Taking A Walk On The Wilde Side

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. Oscar Wilde said this among many other truer and intriguing word.

Last night I watched the 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray for the very first time. This was of course based upon the novel written by Oscar Wilde.

I haven't always been one to watch good old black and white flicks. I now wonder what has stopped me. Perhaps it was because I assumed that due to the great evolution of our intellect and notions of all things I just wouldn't find them stimulating. Wasn't I wrong.

This film that danced around such interesting concepts filled with play on so many stirring words had me from the very beginning. It got me thinking.

Our thoughts on youth and growing old haven't seemed to change much since 1891, which is when Mr Wilde first published The Picture of Dorian Gray, and in fact I very much love the spin Lord Henry, one of the main characters put on this. It was sad yet true. This got me to thinking about truth also - truth can be very sad indeed. And I noticed the difference in the way people would speak in those days - there was so much truth, but it was all put in a very polite way. Nowadays we would most likely tell a lovely lie or describe things in a more round about way in order for it to sound more positive. I may be wrong, this is just my perception so far.

Getting back to the thoughts on youth though, I loved the words Lord Henry expressed Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so And also And beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile.

Although a tad horrible, this is quite true I believe. Through my own observations people do seem to immediately listen more so to someone who is beautiful or trust that a younger person can get away with so much more than someone who is ageing. It is kind of genius in its own right.

I'd like to read more of what Oscar Wilde has to say about life's very fine footprints, but for now he has initially stirred in me a taste for brutal honesty.

I think we have worked toward masquerading the truth in our modern society. It doesn't make us any more clued in to what of the generations centuries before us were though it seems. We still remain in the same cycle regardless of advances in technology and what not.

These feelings are all still so raw, so familiar. What is not the same is that we don't really talk about it in a way that expresses what is real - we may nowadays find this rude or too negative. But in all honesty, perhaps we should be more abrupt with ourselves and take a walk on the Wilde side.

Let's be honest with ourselves, and not go the way in which Mr Gray went - desperately trying to evade the realistic outcome of life. Instead yield it somehow and grow. That is true beauty I think, but it is also quite scary. To make peace with what is considered so dark is probably the true genius in all of this.



#_beauty
#_intelligence
#_change
#_movie_review
#_knowledge
#_wisdom
#_honesty
#truth
#_lies
#_generations
#_difference
#_interesting
#_intriguing
#_perspective
#_darkness
#_happiness
#_life
#_living



%selfavenue