My first blog - Oscar Wilde

I recently saw a movie A good woman.. based on a play by Oscar wilde (forgot the name). In many ways it was a very intresting movie. I guess it made me look back at the picture of dorian gray .. the book i read few years ago .. i think there was a lot of similarities between the two. Most importantly as in dorian gray here too the central character had her dark side; this is one aspect of the movie which hit me most. Behind those paradox which Oscar Wilde uses for his humor he tends to show us the other facet of our hero .. which most of us find difficult to adjust to. We are so much in love with our heros that we want to see them as perfect human beings(i guess too much bollywood) but wilde goes much beyond that, he shows us that a situation makes a hero of villan and a person who is good in one situation wont be so always .. time, his circumstances and his environment change him. A person whom you think is good wont always be good and someone you think is totally immoral wont always be so. He in a way wants to challenge the reader and wants him to open his mind towards the realities of this world.
When i read Picture of Dorian Gray i couldnt figure out what was the real purpose of the book, i still dont understand it pretty well but what i have gathered so far is that he wants to potray how a very calm gentle pleasant person can degrade morally (although he time and again writes there is nothing which is moral or immoral) once he become aware of his beauty and falls in love with it. As Dorian becomes more and more aware of his external beauty the more he wants to have it and is ready to do anything for that. That is what leads to his eventual downfall. May be that was one of the things that the book was aimed at.

I think beauty is gods gift to a man, he should neither be concieted and nor should he give no importance to it at all for as the great man said beauty is higher than genius for beauty needs no explanation.


P.S. - All art is quite useless .... hope to figure this out.