{"id":7495,"date":"2014-05-14T04:15:51","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T03:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/?p=7495"},"modified":"2014-05-14T23:06:22","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T22:06:22","slug":"dorian-gray-strikes-again-riding-the-wave-of-decadence-with-penny-dreadful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mitziszereto.com\/blog\/dorian-gray-strikes-again-riding-the-wave-of-decadence-with-penny-dreadful\/","title":{"rendered":"Dorian Gray Strikes Again: Riding the Wave of Decadence with Penny Dreadful"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last November saw the publication of my sexually explicit Gothic novel The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray<\/em><\/a>, a\u00a0sequel to Oscar Wilde’s classic work about a man whose\u00a0fateful wish to remain forever young and beautiful yields a bit more than he bargained for. The story moves through time from Victorian London on up to the present day, taking Dorian on a rollercoaster ride of\u00a0unrepressed hedonism that’s not only sexual in\u00a0the extreme, but fatal to many whose lives intersect with his.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray by Mitzi Szereto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now it seems as if\u00a0we’re seeing Dorian everywhere we turn\u00a0– from actor\/director Samuel Orange’s audience-friendly\u00a02013 London stage performance<\/a> set in Dorian’s “townhouse” (in reality\u00a0Orange’s residence) to Britain’s royal family of thespians the Redgraves and the Foxes joining forces in a 2014\u00a0stage interpretation<\/a> replete with all the sordidness Wilde could only hint at. And just this week\u00a0we have the debut of the Showtime TV series Penny Dreadful<\/a>, <\/em>which features our dear decadent Dorian in a starring role courtesy of actor Reeve Carney<\/a>, along with several other famous Victorian-era literary characters woven into the Gothic plotlines.<\/p>\n

Do I sense a trend or perhaps more so the simple desire by creative artists to take\u00a0inspiration from\u00a0one of literature’s most fascinating and iconic characters, creating something new from the old?<\/p>\n

Judging from\u00a0the unmistakably adult content in these various works, it appears that I’m not the only one\u00a0to have picked up on\u00a0the cloaked sexuality and homoeroticism in Oscar Wilde’s novel,\u00a0which he was forced\u00a0to revise and censor in order to even make it “publishable.”\u00a0Indeed, I stirred up a fair bit of controversy\u00a0for interpreting Wilde’s character as a man driven almost exclusively by the desire to\u00a0sexually corrupt others (with all the sordid\u00a0details included) – a modus operandi<\/em>\u00a0that\u00a0should be obvious\u00a0to anyone who’s read with any semblance of care\u00a0the original novel, which portrays Dorian as a sexual profligate who dallied with both men and<\/em> women. Having been granted the freedom to work without fear of censorship (or a prison term), contemporary writers\u00a0such as myself have finally been able to portray Dorian Gray as Oscar Wilde no doubt intended.<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0even before the advent of The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray<\/em> and Penny Dreadful<\/em>\u00a0Dorian was already being given new life. Director and choreographer\u00a0Matthew Bourne<\/a>‘s\u00a0passionate and gender-swapping 2008 London dance production\u00a0Dorian Gray<\/a>\u00a0is still making\u00a0its way around the world, giving audiences further insight into the Dorian Gray of Wilde’s wicked imagination. Bourne’s version even goes\u00a0so far as to change the gender\u00a0of Sibyl Vane to that of a male, thereby\u00a0throwing open\u00a0the door to a full-on homosexual liaison. And the\u00a02009 film version<\/a> starring Colin Firth as Dorian’s mentor Lord Henry Wotton takes things well\u00a0over the top when it comes to Dorian’s extravagant sexual behaviour, which descends into a degeneracy that proves as shocking as it does titillating.<\/p>\n

These stage and film productions are\u00a0no shrinking violets when it comes\u00a0to dishing out\u00a0some\u00a0steam, and it appears that\u00a0Penny Dreadful<\/em>\u00a0isn’t doing much blushing either. Intense sexual\u00a0situations and nudity with Dorian at their core abound – and series’ creator John Logan<\/a> makes no apologies. And why should he? Dorian Gray is the ultimate bad boy – a bad boy who’s irresistible to everyone he meets. When you’ve been granted\u00a0eternal life and beauty, you have the freedom to do anything you want\u00a0and have nothing to lose. Perhaps this<\/em> is the key\u00a0to Dorian Gray’s perpetual appeal, particularly in contemporary times. He dares to do what most of us would hardly dare to imagine!<\/p>\n

Which only goes to prove\u00a0that great literature will always\u00a0inspire writers and other creative\u00a0artists. And if it arrives with\u00a0a delicious helping of the Gothic, so much the better!<\/p>\n

(Shameless plug since this is my blog and I’m allowed to do these things: If you can’t get enough Gothic – and let’s face it, none of us can! – my new\u00a0anthology Darker Edge of Desire: Gothic Tales of Romance<\/em> is now available for pre-order worldwide from Amazon<\/a> and other major booksellers. So get a jump on the neighbours! After all, you wouldn’t want to be left behind, would you?)<\/p>\n

\"Darker<\/a>
Darker Edge of Desire: Gothic Tales of Romance<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last November saw the publication of my sexually explicit Gothic novel The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray, a\u00a0sequel to Oscar Wilde’s classic work about a man whose\u00a0fateful wish to remain forever young and beautiful yields a bit more than he bargained for. The story moves through time from Victorian London on up to the present […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1782,1781],"tags":[33,69,2290,2284,2252,2292,1835,2282,2155,2255,2279,2256,2293,2272,2281,2291,679,680,2280,2289,2285,292,565,2257,2283,2287,2286,386,2288,2253,2259,444,489],"class_list":["post-7495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artsandentertainment-2","category-writingandpublishing","tag-authors","tag-books","tag-colin-firth","tag-darker-edge-of-desire","tag-dorian-gray","tag-erotic","tag-fiction","tag-gay-literature","tag-gothic","tag-gothic-horror","tag-gothic-literature","tag-gothic-romance","tag-hbo-tv","tag-homoerotic","tag-homoeroticism","tag-john-logan","tag-literature","tag-live-performance","tag-london-stage","tag-lord-henry-wotton","tag-matthew-bourne","tag-mitzi-szereto","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-paranormal","tag-penny-dreadful","tag-reeve-carney","tag-samuel-orange","tag-sex","tag-sibyl-vane","tag-the-picture-of-dorian-gray","tag-the-wilde-passions-of-dorian-gray","tag-theatre","tag-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t