Fashion Glamor and Mass-Mediated Reality:

Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama and Jay McInerney’s Model Behaviour

By

Sofia Ouzounoglou

A Dissertation to the Department of American Literature and Culture, School of

English, Faculty of Philosophy of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

November 2013 i

TABLE of CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………...ii

ABSTRACT...... iii

INTRODUCTION...... 1

CHAPTER ONE:

Reconstructing Reality in Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama (1998)

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..15

1.1 “Victor Who?”: Image Re-enactment and the Media Manipulation of the Self……..19

1.2 Reading a Novel Or Watching a Movie?...... 39

CHAPTER TWO:

Revisiting Reality in Jay McInerney’s Model Behaviour (1998)

2. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..53

2.1 Media Dominance and Youth Entrapment…………………………………………...57

2.2 Inset Scenarios and Media Constructedness……………………………………...... 70

EPILOGUE………………………………………………………………………………...... 80

WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………………...91

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE……………………………………………………………………....94

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This M.A. thesis has been an interesting challenge as I set off to explore the literary works and theories of great writers, philosophers and theoreticians. Its writing was made possible by the guidance of my supervisor. I particularly thank Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou who supported my project with her valuable advice, helpful comments and immediate responses. I would also like to thank my family which has encouraged me and supported me throughout my studies.

iii

ABSTRACT

This thesis explores the celebrity and youth culture of 1990s New York in conjunction with the consumerist lifestyle of fashion models, as evidenced in Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama (1998) and Jay McInerney’s Model Behaviour (1998). Both being postmodern texts, they expose readers to a world of external appearances vis-à-vis absurd consumption. In particular, the two novels comment on the hallucinatory reality of the 1990s media-generated culture with emphasis placed on the hollowness of fashion and entertainment industries as well as on the behavior stereotypes these generate. Although each writer touches upon the fashion system from a different perspective, they both expose the superficiality of celebrity and fashion culture via a range of characters and points of view. Ellis’s and McInerney’s novels criticize the commodification of human identity and body abuse by the advertising and fashion industry which sells products and ideas through the selling of the human body itself. The popularization of the fashion model image via advertising fragments and disorientates the self. As the two novelists describe in their writings, the rising modeling culture of the 1990s in the U.S. commercialized the human body by exchanging its subjectivity with the objectivity of the commodity. As for the role media play in the two novels, they further enhance the superficiality and constructedness of reality as well as the reproducibility of human identity through its own mediated image. The main keywords that this thesis touches upon are the following: fashion culture, consumerism, constructedness, media- oriented culture, reproducibility, simulation, artificiality and commodity-driven autonomy. Ouzounoglou 1

INTRODUCTION

American culture of the late 1990s is characterized by capitalistic trends that have led to the exploitation and hollowing out of human identity. Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama (1998) and

Jay McInerney’s Model Behaviour (1998) constitute two popular texts of the late 1990s touching upon the manipulation of the individual by the celebrity and fashion world of the time. The aesthetics explored by Ellis and McInerney question objective reality and individual wholeness as opposed to the simulated reality of glamor entertainment and the images it constructs.

One of the theorists to be considered is Jean Baudrillard and his theory of a commodity- driven reality in his book The System of Objects (1968). He discusses the transformation of the object into a sign via advertising. Advertising, according to Baudrillard, constitutes a process which connects the object with the subject and vice versa. He suggests that the relationship between objects and subjects has been breached due to the emergence of a consumerist society. It is the object as sign that constitutes the new communication system that pushes the individual towards consumption. According to Baudrillard,

objects now are by no means meant to be owned and used but solely to be

produced and bought. In other words, they are structured as a function neither of

needs nor of a more rational organization of the world, but instead constitute a

system determined entirely by an ideological regime of production and social

integration. (The System of Objects 162-63, italics in original)

In other words, advertising has turned everything into an object that the individual passively consumes. This sign-based system has the capacity to keep on transforming the object into further signs holding the individual forever into a process of reproducibility and consumption. As

Baudrillard stresses, “this conversion of the object to the systematic status of a sign implies the simultaneous transformation of the human relationship into a relationship of consumption – of Ouzounoglou 2 consuming and being consumed” (200). This point emphasizes the infinite production of ideas which traps the individual into a superficial, consumerist-driven lifestyle. Human needs, desires and beliefs are now presented as commodities which have to be sold and consumed. Desires have transformed into signs which are promoted as tangible objects via advertising. The individual, as

Baudrillard argues, consumes the ideals these objects construct without realizing that due to the reproducibility of these objects/ideas all real individual needs are either covered up or effaced.

