Going Wilde at the Speedway: Morrissey, Martyrdom
and Oscar Wilde
As the
musical equivalent of a literary dandy, the second-generation Irish singer
Morrissey has consistently used Oscar Wilde as a reference point throughout his
career. As early as 1984 Morrissey stated that: “As I get older, the
adoration increases. I’m never without him (Wilde). It’s almost biblical. It’s
like carrying your rosary around with you.” Morrissey’s championing of Wilde
has resulted in a whole new generation of readers for Wilde’s published works.
Over the last three decades Wilde has featured in Morrissey’s lyrics
(‘Cemetery Gates’), as the subject matter of his songs (e.g. Wilde’s demise in
‘I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris’), on stage backdrops (e.g. Wilde pictured
asking ‘Who Is Morrissey?, and on the run-out grooves in vinyl record releases
(e.g. ‘Talent Borrows, Genius Steals’), record covers, and t-shirts (e.g.
‘Interesting Drug’). Morrissey’s devotion to Oscar Wilde has already been the
subject of some academic discussion (see Devereux 2010; Hopps, 2010) focusing
in the main on their shared ambiguities concerning sexual, national and
political identities. Much less attention however has been paid to how
Morrissey has adopted Wilde’s persona (as martyr) to rail against his
detractors and critics in the music industry and in the British establishment.
Morrissey’s use of a variety of mimetic strategies which allows him embody and
envoice the ‘Other’, raising queer and related concerns. Additionally, by temporarily suspending his
own ego, Morrissey become a willing conduit for and puppet of a creative and
performative Wildean ventriloquism.
Taking as our cue a review of the 1994 album Vauxhall and I,
which perceptively remarked that ‘Speedway’ “...could be Oscar Wilde singing on
the witness stand and flirting with the judge” (Sheffield, 1994), we offer a
reading of the song which suggests that Morrissey adopts Wilde’s persona in
addressing an array of his/their enemies. Our approach is as much Sociological
as it is Musicological – that is to say that we are equally interested in the
initial ‘making’ of the song; its performance and delivery as well as its
possible meaning(s). We hold that ‘Speedway’ is an elaborate text - a sort of
latter-day De Profundis (1905) that
successfully manages to conflate the real or imagined martyrdom of Morrissey
with that of Oscar Wilde, by drawing heavily upon Wilde’s 1985 trial. Tropes of
martyrdom were in evidence from the early days of The Smiths and continue to be
present in Morrissey’s more recent work. In presenting himself as a martyr,
Morrissey manages to side with the oppressed whilst at the same time be
narcissistic. Such explicit connections with the oppressed provide a very
interesting set of contexts in which many fans connect with their anti-heroic
icon. Morrissey’s use of martyrdom, however, may also function at an ironic
level. His presentation of himself as one of the persecuted ( variously as
Oscar Wilde, Joan of Arc, St. Sebastian) may simply be an ironic device that he
deliberately uses to send up the music press that has consistently represented
him as tortured and condemned – an ironic playfulness we think Wilde himself
would have enjoyed.