While Joy Shannon is best-known as the front-woman of Joy Shannon and the Beauty Marks, what is lesser-known is that she is also a writer. Along with her visual art and music, Joy has been writing poetry, short stories, magazine articles and screenplays since she was a child.
Joy’s first exciting venture into publishing a full-length book is The First Counterculture Celebrity: Oscar Wilde’s 1882 North American Tour. This book was Joy’s thesis project for the completion of her master’s degree in American Studies. It’s a wonderful full circle moment for Joy because Oscar Wilde was one of her first artistic inspirations as a child. She was deeply inspired by his sass and the way he daringly self-created his artistic career while defying cultural norms.
Over the years Joy became fascinated with historical cultural patterns, which was often what she would create her visual art and music about. For example, her 2010 album “The Black Madonna”, and the visual art that accompanied it, was inspired by the Western European historical shift away from matriarchal, goddess-based spirituality into patriarchal Christianity and what emotional impact that has had upon women’s identities to this day. These cultural investigations led Joy to pursue an MA in American Studies at Cal State Fullerton with a focus on art history and Irish culture. This book about Oscar Wilde investigates several of Joy’s favourite interests: the interaction between Irish and American cultures and how the arts challenge and react to mainstream culture.
For those who might be skeptical at finding excitement in historical research, Joy takes excellent research and makes it an exciting, humorous and, at times, a poignant read. She takes the reader on the 1882 tour as if it is a rock and roll tour now, with press controversy and hilarious Wildean witicisms abounding.
Book Abstract
In January 1882, Oscar Wilde embarked on a lecture tour of the United States and Canada. Wilde was lecturing about the English art movement Aestheticism in conjunction with the comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan called Patience or Bunthorne’s Bride, which mocked the movement. Stretching from the East to West Coast, this was one of the very first press tours of its kind, made possible by new, faster train transportation and more press coverage. With his cunning, witty interaction with the press and his fantastical, gender-role-defying clothing, Wilde embodied a new cultural phenomenon: the counterculture artist celebrity. By detailing how Wilde defied Victorian gender roles while spreading the counterculture ideals of Aestheticism, this book shows the lasting cultural impact of Wilde’s 1882 tour.
