Petronella Wyatt is spot on in quoting Oscar Wilde on morality in art; “books are either well written or badly written,” they are not “moral or immoral”
In the preface to his philosophical novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde wrote: “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written. That is all.”
Shared on Twitter by the witty journalist and author Petronella Wyatt at a time when ludicrously Gone With the Wind is under attack even, this is a timely reminder that works of art should be subjected to aesthetic judgment rather than moral judgment.
The bosses of the BBC and Netflix would do well to remember such.
Pictured top: Ben Barnes starred as Dorian Gray in the 2009 British fantasy-horror adaptation of 1890 novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray.’
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