Eventually, the reproducibility of ideas disorients the individual, since it entraps it into a chaotic process of reproducible but superficial signs.

In his theory, Baudrillard also touches upon the significant role of the brand. Advertising has made the sign/idea acquire a name so as to create the feel of a living personality with the intention to be sold. As he remarks,

it is in this sense that we do indeed “believe” in advertising: what we consume in

this way is the luxury of a society that projects itself as an agency for dispensing

goods and “transcends itself” in a culture. We are thus taken over at one and the

same time by an established agency and by that agency’s self-image. (166)

Therefore, advertising constructs a name which is what motivates the consumer to buy a specific product and not its content. This means that the commodity value rests upon the name/image advertising constructs and not on the commodity itself. So attention should be paid to the powerful impact the brand language has on the consumers since it directs them towards the products to be bought. As a result, advertising dupes the consumers as it pushes them to believe in the false ideals the brand commodity names represent.

In his next book entitled The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures (1970), Baudrillard further analyzes contemporary commodity-driven reality by focusing on representation. The new media-generated culture constructs and reconstructs TV messages so as to engineer the Ouzounoglou 3 consumers’ desires and needs. Baudrillard points out that “this technological process of mass communications delivers a certain kind of very imperative message: a message-consumption message, a message of segmentation and spectacularization, of misrecognition of the world and foregrounding of information as a commodity, of glorification of content as sign” (123, italics in original). As he explains, the individual has entered a technologically-driven culture which rejects both the subject and object as real. What it does instead is to promote the logic of consumption which is based on an image-driven consumerist lifestyle. As a result, the lifestyle the contemporary individuals lead mainly revolves around the objects media construct and promote.

This point is further elaborated on in Baudrillard’s book Simulacra and Simulation

(1981). Here, he claims that the borders between representation and reality have been abstracted.

He talks about a subverted reality where what is visible is the non-real. In particular, the media bombard us not with authentic but with mere representations of reality. Baudrillard remarks that neither the object nor the subject dominates reality. They both dwell in a hyperreal world in which representation dominates. He refers to the emergence of hyperreality in which the subject/object has transformed into a simulated object which although it is a copy or a representation of a real thing, it appears to be more real than reality itself. In Baudrillard’s point of view,

it is genetic miniaturization that is the dimension of simulation. The real is

produced from miniaturized cells, matrices, and memory banks, models of control

― and it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times from these. It no longer

needs to be rational, because it no longer measures itself against either an ideal or

negative instance. It is no longer anything but operational. In fact, it is no longer

really the real, because no imaginary envelops it anymore. It is a hyperreal, Ouzounoglou 4

produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace

without atmosphere. (2)

These lines underline that the object and the subject have been moved out from reality and artificiality and they have been replaced by simulation. After the infinite reproducibility of the real and the unreal, Baudrillard says that we deal with the emergence of the hyperreal image which has led to the dissolution of any boundaries, leading the object and the subject to their death. The exchanging process of objectivity/subjectivity in tandem with consumption has enhanced the artificiality of the image. As a result, the images that surround us are mere copies of a copy.

Daniel J. Boorstin’s theory of the pseudo-event reality of the celebrity comes to enhance

Baudrillard’s simulation theory. Boorstin explains that the subject has been substituted by the

“pseudo-event” image. The celebrity identity according to Boorstin is a product which becomes popular via advertising. In particular, it is not real but only visible. As Boorstin describes in his book The Image or What Happened to the American Dream (1962), “the celebrity is a big name”

(70). Boorstin here focuses on the transformation of identity into commodity. Celebrity becomes a well-known product among other products. However, it is the label which makes celebrity look superior in society. Its power depends on the reproducibility of its image which advertising presents as real. Eventually, the individual gets stuck in-between representation and reality. In this process, it is the artificiality of contemporary culture that distorts the sense of reality the individual has.

After the end of WWII, American society went through socio-economic changes that signalled the rising of a capitalist-driven and mediated culture. It is in the second half of the twentieth-century that various media interventions (TV, electronic and digital technologies) and capitalistic trends brought many changes to the manners, lifestyles and habits of people. The Ouzounoglou 5

1990s, in particular, is considered to be for the U.S. an economically prosperous and technologically advanced decade. In the entertainment industry, the rising of MTV and the celebrity culture it promoted, together with the ecstasy parties and its nightclubbing scene, altered individual perception. The emergent new media culture contributed to the emergence of super- models who became the new role models in terms of manners and behavior. They became the new fashion icons and their images were equated with beauty and success. The new culture that emerged in the 1990s aimed at the youth of the time promoting a lifestyle dominated by nightclubbing which was further boosted by the icons promoted via the star system and the entertainment industry of the time. The impact of the screen reality projected via the media was so powerful that it resulted in the commodification of lifestyles and manners serving for the entertainment industry commercial power and high sales figures.

The new consumerist market that developed brought to the forefront a materialistic perception of reality. People considered products to be substantial possessions that could transform their lives. Commodities became an integral part of everyday existence and individual empowerment. In particular, Lars Svendsen in his book Fashion: A Philosophy (2004), highlights that

[…] consumption to a high degree has been disconnected from what we can

reasonably call the satisfaction of needs. The classic consumer had to consume,

just as every other living being has to, in order to survive, and his needs could

even become quite sophisticated: human life has always demanded more than the

satisfaction of purely biological needs because man is also a social being, which

means that needs were adjusted in accordance with social standards that

transcended the biological ones. These standards have consequently increased. But

the important thing about the classic consumer is that his consumption had a roof. Ouzounoglou 6

[…] And there was a floor, too. There were social norms that determined what

was too little […] or too much […]. (133-34, italics in original)

This quote underlines how the new-mediated culture led to the formation of new standards of living as well as new moral values and ways of behavior. Svendsen claims that the contemporary individual had to come to terms with the forces of consumption which ended up consuming human identity itself. Consumption, as he describes, responds to a basic human need but in contemporary reality this reached alarming dimensions. The 1990s showbiz culture in the U.S. trapped the individual into a spectacle-engineered reality within which everything turned into mere surface. In this way individuals were equated with objects waiting to be consumed which led to their total detachment from objective reality and their own sense of self.

But, what makes commodities so powerful? TV advertisements, movies, fashion shows, video clips and a media-controlled entertainment culture have reshaped human existence by focusing on the commercialization of human identity. This new mediated world reformulated the self, values and morals on a much more technologically-defined basis. The bombardment of the

1990s public with advertisements, MTV programs, reality TV shows, videos and fashion icons popularized and strengthened the power of the image. This ended up promoting the manners and behavior of movie stars and super-models. The ideals of success and self-fulfillment were now combined with the media-constructed images leading people to misinterpretations both about themselves and the reality around them. The public believed in the lifestyle led by the celebrities of the time. As a result, they could be anybody they wanted to just by copying their manners and lifestyles. In this process of commodity consumption, the public consumed clothes, labels and names in the same manner they consumed the images fed to them by the media. Modern products did not improve human existence but they pushed towards a new kind of control. The mediated Ouzounoglou 7 culture trapped the subject into a constructed sense of reality by exchanging human ordinariness with the false dream of fashion and glamor.

This artificiality in manners and lifestyles generated hollowness and superficiality. The mediated reality decentered the self and marginalized it from the real world. As part of the postmodern condition, people turned into mere spectacles. As Guy Debord comments on in his book The Society of the Spectacle (1967), “the spectacle is another facet of money, which is the abstract general equivalent of all commodities” (32). In this line, Debord comments on the manipulation of the individual by the consumerist lifestyle. It has transformed into an image and a hollow personality which functioned on the basis of a market sales-economy. In other words, it has exchanged, as the writer describes, its humanistic value with mere profit. The emergence of a reproducible reality did not create a sense of stability or authenticity. The blurry reality promoted through the media confused the individual as it could not distinguish the difference between the commodity and the mediated message. The illusionary images of beauty and fame became the new doctrine. Fashionable bodies and commodities promoted a false sense of self-fulfillment.

The fashion shows of super-models that were popularized in the 1990s in big urban centers in the

U.S., such as New York, projected youth and beauty as the ultimate ideals. The kind of entertainment nightclubs promoted passed the false idea of excitement and freedom via alcohol and drugs. As Kuan-Hsing Chen argues, “we are given the myth that we are the subjects of humanity when in fact we are objects, the objects of the capitalist machine” (177). This line comments on the false reality entertainment industry constructed in which people lose their free will and become objects of manipulation. The culture of the 1990s promotes the false idea of living in a world that feels to be moving beyond certain socio-cultural restrictions so as to form its own stereotypes.

Mike Featherstone in the book Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (1991) argues that, Ouzounoglou 8

the implication is that we are moving towards a society without fixed status

groups in which the adoption of styles of life (manifest in choice of clothes,

leisure activities, consumer goods, bodily dispositions) which are fixed to specific

groups have been surpassed. This apparent movement towards a postmodern

consumer culture based upon a profusion of information and proliferation of

images which cannot be ultimately stabilized, or hierarchized into a system which

correlates to fixed social divisions, would further suggest the irrelevance of social

divisions and ultimately the end of the social as a significant reference point. (83)

This excerpt explains that contemporary society introduced a new model of consumerism, which consumes both goods and images. In particular, as the writer suggests, the new consumerist market has constructed an accessible-to-all economy and goods. However, this has led to the homogenization of social taste which has accelerated consumption. Due to the bombardment of the individual with multiple sources of information this has led to a confusion as to what is constructed or real. In this case, the consumption of a product has been preceded by the consumption of its image through multiple sources of media exposure that has led to the entrapment of the individual and to its subjection to a world of mere representation.

Mediated images have distracted viewers’ attention from objective reality. The culture of images has no start or end point which enhances the sense of hollowness they create. The self is exposed to multiple commodities whose images destabilize its vision. These images float constantly in time and space creating a contingent effect. As a result, the media-generated reality makes us experience a different version of the world with the only difference that it is non- existent but virtual. Linda Hutcheon in her book The Politics of Postmodernism (1989), points out that “the postmodern […] is not a degeneration into ‘hyperreality’ but a questioning of what reality can mean and how we can come to know it” (34). Here, Hutcheon highlights that Ouzounoglou 9 constructed images do not abolish reality but blur its borders with what is fake or artificial. The series of images media construct has created a multi-faceted reality. In order to approach reality the individual is caught up into an ongoing process of interpretation and re-interpretation triggered by the multiple, often constructed, facets of the real. Finally, we are left exposed to artificiality which fragments our vision and pushes us to believe in its illusionary authenticity. As

Hutcheon explains, we are driven away from the authenticity of reality since we no longer know what is authentic anymore.

The new culture of entertainment industries that emerged in the 1990s in the U.S. enhanced, as it has already been mentioned, the power of the spectacle. The superficiality of the image, its fluid and hollow structure points towards a culture of empty personalities. TV and films enhanced the position of the celebrity image in contemporary culture and boosted consumerist lifestyle. In particular, Colin Harrison underlines in his book American Culture in the 1990s (2010) that,

the economic imperatives of cinema in an age of conglomeration often showed

through in the films themselves, leaving many of the movies of the 1990s with a

kind of disrupted textuality – those moments where the film’s universe is intruded

upon by product placement, a star’s catchphrase or a sequence promoting the CD

soundtrack, as well as the more obvious cases where a conclusion is contrived to

make way for a sequel. (112)

Therefore, a materialistic and consumerist mood dominated since in the filmic narratives of the time attention was paid not only to the narrative itself but also to the means of its construction.

Industries, as Harrison explains, trapped the individual into the images portrayed on the screen by bombarding the public with multiple versions of reality and lifestyles that viewers found difficult to get away from. Ouzounoglou 10

In the terrain of literary narration, the hallucinating culture of the spectacle and the market’s consumerist force transformed literary writing into a product waiting to be publicly consumed. Joe Moran mentions in his book Star Authors: Literary Celebrity in America (2000), that “[…] the creation of the author as a ‘personality’ by a vast network of cultural and economic practices - will actually threaten the whole notion of authorship as an individualistic activity, taking away agency from the author […]” (61). This line, as the writer explains, highlights the author’s corruption by the new capitalistic system. As a result, writers, equally to their books, have become part of a process of production and consumption. Moran’s opinion, as presented above, exposes the postmodern era’s duplicity by diluting the author’s image and what this represents. This is exactly the case with Ellis and McInerney, the writers this thesis focuses on.

