Friday, June 23, 2006

10 pictures of DORIAN GRAY

In preparation for our next show, behold a collection of video clips inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray:

1. Long live 80s music video!



(That's semi-obscure synthpopper Robert Marlowe's "The Face of Dorian Gray," in case you were wondering.)

2. Who knew? Turns out the book is really a warning about the dangers of internet porn, more than 100 years before the fact:



3. Pretty much the entire 1945 movie adaptation, in the form of 9 minutes' worth of stills subtitled in French:



4. A verrrrrrrry short Spanish art-film version of the story:



5. A table full of high school girls take the opposite approach to the problem of adaptation: instead of trying to condense a novel into a three-minute video clip, they devote three verrrrrry long minutes to two lines. Hooray for the American educational system for producing tomorrow's avant-garde today!



6. Just what is it with the giggly high-school girls and their baffling inside jokes about Dorian G?



(Is it possible she has him confused with David Copperfield?)

7. By contrast, high-school-age boys (okay, he's 19) deliver fairly straightforward book reports (curiously never spelling out the obvious connection between the two novels under consideration) :



8. Ah, now we get to the heart of the problem: here's what the kids are really doing when they're supposed to be discussing the book in class...



9. I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with the book, but it's my favorite video with the keyword "Dorian" :



10. To close, two lilting ballads by a band who take their name from Wilde's immortal tale. I'm quite certain old Oscar would approve of the wry, subtle wit of their lyrics: