#dorianna

I remember hearing about Dorianna, a YA adaptation of the Picture of Dorian Gray. At the time I hadn't read the Picture of Dorian Gray so I had no interest. Now, having read and loved the book, it occurs to me that making Dorian a girl is strongly misogynistic. Making him a girl to suit a modern adaptation implies that today's teen girls are the only people capable of such vanity as that which drives the original novel. It makes it seem as if her being a girl is a choice made to enhance the readers grasp on her ability to be vain and self absorbed. Not only that, but making Dorian female (while leaving the two male figures I assume to be Basil and Henry in some corrupted form as men) is undeniably homophobic. Dorian Gray was a socially revolutionary book for gay people. It was highly censored, but even so, the inherent gay themes of the story shocked society. One of the things Dorian does that is meant to repulse the reader is the contempt he shows for someone simply for loving another man. The book shocked society; so much so that it was used as key evidence to convict Wilde for sodomy. If the book was gay enough to send a man to jail, that part of the book has to matter. It's integral to the importance of the story.