 2: the word state to describe the society that is like
Speaker 2: providing the stuff. And then but the thing it shouldn't
Speaker 2: do is govern it. And everyone just uses words. However,
Speaker 2: right right, and around this time, he probably should have
Speaker 2: gone to France because homosexuality was legal in France and
Speaker 2: the art and literary scene in France was predominantly anarchist
Speaker 2: at the time. It's like how punk in the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties and nineteen nineties was like anarchists, right, as like
Speaker 2: the dominant strain that was the eighteen eighties and eighteen
Speaker 2: nineties literary and arts scene in Paris. Instead, he stuck
Speaker 2: around London, where neither of the things that he liked
Speaker 2: doing were particularly popular, and eventually it's going to kill him.
Speaker 2: He starts making statements about his political position. I bring
Speaker 2: all this up because people like want I'm claiming this
Speaker 2: man for anarchism, and I want to show my work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, show your work.
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety three, he wrote, in the past, I
Speaker 2: was a poet and a tyrant. Now I am an
Speaker 2: artist and an anarchist. In eighteen ninety four, he told
Speaker 2: a journalist from the theater, we are all of us
Speaker 2: more or less socialists. Nowadays our system of government is
Speaker 2: largely socialistic. What is the House of Comments but a
Speaker 2: socialistic assembly. I am rather more than a socialist. I
Speaker 2: am something of an anarchist. I believe and like people
Speaker 2: are then and now like. But what does he believe in?
Speaker 2: It's impossible to know because he doesn't put this stuff
Speaker 2: directly and obliquely in the art he makes. And I
Speaker 2: think that that's a conscious choice, but not like afraid
Speaker 2: to do it. He has a different way of working.
Speaker 1: Well, And it seems like, you know, it's not that
Speaker 1: he kept them separate, but he wanted politics to serve art,
Speaker 1: and so he didn't want to necessarily make art about politics, right.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be able to just make the art
Speaker 1: and have the political structure support that.
Speaker 2: Create exactly, yeah, exactly. At this point, he puts out
Speaker 2: his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. The first
Speaker 2: version comes out serialized in eighteen ninety, and then a
Speaker 2: slightly more sanitized version is published on its own, and
Speaker 2: everyone like knows it's a bit gay, like that's what's
Speaker 2: sanitized about it with each release. His most famous plays
Speaker 2: come out in the eighteen nineties, especially the Importance of
Speaker 2: Being Earnest, and then after Pride Cometh the Fall and
Speaker 2: somehow I'm going to tie it back into boxing and
Speaker 2: We'll talk about it on Wednesday. That's part one.
Speaker 1: I loved it. That was great. I'm really enjoying this.
Speaker 1: I just had no idea such a shallow, such a
Speaker 1: shallow vision I had of a man I love so much.
Speaker 2: No, I know, I picked this one because I've been like,
Speaker 2: actually was a little bit like I gotta be done
Speaker 2: doing Irish ship for a while. Especially, I was like,
Speaker 2: I gotta be done doing Irish Catholic ship for a while,
Speaker 2: you know. But I was like, oh, I want to
Speaker 2: do a you know, I want to do a moral panic.
Speaker 2: And Oscar Wild's been like on my to do list
Speaker 2: for a while and then I think the title of
Speaker 2: this is going to be basically like Oscar Wild, the
Speaker 2: story that's more important than I than even I realized,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: More important than being earnest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. So if people want to hear your takes
Speaker 2: on moral panics and urban legends, where can they do that?
Speaker 1: You can find American Hysteria wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: as we say in the industry, Yeah, I guess we're
Speaker 1: on Instagram American Hysteria podcast. If you want to do.
Speaker 2: That, cool, you can watch me. I take. I write
Speaker 2: a substack and pretty much every week I find a
Speaker 2: weird way to tie into thing that I'm deep diving
Speaker 2: into whatever else I write, because it's like all I'm
Speaker 2: thinking about. I wrote a piece on substack a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks ago. As you hear this that you can
Speaker 2: read more about Oscar Wild. No, it's not more about
Speaker 2: Oscar Wild. You're going to get more out of the podcast.
Speaker 2: Just go, I'm on substack. Go there. Half of it's
Speaker 2: free and whatever, Sophie, what do you got to plug at.
Speaker 1: Our cool Zone Media and cool zonemedia dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, I'll see you off. I almost said Thursday,
Speaker 2: but I don't know why, Oh, because that's the day
Speaker 2: we record. I'll see you Wednesday. Cool People Who Did
Speaker 2: Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.