The Mirror of Consumption and Media in American Postmodern Fiction: A Baudrillardian Reading of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Authors

1 Islamic Azad University

2 Kurdistan University

Abstract

The present paper seeks to argue that consumption and media wield an unparalleled influence over contemporary American society, in a way that these drives constitute the primary means through which identity is constituted. Closely referring to Jean Baudrillard’s critical concepts, the present research contends that the fictional characters of Bret Easton Ellis, particularly in American Psycho, are prone to this postmodern world, where all experience via consumption has become fathomless, and traditional notions of identity have been changed. Ellis’ characters oscillate between the extreme poles of violence and ennui as they do their best to prevent their psyches from collapse amidst the surrounding turmoil caused by excessive consumption. Neither one of these alternatives results in any relief. In this type of literature, the protagonists are immersed in the contemporary world of consumption and the mass media. In fact, primary interest here is on the effects of this immersion in the world of commodities on the major characters, and their reactions in the selected novel. Accordingly, dependence on possessions by the characters of the novel in order to isolate themselves from the threatening disorder of the post-modern world is the major concern of present study of the novel.

Keywords

References

  1. باکاک، رابرت، مصرف. ترجمۀ خسرو صبری، تهران: شیرازه، 1381.
  2. بودریار، ژان، جامعۀ مصرفی: اسطوره‌ها و ساختارها. ترجمۀ پیروز ایزدی، تهران: ثالث، 1389.
  3. ---، آمریکا. ترجمۀ عرفان ثابتی، تهران: ققنوس، 1384.
  4. پُستمن، نیل، زندگی در عیش مردن در خوشی: زوال فرهنگ در بستر عشرت. ترجمۀ دکتر صادق طباطبائی، تهران: اطلاعات، 1375.
  5. Amerika, Mark and Alexander Laurence. Interview with Bret Easton Ellis (1994). Retrieved from:
  6. http://www.altx.com/interviews/bret.easton.ellis. html [accessed on July 10, 2017]
  7. Annesley, James. Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture and the Contemporary American Novel.
  8. London: Pluto Press, 1998.
  9. Baudrillard, Jean. Consumer Society. George Ritzer. London: Sage, 1998.
  10. ---. For a Critique of Political Economy of the Sign. London: Sage, 1993.
  11. ---.Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 1994.
  12. ---.Selected Writings. Ed. Mark Poster. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988.
  13. Bocock, Robert. Consumption. London: Routledge, 1993.
  14. Bottomore, T. and Rubel, M. Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy.
  15. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.
  16. Colby, Georgina. Bret Easton Ellis: Underwriting the Contemporary. New York: Palgrave, 2011.
  17. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert
  18. Hurley, Mark Seem. Minneapolis: Minnesota Press, 1977.
  19. Dyer, Richard. “Kill and Kill Again”. Sight and Sound No. 7(September 1997): 14-17.
  20. Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. New York: Vintage, 1991; London: Picador, 1991.
  21. ---. Glamorama. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998; London: Picador, 1999.
  22. ---. Less Than Zero. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985; London: Picador, 1986.
  23. James, Henry. The American. New York: Everyman Paperbacks, 1997.
  24. Jameson, Fredrick. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Capitalism. New York: Verso, 1991.
  25. Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society.
  26. London: Routledge, 2002.
  27. McLuhan, Marshall. The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967.
  28. McLuhan, Marshal and Bruce R. Powers. The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media
  29. in Twentieth First Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
  30. Mookerjee, Robin. Transgressive Fiction: The New Satiric Tradition. New York: Palgrave Mac Millan,
  31. Murphet, Julian. Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho: A Reader’s Guide. New York: Continuum, 2001.
  32. Young, Elizabeth and Graham Caveney. Shopping in Space: Essays on American Blank Generation
  33. Fiction. New York and London: Serpent’s Tail, 1992.
Critical Language and Literary studies
Volume 14, Issue 19 - Serial Number 19
October 2018
Pages 119-140

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics