Part Two: Oscar Wilde: A Story That Was Way More Important Than I Realized

In part two, Margaret continues to talk with Chelsey Weber-Smith about the gay anarchist Irish dandy who proved to be not shallow at all.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, which
is a podcast that comes out twice a week where
I talk about people that I think are cool who
did cool stuff? And this week is an archetypical episode
where I really like the person I'm talking about and
the person I'm talking to, who is Chelsea Weber Smith,
host of American Hysteria, which is another podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hey, so happy to be back. I am loving this
series so far. It is right up, my allie, So
thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hell yeah, happy to have you. That sounded fake. That's
not true, It's not fake. Yeah. I hate my job. No,
I love my job, Tim Hard I know, I know,
I'm really bad at So Sophie Hi is the producer.
Hi Sophie. Hi, Hi Sophie.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
You gave me the you gave me your phone voice.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Hi Sophie. Hi Sophie.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Hardly nailing this.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
And I guess our producer or whatever or audio engineer
is Daniel Danel. High Danel. You have to say hih
Daniel too. We can't move forward to Dane Yeah, okay cool.
Our theme musical is written forced by a woman, and
this is part two and a two parter. So the
second half about Oscar fucking Wild, who probably wouldn't have

(01:22):
hated having fucking although I guess he had enough middle
names he probably didn't need anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Remind us, wait, remind us of the whole name again.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh but it's all the way back up at the
top of my script, nor I don't do it. Several
of them start with f Yeah, it's like three, there's
like finnial clarity, larity. Well, then fuck works Wills. I
think Willis or Wills is one of them. Yeah, all right, Yeah,
I totally know this man inside and out. I wouldn't

(01:53):
hate to. So we are talking about Oscar Wild, and
when we've last left off, he has reached the pinnacle
of his well. He's just about to put out like
his most important works and he is just like fucking
killing it. And he loves his kids, he loves his life.
And then it's the early eighteen nineties. Oscar Wild is

(02:17):
at the peak of his fame, in his power. He's
writing plays and essays that will outlive us all. And
then he falls for a guy and has a train
wreck of a relationship and it just fucks everything up.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Who among us you know?

Speaker 2 (02:32):
In eighteen ninety one, he meets the man whose father
is going to ruin his life. He meets Lord Alfred Douglas.
His friends all call him Bozie, which seems to be
a childhood nickname from his mother called him. It relates
to the word boy. Somehow, I don't understand how English
people work. Bozie was a younger man, he was twenty

(02:55):
one or something. Oscar's in his mid thirties at this point.
They hit it off and they have a love affair
full of dramatic breakups and wild goings ons. Alfred demands
Oscar spend basically all of his money on him, and
Oscar does just whatever fucking Bozy wants Bozy gets, and

(03:17):
they just wrecking ball each other's lives, just fuck each
other up. It's really bad.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Do you think that this is a fuck each other
up because they are actually really passionately in love or
is it hard to say? So?

Speaker 2 (03:34):
You know those like relationships where you kind of just
fight all the time but the sex is fucking wild,
and then whenever you're away, you're like, oh, actually that
person wasn't so bad after all, And if he calls
your like come running back.

Speaker 4 (03:50):
Yeah, I know that yeahact situation. Okay, all right, it's
one of those, got it. The two of them have
a particular habit. One of their favorite ways to spend
the time is that they go to a very fancy
hotel they hire sex workers together and then tip the
sex workers lavishly, like they'll send them home with silver
cigarette cases and shit like.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Oh okay, I know, like yeah, I like that.

Speaker 5 (04:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
And then they get into big blow up fights and
then they get back together, and it is really fucking
bad for Oscar. It's probably bad for Bosie too, but
he's later going to become a massive anti semi although
anti Nazi. Okay, Well, Lord Alfred is the man who
coined the phrase the Love that dare not speak its name,
and he's kind of a want to be intellectual, but

(04:37):
he's fucking twenty one. Oscar Wilde was a want to
be intellectual when he was twenty one. I was a
want to be well, I don't know what I was
when I was twenty one.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
I was definitely I want to be intellectual when I
was twenty one, so.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
I know I was, like I think when I was seventeen,
I wasn't want to be intellectual, and when I was
like twenty one. I was like, I'm going to die
in the revolution. Before I turned twenty four.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
I wasn't want to be anarchist by then too.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah, yeah, and Oscar Wilde is like hiring him to
do stuff he sucks at, like translate his plays and
things like that, and then like Oscar will do just
like go back in and like clean up all the
translations and shit.

Speaker 5 (05:12):
Like.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
At some point, I think what happened is Oscar wild
like writes a play in French and then like the translation.
I think it's the one that Alfred does, and so
they date and they're wildly in love and fucking each
other up and then having amazing, beautiful decad at times. Also,
and Alfred's dad is the Marquess of Queensbury. I refuse

(05:36):
to learn what a marquess is. Fucking royalty. I don't
even know some royalty shit something embarrassing. Yeah, you ever
heard of the Queensbury rules of boxing? No, it is
the rules that modern boxing is like developed from. Okay
because of the Marquess of Queensbury. This particular man, all right,

(05:59):
he did not write them down, but he popularized them
and he was he was big into boxing and he
sets about trying to ruin Oscar Wilde's life because he
sees Oscar wild as the corruptor. This groomer was ruined
his son because, as we talked about last time, homosexuality

(06:19):
and heterosexuality were brand fucking new terms at this time.
I really loved it. Actually was like a really mind
blowing moment when I realized that heaterosexuality is about one
hundred and twenty years old.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 5 (06:29):
You know.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Uh, But that doesn't mean that before that everyone was like,
do whatever you want, it's all groovy, you know.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
No, I just meant that there wasn't an identity category.
There were like actions that you took, so you like,
did gay stuff you weren't necessarily gay stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yourself, yeah, And if you were, it was like words
like pervert and things like that.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yes, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
And as best as I can tell the way that
Oscar wild in this particular moral panic about homosexuality, gay
men are seen as like vampires. They are corruptors that
go around and ruin the young and turn them into
corruptors themselves, pretty much exactly what people say about like
trans women. Now. Yeah, so, mister Queensbury, I refuse to

(07:15):
call him marquess every single time, and I think he
would be annoyed if I called him mister, and I
don't like him, so I'm gonna call him mister. Stick
it to him. Yeah, take that man who's been dead
since before my great grandfather was born, before my grandfather
was born. So he sets about to ruin Oscar Wilde's

