Moira Donegan studies the creative and personal similarities between Morrissey and his idol and muse, Oscar Wilde:
As two Irishmen, they pretended to be more English than the English.
Morrissey had little of the formal education whose affectations he adopted; Wilde was absent from the rituals of heterosexual sociality whose ridiculousness he mimed. They were outsiders, and therefore they perhaps had the luxury of disinterested observation. But such an analysis overlooks what is perhaps the emotional crux of their work, the core that becomes lucid only after repeated readings. For though they each lay claim to certain forms of social exception, neither Morrissey nor Wilde is wholly comfortable or unqualifiedly smug in his position as an outsider. Both men’s work is tinged, too, with a desire for belonging.
The problem with using humor to conceal your anxieties is that it tends to be a pretty weak disguise.
In jokes, the psyche often rears its head where it’s not supposed to. This might be why there is a sincere and disquieting bitterness detectible in these men’s work beneath all the snark and sheen. Why would Morrissey quip, in “Cemetery Gates,” that Keats and Yates are on your side, if he had no desire to demonstrate the erudition that is held as a standard of worthiness by the sort of people who admire Keats and Yates? Why would Wilde write When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is, if he did not wish to show himself to be a self-conscious member of the leisure class? One of the prices of upward mobility—be it an upward mobility of wealth, culture, education, or just social popularity—is the twinging shame of knowing that you’re not quite a native in this new strata of yours. It can be difficult to shake the dark suspicion that you will be rejected as readily as you were welcomed, once your new admirers discover that you’re a fraud.
Recent Dish on Wilde here and recent coverage of Morrissey’s new autobiography here.
(Image of a Smiths-Wilde T-shirt via eBay)
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