#dorian gray? more like dorian gay

[st4r-with-a-four]

They're so silly.

[potato-lord-but-not]

would you be interested in some gay people plagued by horrors on this fine October evening?

[glorious-destruction]

I think about this a normal amount

[incongruous-faggots]

🤨🏳️‍🌈

[math-is-math]

GUESS WHICH BOOK I’VE BEEN READING 🥸

(completely and utterly ignores the fact that I’ve been gone for two months)

[fluffypinkposts]

The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Read this sooo long ago, it's such a vibrant story It's one of those books that are so good, I'd rather read them that eat a meal yk

[pasta-in-the-pudding]

RIP Dorian Gray you would've loved drunk elephant skincare <///3

[azumasoroshi]

oh of course izaya is an oscar wilde fan. he would definitely use this as his bio for his private discord/twitter account

pulls out the importance of being earnest and the picture of dorian gray. time to analyze these from the psychological/literary perspective of izaya lets go baby (he has his own category)

edit check tags and rbs for some actual analysis stuff lmAOo

[x-the-picture-of-dorian-gay-x]

On one book cover I saw, Dorian wears these Crowley-from-good-omens-lookin-ass sunglasses and I needed to draw it

[fuckvictorvale]

up next on the dark academia reading list: the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde and these violent delights by micah nemerever

[littlefreakkitty]

Apparently i was reading The Picture Of Dorian Gray for the first time and she read it before -

[redcandieddust]

I'll raise you up,

DO I LOOK LIKE I CANNOT INTERPRET MEDIA FOR MYSELF AND WOULD FOLLOW WHATEVER YOU TELL ME ABOUT WHAT I KNOW FROM MY OWN READING AND WHAT I AM DOING BY TRADE ❤️

"but they are not canon"

Do I look like I give a fuck

[passerinesoncaffeine]

omocat knew exactly what they were doing holy fuck

[expiredtomathee]

"The one charm about the past is that it is the past" - Oscar Wilde

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

Goth Lit fandom: Now that we're in a place culturally where we can portray gay relationships without going to prison for two years, and now that popular media has started to tackle bi and gay characters being toxic in relationships, surely we can make Dorian Gray's subtext into text. We can adapt it as a book about a man loving another man so much that he captures his likeness and his soul. We can show Dorian use his beauty and appeal to manipulate men like he did in the book. We can tell this as a tragic story of an artist falling for a man who is much more toxic than he seems.

Netflix: Or, hear us out, siblings?

[renthony]

In Defense of Shitty Queer Art

Queer art has a long history of being censored and sidelined. In 1895, Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence in the author’s sodomy trials. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the American Hays Code prohibited depictions of queerness in film, defining it as “sex perversion.” In 2020, the book Steven Universe: End of an Era by Chris McDonnell confirmed that Rebecca Sugar’s insistence on including a sapphic wedding in the show is what triggered its cancellation by Cartoon Network. According to the American Library Association, of the top ten most challenged books in 2023, seven were targeted for their queer content. Across time, place, and medium, queer art has been ruthlessly targeted by censors and protesters, and at times it seems there might be no end in sight.

So why, then, are queer spaces so viciously critical of queer art?

Name any piece of moderately-well-known queer media, and you can find immense, vitriolic discourse surrounding it. Audiences debate whether queer media is good representation, bad representation, or whether it’s otherwise too problematic to engage with. Artists are picked apart under a microscope to make sure their morals are pure enough and their identities queer enough. Every minor fault—real or perceived—is compiled in discourse dossiers and spread around online. Lines are drawn, and callout posts are made against those who get too close to “problematic art.”

Modern examples abound, such as the TV show Steven Universe, the video game Dream Daddy, or the webcomic Boyfriends, but it’s far from a new phenomenon. In his book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, queer pop culture analyst Matt Baume writes about an example from the 1970s, where the ABC sitcom titled Soap was protested by homophobes and queer audiences alike—before a single episode of the show ever aired. Audiences didn’t wait to actually watch the show before passing judgment and writing protest letters.

After so many years starved for positive representation, it’s understandable for queer audiences to crave depictions where we’re treated well. It’s exhausting to only ever see the same tired gay tropes and subtext, and queer audiences deserve more. Yet the way to more, better, varied representation is not to insist on perfection. The pursuit of perfection is poison in art, and it’s no different when that art happens to be queer.

When the pool of queer art is so limited, it feels horrible when a piece of queer art doesn’t live up to expectations. Even if the representation is technically good, it’s disappointing to get excited for a queer story only for that story to underwhelm and frustrate you.

But the world needs that disappointing art. It needs mediocre art. It even needs the bad art. The world needs to reach a point where queer artists can fearlessly make a mess, because if queer artists can only strive for perfection, the less art they can make. They may eventually produce a masterpiece, but a single masterpiece is still a drop in the bucket compared to the oceans of censorship. The only way to drown out bigotry and offensive stereotypes created by bigots is to allow queer artists the ability to experiment, learn through making mistakes, and represent their queer truth even if it clashes with someone else’s.

If queer artists aren’t allowed to make garbage, we can never make those masterpieces everyone craves. If queer artists are terrified at all times that their art will be targeted both by bigots and their own queer communities, queer art cannot thrive.

Let queer artists make shitty art. Let allies to queer people try their hand at representation, even if they miss the mark. Let queer art be messy, and let the artists screw up without fear of overblown retribution.

It’s the only way we’ll ever get more queer art.

_

Like this essay? Tip me on Ko-Fi, pledge to my Patreon, or commission an essay on the topic of your choice!