{"id":368,"date":"2011-12-16T14:07:14","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T12:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=368"},"modified":"2011-12-16T14:07:14","modified_gmt":"2011-12-16T12:07:14","slug":"oscar-and-boris-a-farfetched-comparison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2011\/12\/16\/oscar-and-boris-a-farfetched-comparison\/","title":{"rendered":"OSCAR AND BORIS: A FARFETCHED COMPARISON<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was trying to get my students interested in Oscar Wilde\u2019s peculiar position as a late Victorian celebrity avant la lettre<\/em>, and before I really knew what I was saying I blurted out that his celebrity status then was not so different from that of Venezuelan import Boris Izaguirre today. That surely got their attention (poor things, it was 15:30…) and a good laugh. Once more I chastised myself for adlibbing instead of sticking to my notes… oh, well, it\u2019s that pressure to keep them entertained all the time!!<\/p>\n

On second thoughts, however, my boutade<\/em> may have some grounds, at least it is making me consider in more depth the difficulties of presenting historical characters as real, living people as not just that \u2013 wooden, stiff characters in history, understood as Hayden White taught us: just an agreed upon fiction. The lurid details of Oscar Wilde\u2019s unfortunate life stick out so prominently that it is harder in his case to reduce him down to just being a writer. One of my students really got a serious case of bad vibes when I mentioned that Wilde died as the fictional Ernest that Jack invents does in his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest<\/em>: destitute, alone and in Paris… Yet, whether you read about him in the Wikipedia or in any proper academic source (say Richard Ellman\u2019s biography), or even if you see the film Wilde<\/em> with comedian Stephen Fry in the title role, there is always a mist surrounding Wilde\u2019s real person, as happens with all the dead authors we\u2019ll never see on TV, only in photos. This is silly, I know, but my guess is that what is shocking about comparing Wilde and Izaguirre is not so much that they\u2019re very different men but that they live in very different times, the latter one when writers can have if they wish a prominent media presence. Just imagine what it would be like to have Wilde (or Shakespeare!) as a talk show guest and you can, perhaps, see what I mean.<\/p>\n

Having said that, Wilde and Izaguirre share much if you think about it: a flamboyant dress style, a flippant repartee, a wish to shine as a celebrity no matter what it takes, their condition as homosexual men, their making a living primarily as journalists. I don\u2019t know if Wilde would ever have accepted pulling down his pants as often as Izaguirre did on TV (remember Pepe Navarro\u2019s late night shows?) but I can certainly picture him presenting Channel n\u00ba 4<\/em> with Ana Si\u00f1eriz. After all, Wilde was the editor of popular magazine The Woman\u2019s World<\/em>, which he rescued from financial ruin with great doses of glamour. No, I\u2019m not forgetting in this comparison the fact that whereas Wilde was a brilliant scholar, Izaguirre did not attend university. I haven\u2019t read any of Izaguirre\u2019s novels (yet) and I can\u2019t say how the two men compare as authors but they do have in common their good nose for the media that pays best: Izaguirre wrote soap operas for TV, Wilde took up playwriting for money (with great business acumen, he preferred a box office percentage over a flat fee).<\/p>\n

Happily for Western society things have changed in a most significant front, and while poor Oscar was sentenced to two years hard labour for his homosexual liaisons, which led ultimately to his sad end, Boris is happily married to the love of his life: a man, Rub\u00e9n. I\u2019m aware of how controversial Izaguirre is as a gay man, with his often annoying mannerisms and his sharp tongue, but when I think of him and Wilde I\u2019m very glad that Izaguirre can enjoy full citizenship rights in our time and very sorry that Wilde had to suffer so cruelly and, above all, so unnecessarily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was trying to get my students interested in Oscar Wilde\u2019s peculiar position as a late Victorian celebrity avant la lettre, and before I really knew what I was saying I blurted out that his celebrity status then was not so different from that of Venezuelan import Boris Izaguirre today. That surely got their attention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theatre","tag-gender-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}