The Decay of Lying and Other Essays

This faggut is a poet preacher prophet! One who spits on you and makes you love to hate to love to hate it.

Oscar Wilde's essay first published in 1889 in the British monthly, Nineteenth Century, has two important implications for the current political moment, which are not what I find most interesting about this dialogue/essay, and in which case I will discuss those first.
1. Wilde (through Vivian) argues that it is not Art that imitates Life, but Life that imitates Art. Importantly, Life includes Nature in this argument. Wilde writes that as "Art is more varied, Nature will, no doubt, be more varied also," in a section in which Vivian (mostly) asserts with his whole chest that it was not until the Impressionist painters that London show more became a city known for its fog. This made me think about what Wilde would do with post-modernism, and today's art, coming after post-modernism. Without sounding like a climate catastrophe denier, is the seemingly exponential growth in form, media, and content for modern art responsible for the chaos of the Natural world? Our art became too exploitative of the resources, the resources then turned and reflected the Art which showed a pillaged Earth.
2. This dialogue is about lying. It is basically a Make Lying Great Again manifesto. Wilde focuses primarily on the lies of myth and the grandiosity of art. However, when he does turn explicitly to politics, it is Cyril who interjects Vivian to suggest that politicians keep lying relevant. Asserting that Truth is a burden to the artist, and that lying should return to fashion in art, would not one reasonably suppose, under Wilde's own logic, that the people (Life) would lie, imitating the Style as much as they do the Content of what Vivian would call high art? This is a pretty hefty philosophical debate that I do not know enough to weigh in on but it has obvious connections to Trump, fascism, colonial capitalism, and carceral logic which I will not belabor here.

I read this because Karen Tongson mentions it in her book Why Karen Carpenter Matters. What I found most interesting, in relation to my thesis research (yes, I got from Joni Mitchell to truth before I even started my Joni biographies...) is the following passage: "Nor could anything be less impressive than the unfortunate hero gravely heralding a dawn that rose long ago, and so completely missing its true significance that he proposes to carry on the business of the old firm under the new name."
Great! This Is Exactly What I Fear Writing Fifty Pages About My Reading Of Joni Mitchell as a trans person will do. I must not upset Cyril and Vivian. I think I will end up using this in my thesis, so it is not a loss on that front. That also means I do not want to share too much of my thoughts on this for now.

Anyway, I'd join Wilde's cult and I'm mad about it. show less

I call BS!