The characters in their novels are alienated from the real world trying vainly to fulfill themselves by finally transforming into mere images. Their obsession with fame and money exposes the ills of contemporary media-generated culture. In their novels, Ellis and McInerney comment on the fictionality of a lifestyle which also brings forth a different model of authorship as will be shown in the next two chapters.

Taking place in Manhattan New York, Glamorama focuses on the multiple facets of fashion industry communicated to us via Victor Ward’s/Johnson’s narrative. Victor tastes all the benefits his celebrity career offers him. His sexual affairs with Chloe Byrnes, his lukewarm relationship with his senator father and his friendship with Damien Hirst, a club financier, make

Victor stand out from the other characters in the novel. Victor’s superficiality is often intersected by the presence of F. Fred Palakon, a covered-up agent who approaches Victor for secret purposes. Palakon hires Victor and sends him to London to track Jamie Fields, Victor’s old acquaintance at Camden College. During his trip, Victor’s mission transforms into a violent screen action. This blends the realistic boundaries of the novel with the filmic ones. While the Ouzounoglou 11 story unfolds, Victor’s celebrity status gives way to his criminal activities. People get murdered and Victor Ward is stuck in the middle of these scenarios. Victor gets acquainted with Bobby

Hughes, a criminal disguised as a fashion model, who creates celebrity duplicates for his criminal agendas. Although Palakon’s hidden plans with Victor’s father and Palakon’s secret meetings with Bobby Hughes are finally exposed, Victor cannot realize that he has been stuck inside the reproduction of his own image. While Victor’s duplicate acts as being the senator’s real son,

Victor struggles to come to terms with who he really is. Glamorama constitutes a subversive narrative where filmic and literary narration blend together, creating an illusive and blurry effect as to what is real or illusive.

Similarly to Ellis, Jay McInerney in Model Behaviour focuses on the manners of the

1990s world of fashion. The story is narrated by Connor McKnight which describes Connor’s relationship with Philomena Briggs, a well-known fashion model and the cover girl of popular fashion magazines. As a rising journalist, Connor defies the fakeness of celebrity culture but as

Philomena’s boyfriend he succumbs to the luring power of the fashion system. He is in pursuit of pointless celebrities’ interviews, he loathes the superficial fashion manners and he gets betrayed by his friends. His efforts to save his relationship with Philomena fall apart because he does not want to share her with the celebrity world she is part of. Incapable of overcoming their constant conflicts and arguments, Philomena, with the excuse of needing to travel due to her modeling duties, abandons Connor and gets involved in other sexual affairs. Connor becomes paranoid with Philomena’s infidelities. He reminisces their past life together, such as their first acquaintance, the moments of happiness before Philomena entered the fashion world of success.

Connor’s troubles resemble those of any ordinary person. At some point in the narrative, Connor slides into a fictional reality that blurs the boundaries between illusion and reality. Connor’s family issues, such as his sister’s divorce, her eating disorders and his parents’ alcoholism try to Ouzounoglou 12 anchor Connor in objective reality. In his fictitious world, Connor is back together with

Philomena. Unfortunately, this constitutes a figment of his imagination.

In Chapter One of this thesis, I will focus on the 1990s world of fashion, the consumerist ethos of contemporary society and the human obsession constructed by external appearances.

Ellis’s Glamorama will help me investigate the facets of the celebrity culture which commodifies the individual with its false idealizations. This chapter draws mainly on Jean Baudrillard’s notion of a commodity-driven reality, as described in his book The System of Objects. In particular, attention is paid to the transformation of commodities into signs which manipulate contemporary identity. The rising of an alter ego is also discussed here in an attempt to describe the transformation of the object into a celebrity image. According to the Baudrillardian theory of hyperreality, as described in his book Simulacra and Simulation, the hyperreal image that takes over Ellis’s protagonist in the novel appears to be more real than the real. Sonia Baelo-Allué’s ideas of media constructedness come to enhance Baudrillard’s theories of a sign-generated culture and hyperreality. Jonathan E. Schroeder’s viewpoints on photography are also contained into this chapter in an attempt to shed light on media duplicity which proves essential for the understanding of the endless self-quest of Ellis’s protagonist. Finally, emphasis is placed on

Brian McHale’s theories which attempt to explain the emergence of hypodiegetic narrations that interrupt the primary plot in Glamorama.

In Chapter Two, attention again is paid to the 1990s fashion culture but it is approached from a different perspective. It deals with the falsity of reproduction, while this time the narrative focuses on the reproducibility of romance. The commentary here draws on Baudrillard so as to highlight the media commodification of contemporary identity by connecting the real image with symbolic meanings or signs. Special attention is paid to the advertising process and particularly to the advertised image which is set up to serve the market economy. The ideas on family Ouzounoglou 13 relations are also drawn into the discussion here so as to highlight the young people’s obsession with the media and their detachment from the domestic environment. At last but not least, Brian

McHale’s theoretical framework on representation explains the self-fragmentation via the narrative’s reconstructedness. In particular, attention is paid to the inset scenarios placed in

Model Behaviour that interrupt the primary plot of the narrative and distort readers’ understanding. Emphasis is also placed on the sense of omniscience the camera produces and its impact on the protagonist’s vision. Finally, McHale’s comments on the construction of alternative fictional scenarios within the same story, as has been explained in this chapter, lead readers to a different understanding of McInerney’s happy-ending version of the story which matches the falsified version of reality often promoted via the media.

To sum up, the late 1990s society manipulated the subject as it relied on the false reality the market and the mass media constructed and promoted. Contemporary identity became obsessed with the glamorous images of the showbiz. The world of the spectacle tricked human vision and distorted identity. Fashions abstracted depth and meaning from human existence and let it be exposed to an artificial reality in which it became both a victim and a victimizer. Both

Glamorama and Model Behaviour deal, as we shall see in the next two chapters, with the hallucinatory reality media construct. The young protagonists of these two novels experience the pleasures of their materialistic lifestyles which frame them into a pointless consumerist lifestyle.

The numerous lists of products that we will encounter in the narratives expose the human obsession with materialism and the young characters’ failure to control their consumerist instincts. These characters appear to have resigned from any sense of reality having exchanged their humanity with artificial images, emotions and needs. They look happy with their advertised image which promises them in the beginning money and fame but at the end leads, as they realize

(at least some of them), to their extinction and annihilation. Finally, the multiple scenarios that Ouzounoglou 14 suddenly emerge in these two novels will come to interrupt the narratives and entrap the readers into the deceptive reality the camera creates. These novels attempt to describe contemporary

American reality from different perspectives offering readers an insight into the multi-facetedness as well as hollowness of a media-driven reality.

Ouzounoglou 15

CHAPTER ONE

Reconstructing Reality in Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama (1998)

The spectacle is money for contemplation only, for here the totality of use has already been

bartered for the totality of abstract representation. The spectacle is not just the servant of pseudo-

use – it is already, in itself, the pseudo-use of life.

―Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (1967)

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of

a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.

―Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

1. Introduction

The constructedness of reality via media intervention and the reproduction of false images with regard to the representation of identity is what Bret Easton Ellis tackles in his novel

Glamorama (1998). In particular, he examines the pervasive impact of the camera on the construction and promotion of celebrity identity, manners and appearances, as this is envisaged in the fashion world of the 1990s in the U.S. Glamorama revolves around the power of the image and the world of the spectacle which highlights the termination of authenticity and the popularization of artificiality. At a time when morals and values are determined on the basis of appearances, Ellis’s Glamorama exposes the power media culture has in constructing and deconstructing identity. Ouzounoglou 16

Ellis’s characters in Glamorama are celebrities, models and actors. His male protagonist,

Victor Ward, is absorbed by the lifestyles of his modeling profession and he acts in accordance to what he thinks he sees as real. Victor and the rest of the models appearing in the novel do not have something to share between them. They are totally concerned with images and superficial manners. Attention in Glamorama is paid to the impact of the mass media on identity formation which brings to the forefront the issue of celebrity identity. Victor Ward alongside the other characters in the novel belongs to a particular social group which takes media-promoted images to be the real thing and believes in everything the camera captures. As the story in Glamorama progresses, more and more young characters in the novel identify themselves with hallucinatory images while forgetting who they really are.

