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Wilde Speculations.

Like the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board, UD has been struck, since the inception of his campaign, by what a Wildean character Donald Trump is. But while she has been tending toward Lady Bracknell, the paper points to Dorian Gray.

He is our nation’s “Portrait of Dorian Gray,” the not-so-secret creation of our worst values.

Like the hidden portrait which over the years manifests the cruel and dissolute truth of Dorian Gray’s life (while he himself maintains a black-magic youthfulness), Trump is the portrait with the curtain drawn fully aside, the picture of young and at the same time dissolute America which many of us would prefer not to see (hence the outrage his candidacy has excited).

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For UD, the Trump Bump isn’t quite this grim or this simple or even this moral a tale. That’s why the rollicking amorality of The Importance of Being Earnest – subtitle: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People – seems closer to the truth. Though loud, Trump is – like Aunt Augusta – trivial (note that the Huffington Post is covering his campaign in its Entertainment section). The Trump/Bracknell comedy derives from the contradiction between this triviality and their cosmic self-importance.

The reason the Bracknell role is often played by a man is the same reason Donald Trump is played by a man: Both are unfortunate victims of too much male hormone. Both parody The Hyper-Male of any culture, not just America: Braying, belligerent, boastful, brainless, and utterly beside the point.

Both care, in the crudest fashion, only about money (“A hundred and thirty thousand pounds! And in the Funds! Miss Cardew seems to me a most attractive young lady, now that I look at her.”), and both make absolutely nothing happen. Bracknell flounces and rages but both parties marry over her objections; Trump flounces and rages but the Republic romps along.

Bracknell and Trump are the best parts of the shows they’re in, yes. But this glorious country is not going to form an alliance with a parcel.

Margaret Soltan, July 21, 2015 10:52AM
Posted in: democracy

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3 Responses to “Wilde Speculations.”

  1. Crimson05er Says:

    Nice insight.

    I’m not sure I’d agree with Trump as a Wildean character, though. The aesthetics aren’t right — he’s too crass, too crude. I’d go more with Nathanael West. That’s the ticket. Trump could’ve stepped out of A COOL MILLION.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Crimson05er: I love the idea of Trump as something out of Nathaniel West. Maybe also a variant of Shrike in MISS LONELYHEARTS?

  3. Crimson05er Says:

    Ohhh . . . I like that. I believe it was Shrike who had a quote in LONELYHEARTS along the lines of, “I am a great saint . . . I can walk on my own water.” That sounds appropriately Trump-ian.

    Trump is one of those characters who proclaims as “classy” those things that are decidedly not. Paul Fussell would have a field day with him. The New York Times regularly points out that Trump’s adjective of choice — in speeches, interviews, financial filings, etc. — is “huge.” There’s something in his psyche that speaks to a distinctly American desperation about the self-image of the nation. It’s like he’s self-consciously embodying the Id of the post-1945 United States, revealing an electoral process completely stripped of Ego and Super-ego. Literature may be our only hope of containing his multitudes.

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