(07:36):
reputation in life to save his son from becoming a
vampire or whatever. But the first couple times they meet,
like they'll be like, like Bozi and Oscar will be
at a restaurant together, and like Dad will just happen
to be there because like all the rich people hang
out to rich people shit, you know, and he'll like
come over. And Oscar Wilde is so fucking charming that

(07:58):
he successfully charms his twenty one year old boyfriend's dad
multiple times. And so it's like Dad will like storm
over and like sit down, and Oscar I'll be like, man,
I love fishing. I hear you like fishing. Let's talk
about fishing.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
Oh man, this is what I aspire to be for.
When I meet my partners, like homophobic family members, it's
like I will do it. I will charm you into
this and do excitting this.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Oh yeah, and it's like every single time, and then
he like leaves it in my head. He's like, oh wait,
I'm supposed to be mad.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
That vampire.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, she was this charming, smile, handsome abs. So finally
mister boxing Man shows up at Oscar's house and is like,
next time I see you and my son together, i'ma
fuck you up. I think he says, I will thrash you,
which is nice eighteen nineties for ima fuck you up,
to which Oscar replies because he is fucking witty and quotable.

(08:59):
I don't know what the Queensbury rules are, but the
Oscar Wild rule is to shoot on site.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
So he's like, hey, you want to come at me,
I'll fucking kill you.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
And I think Bosey Lord Alfred is egging Wild on
because Lord Alfred hates his fucking dad. And then one day,
Lord Alfred he shows up at the rich people London
club that Wild hangs out at. It was like referred
to as like showed up at his club and I
was like, dear Google, did Oscar Wild own a club?

(09:33):
And then it's like no, it's just like a weird
rich British people thing where you have like your gentleman's club.
Actually this particular one accepted men and women, but it's
like your weird rich people club.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
And for a second, I was thinking of Oscar Wild,
like Lindsay lohand in that one video when she owned
that club in Mikono's doing that really.

Speaker 5 (09:55):
Really funny.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
It's pretty good, thank you.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
So I would I would love to go to Oscar
Wild's club or probably this club that I don't know
anything about.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Lindsay Lohan's club and Mikinos became abandoned because she only
lost interest or something, and I always just dreamed of
going to that.

Speaker 5 (10:14):
Hell the TV show on her club in Mikinos not MTV,
and there was a phase where it was the best
worst show on television. Yeah, it don't songs for like
six weeks because that's when she lost interest.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
But she had a fantastic fake accent.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Oh yeah, Well, I know a lot more about pop
stars in eighteen nineties London, and.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
I do, so why we're bringing it in, We're making
it modern. I know.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
I appreciate that. Sometimes I like become conscious of the
fact that I like know more about like even like
political shit, of the nineteen tens in Ireland than I
do about. Like now, that teens to me directly.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Yeah, I do understand that.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, so Oscar wild as a club, but not as
cool as Oscar well owning a club, which I would
absolutely have gone to. And I think if he had lasted,
none of this had gone down. I could see this
man owning a club.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
And he leaves a calling card, which is another rich
people thing, and it says for Oscar Wilde posing somdamite
because among his many boxing talents does not include a
talent for spelling or comprehensible handwriting. Okay, is spell it's
sodomite spelled wrong. And Oscar Wilde is like, I'm gonna

(11:38):
sue this man for libel wow. And his friends are like,
but you're a sodomite. You're like, and he will go
to jail unless he can prove you are a sodomite,
which he can do because you're a sodomite.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
And his other friends are like, hey, Paris is lovely.
Would you like to go to Paris.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
Let's just go to Paris and have a nice time.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, And he's like nope, because if I let this
stand it will ruin my reputation. I am suing this
man for libel. My favorite history arguing about I'm less
interested in like did he fuck so? And so that's fine?
Why the fuck did he do? This? Is my favorite
history arguing about of this whole thing. Yeah, so Queensberry

(12:35):
now has to proven court that Oscar Wild is a
sodomite and it's a criminal triald, criminal liable. Queensberry is arrested,
but the trial never becomes about Queensberry. I think Oscar
wild sees it like, oh, I'm going to have the power.
I'm going to be the prosecutor. I'm going to stand up,
I'm going to fight. You know, it is a trial
about Oscar wild Several times Oscar wild has to be like, hey,

(12:57):
I'm the I'm the prosecutor, not the defend Yeah wow,
and people are like fuck you you homo. Yeah you know.
Like soon enough, Queensburg is found not guilty and Oscar
Wilde gets put on trial instead for gross indecency aka

(13:17):
touch and pens.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
So he's the after the trial because of this publicity,
he gets charged with a separate crime.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Because of all the evidence that came out in the
course of the trial.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
Oh gosh, Oscar, you didn't have to do that.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
No, he did not have to do it. These three
trials is three trials of fucking Oscar Wild. They are
a big fucking deal. Yeah that It is a big
deal in history because Oscar Wild was not the first
nor the last celebrity to go on trial for gay sex.
But it is coming at a time of public moral

(13:54):
panic around, you know, the sodomites in our mist mist
or whatever, and Oscar Wild is like one of them
most famous people around. It also comes at a time
when there's two other big scary things going on in England,
Irish nationalists and anarchists. And your boy is a gay

(14:14):
Irish anarchist.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Yeah, okay, And what year are we in?

Speaker 2 (14:18):
This is eighteen ninety five, he goes on twenty five.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Okay, great.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, I'm going to take a detour really quick to
talk about Irish independence and British anarchists because as an
angle I haven't seen too many people cover and it's
about the trial, and I think it's really interesting. During
the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, British anarchists were primarily
focused on anti colonialism. In particular, they were focused on

(14:42):
freeing the colony next door Ireland. Anarchists across the world
were starting to turn their attention to anti colonialism everywhere,
but it's particularly the case in Britain, which makes some sense.

Speaker 5 (14:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
They also weren't trying to tell the Irish rebels what
to do. They weren't like, hey, you all got to
be anarchists and do whoever anarchy. Instead, they actually looked
to the Irish rebels for inspiration and remained in dialogue
with movements around the world. It's actually they actually did
better at this than I expected them to to be.

Speaker 5 (15:09):
Frick.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
They're kind of supporting whatever the Irish nationalists needed versus.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Right, right, And I don't know whether they were like
sending arms or not sure, right, but I do know
that they were some of the only people in England
publishing things that were like we support the following like
Irish nationalists crime that had nothing to do with anarchism
as a cause. It was just anti colonial.

Speaker 4 (15:33):
Yeah, and ideological support yeah okay, yeah, and like literally
even just being able to get news about it that
they were like constantly getting repressed for.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
This is not a big free speech time, you know, right,
And in Britain anarchists were also like, hey, fellow Brits,
you know that whatever repressive shit they do to the Irish,
they'll eventually do here, right, and considering the the English
later invent rubber bullets to use on the Irish, like,
oh shit, that's like eighty years later. But yeah, but

(16:05):
this is exactly what happens. The repressive apparatus that was
used against the Irish was then used domestically, and specifically,
the spying apparatus was used domestically. Okay, and so we're
gonna talk about the Phoenix part killings as a sort
of cool people detour just to talk. No one's been
stabbed so far as this episode. You know, yeah, some

(16:27):
people are going to get stabbed and shot now, and
some of them will deserve it. Irish Rebellion was about
Irish independence, but it was specifically against landlordism as well.
There have been a potato genocide in the eighteen forties
where England had starved Ireland during period of potato blight,
but shit had not gotten better by the eighteen eighties
and so like economically, and so you have this next

(16:49):
generation who are like, hey, how come we're all tenant
farmers instead of owning our land, and we're one bad
harvest away from death. And also we keep getting evicted,
so we're actually not even one bad harvest away from death.
Were just dead.

Speaker 5 (17:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
This leads to the Land War of eighteen seventy nine
to eighteen eighty two, which is a whole fucking war
against landlords, and I just want to sit on that
pleasant thought for a moment. Although in this particular war
against the landlords, the landlords did come out on top.
Britain by eighteen eighty one was like, all right, fuck y'all,

(17:22):
Irish motherfuckers, no more trial by jury and Ireland we
are fucking in charge, not you fuck off. They arrested
nine hundred anti landlord activists and then the Irish were like,
you know, there's like a couple of guys responsible for that.
There's like, well, to quote the great folk singer Utah Phillips,
the earth is not dying, it is being killed, and

(17:43):
those who are killing it have names and addresses. The
Irish were like, well, it's I can point to those people.
That's the guy. One group that came out of this
land War was called the Irish National Invincibles or just
the Invincibles, which is a fucking cool name. Yeah, And

(18:03):
they are a splinter from the Irish Republican Brotherhood and
they were like, what if we just stab the aforementioned
responsible men to death in a public park. Surely that's
a thing within our power. And they try a couple
of times, but they keep failing. But like the little
engine that could, they just kept right at it until

(18:25):
one day they succeeded. Or to quote the later IRA
talking about how they the later IRA kept trying to
blow up Margaret Thatcher and they said, you have to
get lucky every time. We only have to get lucky once. Wow. Wow. Yeah,
And I think it was I think they're specifically mad

(18:46):
that Margaret Thatcher was giving Margaret's a bad name.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Yeah, yeah, primary problem, her greatest sin.

Speaker 5 (18:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
So one day in Phoenix Park, seven of these Invincibles
surround the Permanent Undersecretary Thomas Henry Burke and the new
Chief Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, the latter of whom had
literally just arrived in Dublin to be in charge of
repressing the colony. They actually didn't even recognize him. I
think they just were killing the permanent under Secretary and

(19:14):
then like you know, found this other guy that needed
to get stab into and they killed them in Phoenix Park.
And unlike the park name, those two did not rise
from the ashes. Ah, thank you, thank you. The weapons
have been delivered by a seven month pregnant Irish nationalist

(19:34):
named Mary Anne Byrne, who ran weapons for the Resistance
under her skirts, and the getaway driver. The getaway driver
was named and I am not making this up Skin
the Goat.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Wow, all one word hyphenated.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
I'd go to a party at their house. I don't
think they are a couple, but I'm pretending male.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, totally, there's Mary and skin the Goat. He earned
that name because one time he killed and skinned a
goat and then wore the goat skin on his lap
while driving a cab.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Well, there you go. Yeah, very literal nicknames back then.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, yeah, totally. So anyway, so the Invincibles killed some
men responsible for the subjugation of Ireland. One of the
assassins was this guy named James Carey, probably no relation
to the actor of the same name, and he got
caught and he turned snitch, and his snitching saw five
of his associates hanged and This led to a whole

(20:32):
chain of events. The Crown was like, all right, Jim Carrey,
you got to eventually make the mask, so we got
to get you away from here under a fake name.
Get you to South Africa. You'll be safe there. But
there's other people on the boat, and one of the
other people on the boat is just he's not there
to do anything. I mean, was there to go to
South Africa. But he is a forty eight year old

(20:54):
Irish bricklayer named Patrick O'Donnell. And Patrick O'Donnell had been
hanging out in cold mining, Pennsylvania with his Molly McGuire cousins.
See are two parter on the Molly McGuire's the people
who like to kill landlords the middle the night. They
believed in very direct solutions to certain types of problems.
So Patrick discovered James's true identity while they're on the

(21:16):
ship together. Three bullets later, James Carey is dead. Patrick
O'Donnell's stands trial. He is sentenced to death. The judge
refused to let him speak after the sentencing, so instead
he shouted, He shouted three cheers for Old Ireland, Goodbye
United States, to hell with the British and the British Crown. Nice.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
Yeah, at least he got one in there.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yeah, I know, I know. He was executed and was
and is considered a martyr to Irish freedom. You know,
a man who made a decision while he was on
a boat.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yeah, bricklayer.

Speaker 5 (21:54):
Job.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah yeah. What's this got to do with Oscar Wilde.
It has two things to do with Oscar Wilde. When
Oscar was on his tour of the US, he spoke
unabashedly about how those killings, the Phoenix Park killings were
quote the fruit of seven centuries of injustice, and his
irishness is often erased, but he was his mother's son.

(22:17):
He also specifically talked about how the colonization of Ireland
was cutting into the Irish ability to be artists. The
other connection is that the English anarchist press was supporting
the Invincibles and Irish nationalism generally, and soon enough, you know,
a decade or so later, they're supporting Oscar wild Because

(22:38):
not a lot of people supported Oscar wild while he
was on trial, but the anarchist press did. And as
another weird side note about the anarchist press in England
at the time, there's this paper called The Torch, and
it was run by two teenaged anarchist sisters named Helen
and Olivia Rosetti. They started it when they were thirteen

(22:59):
and sixteen. And it's like one of the papers of
like wide circulation that's like covering shit from all over
the world. It's like they're not writing all the pieces.
They're like getting all of these people who write all
these pieces and stuff.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
You know, Wow, that's so cool.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
And then here's where I guess it's really annoying. Another
example of the things that Margaret doesn't like to talk
about but has to all the time. Later, these two
girls become fascists because one of the things I hate
talking about is that the fascist movement came out of
the revolutionary politics of the left combined with the conservatism
and authoritarianism of the right. It was leftist methodology applied

(23:41):
to right wing values. Yeah, there are leftist roots to
a lot of fascism, and a lot of leftists became
early fascists.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
Not now to talk about it, though, Yeah you got
to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah important. It's not fun too, and oh.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
It's not, but you gotta you know, it's you have
to so you don't repeat the past.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, totally, totally, And it's just like annoying because then
people will be like, oh, national socialism, that means it's leftist,
and you're like, no, it's a right wing movement, and
you're like but also.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
You know, yeah, I do know.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
So for now, they are running an anarchist press, and
they and other anarchist presses are supporting Irish independence, and
a bunch of their writers are supporting Oscar Wilde. Let's
go back to the trial. Well, actually, before we talk
about the trial, have you ever considered that there's a
gaping hole in your life, a hole that you feel

(24:44):
like could be filled but not in a quote Greek way,
but through a consumer way. Do you ever think about that?
I know I do, so it keeps me up at night.
Here's these ads that will fill you're whole. Nope, I
don't like. Go Okay, here they go and we're back. So,

(25:17):
like I was saying, the trial is three trials. First
there is Wild trying to prosecute boxing rules man, and
then the Crown trying to prosecute Wild. And that first
attempt to prosecute Wild doesn't work. There's a hung Jurney
and so the crown is like, well, while we got
you here, why don't we just put you on trial
for the same thing again? And he was like, I mean,

(25:38):
I'd probably rather you didn't. And they're like, well, are
you gonna run in France? And he's like no, and
they're like why not and he's like, I don't know.
And historians are going to argue about it later. It's
eighteen ninety five. Private investigators during the very first trial,
they dig up a fuck ton of the sex workers
that he had slept with, and then the crown blackmails
them into testifying against Oscar Wild. I think pretty much

(25:59):
they're like, hey, we're going to prosecute you unless you test. Yeah,
there's also some implication that they might have been tortured,
and a bunch of them testify, and I think, like,
I think Oscar World's like a little bit surprised Pikachu
face about this. Yeah, Like, I think he just thinks
he's going to get away with it. You know, his

(26:21):
own books and plays are used as evidence against him
in these trials. Everyone is trying to tease out every
gay line from every one of his plays, and Wild's
defense it changes tone here and there by and large
he's not like being gay's fine, fuck you. By and large,
he's like, I didn't do it. Can't say I did

(26:42):
it because I didn't do it, which is I don't
blame whatever. I'm a big tell the truth person. When
someone's not threatening to lock you into a cage, you know.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah, you don't need to tell the truth to the courts,
yea necessarily like show honor.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah, don't lie to someone that you wouldn't punch. That's
the it's my general go to.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
It's good rule with them.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah. So, and partially he gets caught up in a
lot of his own lying about this because he can't
help being super witty. They're like, hey, did you kiss
this guy? And Oscar Wild's like, well I would, but
he's ugly, like I would never kiss a man like that,
and they're like, so you'd kiss a man He's like,

(27:24):
ah shit, got me again, man. And the whole time
between each of the trials, before the first one, before
the second one, and before the third one, his friends
are like, go the fuck to France. Why the fuck
aren't you in France. In fact, we all left for
France because we're all gay. And there's now this moral
panic around you, and we don't want to testify you

(27:46):
against you, and we don't want to go to prison,
So come the fuck to France. Yeah, his mother is
like stay and fight.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
And I don't know whether it's a mama's boy thing.
I don't know what it is, but you know, there's
all so like I get the feeling that he he
kind of just felt like his whole life was falling apart.
Like I feel like it was like almost kind of
a nihilistic move and he'd just been in this like
long shitty relationship and his life was kind of losing
the plot and he was kind of in spiraling out

(28:16):
of control.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Do we know if his mom was accepting of him
being gay.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
His mom seems so, I guess, unless she was saying, like,
defend yourself against these accusations, because there's like.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Two different things that could be I know, Yeah, I
don't know. My guess is supporting mom based on everything
I read about the relationship, but I don't know.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
And her politics too.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, but there's a lot of you know, it's like
one of these things where it's like, well we'll talk
about it. Sure. So he defends himself, and he actually
ends up defending obliquely homosexuality and specifically generation gap relationships
that are homosexual. They ask him what the love that

(29:05):
dare not speak its name is, and he basically is like, hey,
all throughout history, older men have loved younger men. It's
a Greek tradition, and everything's fine. But it's like the
way he phrases it, you could kind of talk about
same sexual relationships if you didn't talk about fucking. For
a lot of the Victorian era and a lot of
the historically close friends were literally just historically close friends,

(29:25):
and like you could have men could talk about loving
each other because since you hadn't created homosexuality as a
vice and a you know whatever, like there wasn't like
a fear of like you know, you look at all
the old photos and like men are like hugging and like.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
Holding hands and like each other's laps and stuff.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah, and you're like, oh, it means they were all gay,
and that's like sometimes true, but it's also just like
they weren't afraid of being called gay all the time,
so they just exactly enjoyed affection with each other because
that's normal and human. Yeah, And so it's possible that
when he was defending the Love that not dare not
speak its name, he was like still not being like,

(30:06):
you know, and I touched his buttole my finger or whatever.
The first trial ended with the hung jury and he
was retried. An Anglican priest who was a Christian socialist
put up a fuck ton of money to get wild
out on bail between the trials, and he still wouldn't flee.
And it's possible this time he just didn't want to
fuck over that priest.

Speaker 5 (30:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Yeah, he went back to court. The judge fucking hated him,
said it was quote the worst case he'd ever tried,
because he like, was you know, seducing and ruining these
like young men or whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah, and
he was convicted of gross indecency. He was sentenced to

(30:45):
two years of hard labor. At the end, Oscar Wilde
said simply, and I may I say nothing, my lord,
and the judge didn't let him speak, and the crowd
jeered him.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
I've read a couple academics discussing the trial wasn't it
was about homosexuality, but it was also about the whole
gay Irish radical thing, right, because a lot of the
press treated it that way. At this time, papers were
excited to see someone attacked for attacking conventional morality. And
even this esthetic movement idea of art for art's sake
is attacking conventional morarality by refusing to make art that

(31:21):
specifically upholds traditional morality.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (31:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
A modern Irish author, Diglon o'donhall wrote, quote, Unlike anarchist
assassins and bombers, who would always be outsiders, Wild was
embedded within the artistic and social elite. His position as
a revolutionary who enjoyed popular celebrity meant that he posed
a greater threat to the establishment by criticizing it from within,

(31:46):
and his enemies in the mainstream press were patiently waiting
for an opportunity to punish him for his public success.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, And another piece around this, there's this Irish cop
in London who's anti Irish or anti Irish independence. His
name is Chief Inspector John Sweeney. He was an Irish
anti Fenian who spent a long ass time spying on
the Fenians in London, the Irish revolutionaries, and then he

(32:15):
moved over to spying on the anarchists and so the whole,
like the police state, will come to affect us too.

Speaker 5 (32:22):
Write.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
You know, in the eighteen nineties, British anarchists were largely writing,
not blowing things up. A lot of the continental anarchists
are in a like King killing stage, but not the
British anarchists so much so. His primary concern was how
to censor anarchists speech and how to shut down newspapers
and stop ideas from circulating. This does not feel coincidental. No,

(32:48):
as soon as Oscar Wilde is on trial, before he's convicted,
his name is stripped off the marquees at the theaters
running his plays, and soon enough the plays themselves are stopped.
The public like turns on him on a dot. The
press calls him the a laureate of corruption. Wow, everyone
gets on name. I know, I know, I've all right

(33:09):
with that. Like, yeah, never.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Really was too. If he weren't, if he wasn't like
stuck in jail, he might enjoyed it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
He has this quote when he's a younger that I
don't have in Frontman and put in the script where
he's like, I'm going to be famous or you know, notorious.
Whatever the man accomplished both, he did it, and yeah,
everyone's on board with stopping this vamporism from corrupting the world.
I'm the one making the specific vamporism comparison, but that
is the corruptor of youth, the groomer, the you know.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah, the like hypnotizing force.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, spoiler alert. If gay sex tikes you gay, it's
because you like it.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
Anita Bryant did the vampire metaphor for gay men in
the seventies.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Oh shit, yeah, should look at that up.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
She said that because gay men and eat sperm, they're
eating life itself or something like that, and so their vampires.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
Oh this is someone who meant it negatively.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I once. Yeah, she was like
the Orange Juice spokeswoman who kind of single handedly started
the anti gay movement in the seventies.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
So yeah, I'm pretty like into gayness's monstrosity. Like yeah, sure,
So I'm like I have a vampire or whatever. You know.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
Yeah, lots of gays, if not most enjoy a good
horror movie.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
So I am. And so he's on trial. Most people
are turning their backs on him. He had spoken up
for the anarchists eight years prior, and the anarchists spoke
up for him. The broader socialist movement hadn't really grappled
with how they felt about homosexuality at this point, including
the anarchist movement. They hadn't like just sat down and

(34:53):
been like, what do we think about this? What's the
party line? You know, at least not that I've ever
been able to find. I've I've read a lot about
their like grappling with like the woman issue and colonialism
and things like that, right, but they hadn't like sat
there and thought about homosexuality as a movement. And Oscar
Wilde's trial brought pro homosexuality to the forefront of anarchist politics,

(35:17):
and from there, as best as I can conjecture, it
filtered out to the broader socialist left. At the time,
the broader socialist left despised Oscar wild in this homosexuality. Also,
they kept being mad at him for not being their
style of socialist. You know, it's possible that if he
had been a you know, Marxist, they the Marxist would
have been like, we're suddenly fine with gays, you know.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
It was the anarchist press that kept his essays and
plays in print after his fall from grace. I want
to say among because I actually don't specifically know that
no one else did, but I know a lot of
specific examples when the anarchist press did when no one
else would in various situations. It was one of the
only places you could go to read about the trial
and find things like people saying, hey, what if too

(36:02):
consenting adults can do whatever the fuck they want? What
the fuck is wrong with you? Even the homophobic anarchists
writing were like, hey, did you know you can read
portrait of Dorian Gray without like going out and touching
panes with some guy, like just stop censoring shit, what
the fuck is wrong with you?

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (36:21):
And I like, I kind of love it when people
who are like a little bit homophobic are like, well,
my values are more important to me than how I
have my own weird biases.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
But it did not save him, right, There was certainly
not a ton of public outcry to defend him, and
he went off to prison. Two years of hard labor
is very different than going to prison regular. It's actually
almostly a little bit like going to prison regular in
the United States now, yeah, right, But like at the time.
It was really really bad. It kills a lot of people,

(36:58):
and it functionally kills him. They functionally gave him a
death sentence. And what won't kill you or give you
a death sentence unless you get the ad for becoming
a jail or, which is a don't. When I say
that we're sponsored by all ads, I mean except the

(37:19):
one that says scope be it whatever. Here's ads. Everything's
horrible and we're back. And if you're listening to this
in prison while walking on a treadmill endlessly to grind

(37:43):
wheat into flour, then you might be Oscar wild, because
is that what it was? That's one of the things
he had to do. Now, he had to walk on
a treadmill to grind flower. It took me. Most of
the sources I found just said like, walked on a treadmill,
and I'm like, the fuck for why? Yeah? Yeah, but
it really is still kind of just for work. Like

(38:05):
he also had to scar his hands permanently to separate
old naval ropes I think soaked in tar pitch or
whatever into their individual threads. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 5 (38:14):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
In the beginning of his time in prison, he was
only allowed to read the Bible and some old Christian
book called The Pilgrim's Progress. Eventually, a new warden arrived
and he was offered more books, and he read all
kinds of shit and all kinds of languages, especially read
a lot of Dante, and he read a lot of
theological texts, including this Catholic convert from Anglicanism named John