Celebrity images in Glamorama are portrayed as precious commodities. Victor views media reality as liberating and realistic. Glamorous appearances become his ticket for success; his super-model girlfriend, VIP connections, the fashion parties he regularly attends and his public icon is what makes Victor Ward visible to others. In the novel, Victor Ward is a young man who always asks for more, an attitude that pushes him to a commodity-driven lifestyle.

Victor Ward appears to be hypnotized by celebrity glamor and behavior code which finally leads to the effacement and replacement of his self with a superficial image. Ellis’s attention in

Glamorama to celebrity lifestyles exposes the falsity of the self as it transforms into an object of voyeurism and exploitation. The young protagonist experiences his commodified subjectivity as realistic because his world is driven by commodities. However, he is so absorbed by the constructed reality that envelops him that he does not at all become aware of his withdrawal from objective reality.

Victor Ward’s model lifestyle equates him with a consumable commodity. In

Glamorama, there are no real characters since everything is commodified. Victor’s identity is Ouzounoglou 17 commercialized and the only actions he participates in are runways shows, photo-shoots, advertisements, TV commercials and famous fashion magazines interviews which are only interested in his image and not his real character. In the novel, the real Victor appears to be passive; he just observes this world of superficial images and constructed identities but he does not react. He does not even question himself or his actions, even when his duplicate self is about to steal his legal position as the senator’s son. What seems to matter for him are his looks. Victor is mainly worried about his hair, outfits, body, parties and brands without paying attention to the side effects his obsession with his looks and lifestyle may have. Everything in Ellis’s world is superficial. Youth, beauty and personality have turned into commodities themselves on the altar of prestige and glamor.

In Glamorama, we watch Victor Ward to be caught up into the hallucinatory reality the mediated images construct for him; he pretends to be a super-model, a nightclub planner and a famous film star. The world of the spectacle continuously constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs Victor’s identity as he constantly moves between roles. Throughout the novel, Victor is presented as a consumer of products, manners and relationships; but eventually he consumes himself. Trying to keep up with Victor’s multiple images of selfhood, readers find it difficult to distinguish reality from fiction. Ellis places his male protagonist into a pointless self-quest so as to explain that the self is doomed to fail in this consumerist environment. At the end of the novel, we realize that Ellis’s character does not have a self; it is his mediated self that has completely taken over his identity and values having transformed him into a vacuous image. The empty spectacle that Victor Ward once idealized as real now fades away as he has nothing to rely on.

Glamorama appears to be a book of manners which mainly focuses on the consumerist lifestyle of the 1990s celebrity culture. Glamorama’s readers are not supposed to find inside the book any depth or substance because all fictional characters are absorbed by their mediated Ouzounoglou 18 images. The narrative revolves around celebrities, consumerist products, sex and violence that are used by Ellis so as to explore the irrationality of commodified and mediated contemporary reality. The readers gain access to the narrative’s blankness through its meaningless plot, short- sentence dialogues and numerous lists of goods and celebrities. The plot unfolds slowly confusing readers’ understanding. As Sol Invictus underlines in his online review of the novel,

the execution was somewhat lacking. For starters, the book is too long. This is

most painfully apparent in the first 200 pages, which, despite being a truly precise

satire of the culture of the 1990s, are banal beyond belief. This was arguably

intentional on the part of Ellis, but it does little to illuminate the plot or to make

the book any more interesting. Similarly, Ellis has a jumpy style of writing that

paradoxically becomes predictable, especially when it is spaced out over the

course of about 600 pages. (1-2)

This review attempts to expose the issues that readers deal with while reading Glamorama.

Ellis’s efforts to challenge public opinion through his subversive writing techniques were not easily discernible by critics and reviewers when the book came out.1 As Invictus explains here,

Ellis was aware of the loss of interest his narrative exaggerations may trigger for readers, but this was the case. Ellis knows that the short sentences, the long pages and lists of products he contains in his novel distract readers from the main theme of Glamorama. Ellis enhances the chaotic form and superficial content of his narrative by avoiding to bring his story to closure. After reading

Glamorama’s long narrative, the readers expect to reach an ending with regard to Victor Ward’s actions. However, the way Ellis treats his novel’s ending seems to be a bit ambivalent. Ellis’s ending is completely different from McInerney’s ending in his novel Model Behaviour as we will

1 Reviews about Glamorama were published in Vanity Fair, New York Times, Washington Post, Observer, New Statesman, New York and Newsweek. For more information about Glamorama’s reviews, see Baelo-Allué 131-41. Ouzounoglou 19 see in chapter two of this project. Although Ellis lets his protagonist be exposed, McInerney chooses a superficial and media-constructed “happy” ending for his novel.

