Oscar Wilde in the Third Millennium: An Introduction

Wilde has reached iconic status in contemporary popular culture, and the secret of his success pivots around his “capacity for translating his life into a form of writing and his writing into a vital gesture which articulates a complex critique” of late-nineteenth-century English society (Martino 2013: 141). According to cultural critic and novelist Michael Bracewell – author of England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie (1997) and director of Oscar, possibly the most fascinating among documentary films on Wilde (BBC, Omnibus Series, 1997) – the Anglo-Irish writer stands out as the first pop star of British history: a pop celebrity, a cultural icon who literally put all his genius into his life and only his talent into his work, in the desperate and yet successful attempt to turn his life into a work of art. Bracewell’s works (both book and film) are, in this sense, examples of how Wilde “is now reproduced as a kind of Godfather of Rock”. Neil Sammells’ “now” coincides with the year 2000, but, more than two decades later, this form of Wildean reproduction is still detectable in the domain of popular culture and has given shape to extremely rich and fascinating intermedial performances.