Image vs. Reality and The Picture of Dorian Gray
Tonys voters made the right choice earlier this month with The Picture of Dorian Gray (which closes tomorrow!), awarding Sarah Snook’s tremendous performance but not the production as a whole, which hides Snook behind screens far too often.
Screens are my current personal nemesis on Broadway. I don’t necessarily hate when they’re used as backdrops—though I appreciate when they aren’t; the real sets are one of the many reasons why Death Becomes Her feels like a breath of fresh air. And while I enjoyed the IMAX nature movie vibes of the wraparound screens in Redwood, it activated the motion sickness of two friends.
But screens infuriate me when they distance the audience from the actors. Part of the joy of live theater, the thing that fills me with wonder even when I hate a show, is the connection felt between the audience and the performers as they create something in front of our eyes that will never be exactly the same again. This is still true for Dorian Gray; for the most part, Snook is acting live. But the moments in which I could only catch glimpses of her corporeal self as she was filmed behind the screen, only to show her on the screen in real time, seemed to put an unnecessary intermediary between actor and audience.
At times, though, the screens served a clear thematic purpose, particularly in the scene in which Snook used an iPhone anachronistically to filter and alter her face in front of us. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian stays forever young and beautiful while his portrait changes, taking on the marks of both his age and his sin. In this production, there isn’t an onstage depiction of the portrait. But in this scene, Snook is examining and reflecting on her image, and what we see on screen alternates between Snook’s unaltered face, which, with its natural wrinkles, is meant to reflect the haggard appearance of the portrait, and an exaggeratedly filtered, doll-like image of her face with sparkling eyes, plump, pink lips, blurred skin, and long, thick eyelashes, meant to convey the loveliness of youth that Dorian’s actual face retains.
When the novel was published in 1890, Dorian would have been living the dream, aesthetically speaking. He stashed the increasingly dreadful portrait upstairs behind a curtain in a locked room so no one could see it, and at the time, his actual appearance was all that mattered. Now, however, our image as conveyed through photographs is increasingly important.
People are undoubtedly concerned with their actual appearance also (when I typed the words “young and beautiful” above, I thought of the Lana Del Rey ballad to appearance anxiety), and tools to improve it, from skincare routines to plastic surgery, are increasingly common. But much of our communication with the world now takes place on screens, and we have an increasingly large arsenal of tools to alter our digital appearances. Retouching photographs used to be an expensive and time-consuming task undertaken only by professionals, but now everyone can make adjustments in their regular photo apps, and many people have specialty apps like Facetune to make Photoshop-like corrections. The growth of AI will only make this process easier and the alterations potentially more significant.
The scene reminded me of a New York Times Ethicist column in which a woman used AI to create improved headshots for herself, for which she received an onslaught of compliments from her friends online. Her husband found it dishonest, so she asked the Ethicist whether individuals have an obligation to disclose the use of AI on an image. While he stopped short of imposing such a requirement, the Ethicist likened taking pleasure in the compliments to claiming credit for the taste of a cheesecake that was purchased from the frozen section. And he also noted that friends might be put off by the difference between her photo and her real-life appearance.
Anyone who has dated online understands the gap that often exists between a person’s photos and their actual selves. The photos might be digitally altered, a decade old, or simply the best three photos that person has ever taken in their life. That sinking feeling of disappointment when you first catch a glimpse of your date’s face that looks nothing like what you’ve imagined based on their profile is hard to come back from.
Everyone knows this, though, and they still do it. With online dating, there’s the clear incentive of increasing your number of matches and potential dates. And for the ever rising number of influencers, your online image is monetized, encouraging many to put forth the most pleasing image possible. But even with less tangible rewards, it’s easy to understand how the positive feedback you get from posting a cute pic could overwhelm any negative feelings you might have about how you created it.
An extreme example lies in the movie The Substance, in which Elisabeth, played by Demi Moore, injects an unknown compound and undergoes a gruesome process of body horror so that a younger, arguably more beautiful creature, Sue (played by Margaret Qualley), can go forth into the world while Elisabeth’s real self is hollowed out on the bathroom floor. A friend pointed out a potential flaw in the film’s character development: Elisabeth is seemingly unaware of what her alter ego does, so she’s not actually reaping any of the rewards heaped on Sue, which makes it difficult to understand why she would continue with the procedure. But perhaps the film is purposefully suggesting a darker truth, which is that the mere idea of a better received version, a sort of image brought to life, of herself in the world is enough to motivate Elisabeth.
With the increasing amount of time we spend online, particularly on social media, our friends may spend more time with our photos than with our actual selves. One could argue that since we’ve accepted screens as conduits to our friends in everyday life, I shouldn’t be so irritated by their inclusion in the theater. The production might be intentionally reflecting the omnipresence of screens, leading the audience to consider the shifting balance of which is more important, the image or the self. This show doesn’t change the heart of the story, but if one were to write a contemporary adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, would it need to be reversed? It’s possible that in 2025 a horrific picture might be more damaging than an unpleasant real-life face.
Let me know what you think in the comments!