Netflix’s ‘Dorian Gray’ adaptation makes baffling change to relationship of its queer characters
The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel by Oscar Wilde that was so famously homosexual it was held up as evidence in his sodomy trial, is getting a new television adaptation—with a baffling twist.
Netflix’s upcoming show The Grays has reimagined Basil Hallward, the artist with a powerful romantic fixation on the eponymous Dorian, as his twin brother instead. Well ,you can’t say incest isn’t on point for the gothic genre at least, though somehow I doubt that’s where they’re going with it.
In the original book, Basil is deeply and passionately besotted with his beautiful young model, Dorian Gray. The strength of his attachment to Dorian may even be what imbues the magical painting, which ages so that Dorian does not, with its power. (It was probably the devil, but Basil may, unintentionally, have helped.) This isn’t some kind of queer reading or subtextual interpretation, either. Basil’s utter infatuation with Dorian was clear enough that even after some serious editing, the book caused a national scandal, with some calling for Wilde’s prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act.
It wasn’t just the story’s overt queerness that upset the pearl clutchers of Victorian society—there was plenty in there to do it—but it was one of many specific complaints raised against it. And, of course, it was then used as evidence against Wilde later, during his trails for “gross indecency” (in this case, sex with other men).
In this light, the decision to make Dorian and Basil twins is deeply baffling. Further speculation that Dorian has been gender swapped, because The Grays has changed the spelling of his name to Doran (without the i) would make it even stranger if true. The queer themes in The Picture of Dorian Gray aren’t a secondary narrative that can be dropped without consequence; they’re an integral part of what Wilde was attempting to do with the book. Taking them out would sterilize it in exactly the way Wilde was railing against.
However, there is hope. Greg Belanti—of Riverdale, Supergirl, and Red White and Royal Blue—his husband Robbie Rogers, and sister-in-law Kate Rose Rogers, of the very queer Fellow Travelers, are all on board as executive producers. Kate Rose Rogers will be writing for the show, as well. With a back catalogue like that, maybe we really will be getting a story of deeply twisted queer obsession, along with all the other themes. (The Grays will be set among the contemporary beauty industry, so there’s plenty of layers to play with.) Just so long as they don’t do a Sailor Moon English dub “cousins” on us. We’ve all suffered enough.
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