(38:36):
Henry Newman, who wrote a bunch about how every religion,
including like Heathen religions, contain truth. They contained revelation.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
That's cool.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
So he's reading like woke Catholic shit.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
Kind of like mysticism or something like that, Nalism.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, and he's not allowed to write while he's in jail,
except letters, So he writes a fifty five thousand word letter.
It's de bosy, but it's to everyone. It's a short novel. Basically,
he had to write it one page at a time
because as he finished each page, they'd take it away

(39:12):
from him. Sometimes I think people guess, like analysts guess
that he probably had about three pages at a time.
Sometimes because of the way this sentences and are structured
in it, it's a bit of a rambling autobiography as
well as a spiritual Triestas, and later when it's out,
a copy goes to Lord Alfred de Bosi, and a
copy gets published as De Profundus, which is after five

(39:34):
years after Oscar's death, and Deperfundus is a biblical reference,
and it means from the depths, comes from Psalm one
point thirty, from the depths, I have cried to you,
oh Lord. So it's basically it's like, hey, I'm in prison, yeah,
what it means, and it's a religious text in a way,
he realizes. He talks about how he's realized that suffering

(39:56):
is as important to his soul as the hedonism he'd appreciated.
He wrote, quote, I wanted to eat of the fruit
of all the trees in the garden of the world,
and so indeed I went out, and so I lived.
My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively
to the trees of what seemed to me to be
the sunlit side of the garden, and shunned the other
side for its shadow and its gloom. He also wrote,

(40:19):
there is not a single wretched man in this wretched
place along with me who does not stand in symbolic
relation to the very secret of life. For the secret
of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind
everything when we begin to live. What is sweet is
so sweet to us, and what is bitter so bitter
that we inevitably direct all our desires towards pleasures, and

(40:41):
seek not merely for a month or twain to feed
on honeycomb, but for all our years to taste no
other food, ignorant all the while that we may really
be starving the soul.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Oh gosh, he was a good writer. I know, he
was a tremendously good writer.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
No Ah. And so he's not saying I shouldn't have
done the joy sex stuff. He's saying everything has this value,
you know.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Yeah. Wow. Do you think then that he like did
feel the criticisms that were leveled against him for being
kind of like a frivolous person, or do you think
that like he I'm just interested because that quote is

(41:32):
just like what do you think that he meant exactly
when he was saying that? Like, do you think it
was reflective of his life?

Speaker 2 (41:40):
So I haven't read every I haven't read all the profundus.
I actually read his very long poem immediately after that
is the main thing I read about it. But I
get the impression that he does regret like some of
the ways in which he was frivolous, right, but he
doesn't regret the like core of it. He stays Antinomian.

(42:01):
He stays believing that, you know, you don't have to
ascribe to a specific moral path in order to reach heaven.
Yeah whatever, right. Yeah. So it's like it's it's hard
because it's like there is regret, but then it's like
like a spoiler, he's going to convert to Catholicism on
his deathbed, and so there's like Catholic articles that are
like and then he's sorry about being gay, and I'm like, yeah,

(42:21):
I'm not a no, it just meant something very different
at that time, you know.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
And Catholicism just fits so well with his sort of
decadence as well, like image like images, and yeah, it's
just it's it's bloody, it's golden, it's you know, things
he likes velvety.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, there's a quote I Am about Catholicism from way
Younger that's at the end of this script.

Speaker 3 (42:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, so that's I think he's like he's like sorry,
he's not sorry, you know. Yeah. Yeah, and prison fucks
him up. Physically. The food is terrible. Everyone is constantly sick,
like everyone's dye area constantly. He collapsed from exhaustion one
day and he ruptured his ear drum and this later
kills him. He's transferred to another prison, which is reading jail,

(43:10):
which should be pronounced reading gayel because I'm an American
and I will never get over how the British spell
the word jail?

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Is it with a G?

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah? Gaol laird?

Speaker 3 (43:24):
Yeah, okay, all right, yeah?

Speaker 2 (43:27):
How did they conquer the world? I don't even notice?
Right in English? And while he's not impressed, And at
one point while he's being transferred, he's underguard on the
train platform and a crowd forms around him and like
spits on him and jeers him, and this is like
presented as the worst, the lowest time of his prison,

(43:49):
even though obviously the like time and you know whatever,
it sucks, it's bad.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
In Reading, he no longer like they don't call him
by his name anymore. He is only C three three.
He is on the third floor of the third cell
of the Sea Ward and his mother dies while he's
in prison. She appeals to be able to see her
son one last time, and this is denied. His wife
changes her last name and moves to Switzerland and takes

(44:17):
their kids with her. He never sees his children again.
He's forced to declare bankruptcy while he's in prison, and
I believe that they're confiscating his copyrights as well as
his belongings. In eighteen ninety seven, he's released penniless and
he gets the fuck out of England and he does
what he should have done ten fucking years earlier, and
he goes to France. He never goes back to England.

(44:40):
He spends the last three years of his life in Paris,
living under a pseudonym, Sebastian Melmouth, which is a combination
of Saint Sebastian, the one who likes getting stabbed and stuff.
The mask is Saint and then Melmoth, the Wanderer from
his uncle's book.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
It's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah, I know it's a good name. Yeah, it's a
pretty transmasque name. But if anyone's looking for a new
trans mask name.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
It's a fast and Melmouth it's right there for you.
Although I'll do my follow up Oscar Wild as an
egg trans woman episode one day, but yeah, yeah, that's
pure conjecture and or you know. So at this point
he's out of prison. His primary contributions to society are

(45:22):
to write long letters about the need for penal reform
and to write a poem. One of his most famous
called the Ballad of Reading Jail, or as I like
to say, the Ballad of Reading Gail. It's really good,
it's very long, it's worth reading. It's very like rimy, right.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
I think you only ever really wrote poems in rhyme.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, just style at the time.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
Yeah, yeah, there wasn't a lot of like lyricism.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yet I was born in the twentieth century. All poetry,
it should be free for him. I don't understand all
of the writing, but I know it's really good and
it's really interesting. He can't get it published under his name,
right because no one will touch it. But he's really good,
So it gets published under the name C. Three three,
his jail name. Wow, no one in America will touch

(46:12):
it at all until the anarchist press is like, all right,
well we'll publish it, which worked really well for the
anarchist press, and I think they actually were like I
think they put his name on it. By the seventh
printing in because it keeps selling out and they keep
printing more. It does really well. And it's a moral
panic too, which is funny because it is the most

(46:32):
like Christian socialist thing you'll read. It is a it
makes you sympathize with a criminal. It is about watching
a man get hanged who killed his wife. It is
about a man who is not a good man being killed,
and it makes you hate the prison system. Yeah, this
just really I don't know, I found it very moving. Yeah,

(46:53):
and people are like, ah, it's terrible, it's immoral. It
makes you sympathize with the criminal. And then like some
people were like even like as they were to cry
and it, they were like, it's forcing you to have
really high Christian ethics and like it just broke every Yeah,
it just broke everyone's brains. Yeah. His wife was said

(47:16):
in about like I think five pounds a week, which
does not translate to a lot in modern money, and
that says like allowance basically, and that's what he's living
off of. And then he gets the royalties from that poem.
And he missed his children every day he talked about
and Robert Ross, Robbie Ross, his lifelong friend, joined him
in Paris, or I think was maybe already in Paris honestly,

(47:37):
but moves in with him, and after a few years,
Oscar's health declines. His ruptured ear drum gets infected, which
leads to meningitis, which is going to kill him. He
died in Paris on November thirtieth, nineteen hundred, at forty
six years old. On his deathbed in a rundown hotel,
he converted to Catholicism, and his quote that he had

(47:59):
once said a long time because he tried to convert
Cathosism a long time ago, and his dad was like,
fuck you. You know he had once said, the Catholic Church
is for saints and sinners alone, for respectable people. The
Anglican Church will do. This is not extra enough, like
what you're saying, like like you know, the Catholic Church.
He gets a drink blood and like be amenable, like cooler,

(48:20):
like carry around skulls.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
Who was with him, was like did he have a
priest there with him or something? Or how do we know?

Speaker 2 (48:27):
He? Yeah, so Robbie Ross went and got a priest
who came over and he's like in and out of consciousness,
but he's able to indicate the priest is like, all right,
you're doing this, and he like kind of raises his
hand feebly. Sure, there doesn't seem to be contention around this.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Okay, because it makes me almost think and this is
like such a weird example, but like Ted Bundy converting
to Christianity at the end and then blaming everything on pornography,
and that was like a manipulating thing, yeah, to like,
you know, support a right wing agenda. So I was
just curious if there was any possibility right that like

(49:04):
this priest had an agenda or something. But sounds like
it's not, like you said, it's not argued about too much.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
That's the best guess I have. There are a lot
of people who are like and he was sorry for
being gay, and I'm like, I'm not finding a lot
of evidence I'm sorry for being gay. But it is possible.
It is possible that this is like I might be
reading it the way that I want to, because he
talks about being Antonomian. He you know, to the end
of his days he talks about like I feel like
I get a sense of like, oh, yeah, of course

(49:32):
he ended up Catholic. This is the shitt he's writing
rather than like he fits neatly into the tradcaf assumption
of now you know.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
And going to prison too famously makes folks more religious
because you have to have hope in something, and so
it makes sense that maybe he found and he was
also being given almost only religious or theological.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Text that was actually what he was asking for. The
at first, he's stuck with the Bible and the progress.
Although I don't know if they would have brought him
like actually know, because they also did bring him William
Peter Books. Yeah, no, I don't know they would have
given him porn. Yeah, well there's some porn in the Bible, but.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Yeah, I mean that's true, there is, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Yeah, no, yeah. It's it's interesting to be because it's
like every read of Oscar Wilde like picks one thing
and it's like Oscar Wilde, the Catholic, Oscar wild the irishman,
Oscar wild the anarchist, Oscar wild the meaningless, witty guy,
you know, yeah, and you're like, he can just be
all those things, and they're things that people want to
claim are paradoxical and often can be and are presented

(50:35):
as paradoxical. But for me, it just seems like he
threaded that needle, you know well, and like, who who.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Is not paradoxical? It's so weird to think that, No,
like you can't be a paradoxical person.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
Yeah, I totally feel like I am. I don't know.

Speaker 5 (50:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
And his last witticism that apparently he used on like
everyone who came to visit him on his deathbed was
this wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.
Either it goes or I do. It is such a
template for this sassk man. It's just incredible. And Robbie

(51:14):
Ross was with him as he died, as was the
priest Emma Goldman, I promise you. And Emma Goldman quote
about him, who herself is quite quotable. She said about him,
while society forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
And one of his sons, Cyril, is killed by a
German sniper in nineteen fifteen in World War One. His
daughter Dorothy took after him most directly. She became a
witty conversationalist and was an out lesbian.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
That's so nice.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
It feels like he gets to live on in some
way in a different time.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yeah, totally. And that's one of the stories about Oscar Wild.
There's a thousand stories that can be told. I want
to shout out that. If you want to learn more
specifically about how he related to homosexuality, there's a two
parter from a few years ago by the podcast Queer's
Fact that Cool is Real worth listening to. Yeah, that's wow.

(52:15):
Oscar Wild the very different than I thought he would
be when I started off reading.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
No, I had no idea about probably eighty percent of
what you've still be here today. I just never thought
of Oscar Wild as a political person really in any way,
almost anti political right. So that's and do you think
that there's any like reason that he's been painted that
way and been like almost like it just feels like

(52:40):
the revolutionary side of him has been like cleaned away
and almost like him because in my mind he was
like a decadent, kind of almost out of touch, yeah,
rich person who happened to be a beautiful writer and
have like, you know, a huge skill with language. But
I never thought of him as a radical, yeah, really
in any way.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Well, at one point I forgot to ended up in
a script at one point eighteen ninety two, this like
this anarchist poet is having a mental breakdown, I think,
and takes like potshots at the House of Commons, just
like shoots at the wall or whatever. Oscar Wild pays
his bail and writes a letter to him and is like,
of course I support you, like everything is like everything
but saying comrade doesn't say comrade, but it's like, h

(53:23):
of course I support you. Like us dreamers have to
stick together, you know. I have found that there's certain
things that people like not talking about in historical figures,
and one of them is gayness. And you can't do
it to Oscar Wild, who people actually try by specifically
trying to pain him as a pedophile instead of.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
A gaming Oh yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
And one of the other things that people try to
write out of history is political positions, especially anarchism, because
anarchism is like it's a harder sell to more people,
and there are more political positions that specifically. This is
most conspiracytorial i'll probably ever be, but stay communists and
capitalists both have a vested interest in having people not

(54:07):
know about anarchist history. I find that, like it's funny
because like social democrats don't have as much of that
and you'll like see more earnest actually talking about anarchism
within like social democrat circles. This is my experience of this.
So I think that it's a combination. It's also that
people don't want to talk about. They want asceticism to

(54:28):
be completely vapid and frivolous and don't want to address.
And I even thought that I went to art school
for two years and I hated it and I hated
people walk around me like our for art sake, and
I'm like fuck that, Like yeah, you know, but then
once you understand it as like, well, shouldn't we live
beautiful lives? Yeah, shouldn't we seek to make the spaces

(54:53):
that we are in esthetically pleasing? You know, It's like
saying interior design matters, and not that interior design needs
to be covered in political posters. But then instead interior
design like helps us live beautiful lives and be our
best selves. And so I think that it's just that
people don't want meaning out of him, you know, they
want well.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
And I guess there's like a big difference between like
the aesthetics of like decadence, meaning like that comes out
of richness versus like you said, I think we said
in part one about like planting wildflowers outside. That's still
like they're they're in service of the same like internal

(55:33):
transformation that happens when you witness beauty, because that it's
a it's a transformational act that I think teaches empathy.
Like experiencing beauty is something that encourages empathy. And it
doesn't have to have anything to do with material things.
It just has to do with like, I mean, it
does have to do with material things, but you know

(55:54):
what I mean, it doesn't there's no caliber of material
thing that is beautiful by virtue of it being that way, right,
It's like you can have, you know, you can have
a mansion that's ugly as fuck, you know, like, and
you can have like a space that you've made beautiful
without any real wealth, you know. So yeah, I think

(56:18):
that it's easy to think that beauty is some sort
of an elite concept, but it really isn't.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Yeah, And it's funny because because one of the things
he talks about sometimes is he talks about how one
of the reasons that we have to end poverty is
so that people can create and so that they don't
have to spend all of their hours working, you know,
so that they can create. Like he was very he
was also he was also I didn't even put in

(56:47):
he's totally fully luxuriated, fully automated, luxury space communism. He
is like, we'll get the machines to do the work
so that we can make the art. And of course
now we live in a horrible nightmare in version of
that where the machines are coming for the art and
not the right word, right. But yeah, no, I just

(57:08):
like I like him so much more than I I
was like always cool, you know, Like, but I'm like, no, yeah,
like socialism for art's sake, not art for socialism's sake.
I'm like, I'm on board.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
I get it. I like it. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Well, that's that's fantastic.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Thank you so much for telling me all of this.
I really like, I feel, I don't know, it's really
it's making me rethink so much about my life because
I've just I've loved Oscar Wilde and in such a
you know, it's just such a specific way, and you know,
it really does Like I think of his grave, you know,
which is such a such a beautiful image for anyone

(57:52):
who doesn't know, you know, like he had I believe
like a marble tombstone would do you remember what it says.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Oh, it's a quote from Deperfundus, but I don't remember
what it is, right, or maybe it's a quote from
the Ballad of Reading Jail.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
Yeah, it's something. But people for years and years and
years would like put on lipstick and leave lipstick kisses
on the grave and it was just really lovely. And
I think a few years ago they finally like put
a horrible plastic barrier all around it.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Yeah, which I think people still kiss.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Yeah, you got to, yeah, because he would just love that.
They'll kiss Oscar Wilde's grave if you can jump the barrier.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (58:32):
No. Oh.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
And then the person Robbie was the person who got
the funeral arrangements and stuff in order, and I think
was behind the At first, I think he was. It
was a very poor grave, and then eventually enough money
and enough people came together for it, like eventually people
stop being so mad at him or whatever, you know.
But he had it a little like there's like a
slot in it for his own ashes, and so he

(58:56):
had his ashes put in Oscar wild scra So.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
It was Oscar, Robbie and Bosie.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Yeah, so Bosie. They actually did reconnect after they reconnected. Really,
everyone's like, please, don't fucking meet up with Bosie, and
they like meet up.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
We know that friend of ours. We're like, don't go
yeah and see them.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Yeah, they actually did meet up again a little bit,
but they they went their separate ways.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
Like, rob are they not get buried by each other?

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Oh? Is he buried by them?

Speaker 5 (59:30):
No?

Speaker 3 (59:30):
I thought you who who was buried next to?

Speaker 2 (59:33):
So Robbie Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, Robbie has got the
cremation there. Yeah no, I think I did say buried
next to earlier and that's not technically that's still very sweet,
yeah no, And I love it too because it's like, well,
these are the people that we come from, Like Dandy's
are stronger than we like like thinking about like I

(59:55):
mean like queen culture, right is like people who have
hard life. I love the idea that someone sees like
I'm making air quotes here an audience can't see, but
like a man walking down the street dressed like a
woman and thinks there's someone who's afraid, you know, yeah,
like seriously, we come from stern stuff. Yeah, yeah, and

(01:00:20):
that doesn't mean we still can't be beautiful and soft
and plant flowers everywhere and be limp wristed and lounge
around on Shay's lounges. It's just sometimes you have to
beat up four men at once and then rob them
for their liquor.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
And slap the shit out of the school bully, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Yeah, all right, well, thank you so much for being
the guest. If people want to hear more of what
you have to say, where can they do that?

Speaker 5 (01:00:49):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
Yeah, you can find my podcast, American Hysteria pretty much
anywhere that you listen to podcasts, and you can find
me on social media at American Hysteria podcast too.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Hell yeah, yeah, I'll plug. It's been a while at
this point, but I finally finished Raw Dog by Jamie
Loftus and it's real good. I listened to the audio.
Looks great and good, and I love having conversations where
speaking of something that gets presented as surface. You know,
it's a book about the history of hot dogs and

(01:01:21):
which hot dogs are best in America. It is also
a incredibly radical book and has all kinds of value
besides it, So I will shout out that you should
go listen to raw Dog by Jamie Loftis or I
guess read We'll.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Say too that. If you want more Jamie Loftus hot
dog content, I told Jamie a bunch of hot dog
related urban legends on American Hysterio ones and that was
a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Oh shit, I'm going to listen to that, Sophie. You
guys think the plug.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Listen to all the podcasts I've made with Jamie loft Disk.

Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
I guess we're just doing a Jamie plug.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Yeah me, the new Oscar Wild Oh oh, if anyone
I can think of them immediately anyway, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Yeah, little bit, that's the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
See everyone next week.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
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