Ellis’s Glamorama demonstrates the illusive world of representation with particular emphasis on the fashion world, its violent nature and superficial relationships. In particular, the modeling world, as part of the celebrity culture in Manhattan, New York, in the late 1990s reveals the objectification, debasement and constructedness of identity. The writer attempts to investigate how the media have given viewers access to different visualizations of personal success and have blurred the boundaries between reality and illusion. This is exactly what the novel explores in addition to the exposure of an array of coupled terms such as real/unreal, visible/invisible, appropriate/vulgar, external/internal, public/private, subjective/objective, seen/unseen, artificial/natural and self/illusion. The world of the spectacle appears to be limitless but also distorted. It is the constructedness of representation and reality that Ellis sets to explore in this novel, as will be shown next.

1.1 “Victor Who?”: Image Re-enactment and the Media Manipulation of the Self

In Glamorama, Ellis starts with the depiction of the celebrity world that standardizes fashion manners and commodifies identity. Happiness, self-fulfillment and success all appear to be manageable in front of the camera which has the power to manipulate people, public opinion and vision. This section deals with celebrities which have lost their personality and have transformed into faceless names, manners and lifestyles. Ellis also exposes media falsity as to the images it constructs; the concepts of youth, beauty and popularity are redefined through the media so as to lure viewers into the tricks of the fashion industry. Celebrity culture, as Ellis describes, offers nothing more than attractive hallucinations entrapping the individual into an ongoing cycle of reconstructed stereotypes and clichés. Ellis’s narrator, Victor Ward, exposes the Ouzounoglou 20 fakeness of the modeling business, the obsession with external looks and the exploitation of human existence when infected with the virus of success, as presented in the novel.

The first issues that Ellis tackles in Glamorama are the constructedness of celebrity identity and the individual transformation into brands. From the very beginning of the novel,

Victor Ward deals with the glamor scene of New York in the late 1990s. Throughout the novel, he talks with celebrities, works for them, has sex with them and betrays them in the end.

Celebrities mean everything to him. That is why he invites all the celebrities he knows to his new club opening as their appearance is going to define its success. As it becomes evident in the novel, celebrities constitute a special group of people which defines Victor’s existence and fame.

It is quite interesting the way their names are listed in the novel which leads to their commodification:

“Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Cindy Crawford, Sheryl Crow, David

Charvet, Courteney Cox, Harry Connick, Jr., Francisco Clemente, Nick

Constantine, Zoe Cassavetes, Nicolas Cage, Thomas Calabro, Cristi Conway,

Bob Collacello, Whitfield Crane, John Cusack, Dean Cain, Jim Courier, Roger

Clemens, Russell Crowe, Tia Carrere and Helena Bonham Carter [...].” (Ellis 8,

my emphasis)

Victor gathers the names in long alphabetical lists that makes them look like shopping products.

They have nothing substantial to offer Victor except for their name and glamor which will ensure the success of his new club. As Sonia Baelo-Allué stresses in her book Bret Easton Ellis’s

Controversial Fiction: Writing Between High and Low Culture (2011), “the long lists of brand names […] are here replaced by long lists of celebrity names: the new brand names of our culture. Victor organizes celebrities following an alphabetical order, turning celebrities […] into the same empty names” (149). This explains that celebrities have a market value in the star Ouzounoglou 21 system Victor belongs to. In this illusive world of glamor and fame, individuals turn into brand names losing any sense of selfhood. The transformation of celebrities into brand names is further exposed through Victor’s dialogue with JD, one of his assistants, in which Victor tries to finalize the guest list for the club opening:

“Stanford Blatch.”

“Oh dear God.”

“Grow up, Victor,” JD says. “He owns like half of Savoy.”

“Invite whoever owns the other half.”

[…]

“Andre Balazs?”

“With Katie Ford, yes.”

“Drew Barrymore?”

“Yes – and dinner too.”

[…]

“Scott Benoit?”

“Party only.”

“Leilani Bishop.”

“Party.” (Ellis 68)

The celebrities listed above enhance the transformation of the celebrity into a brand name. Victor continues treating his guests as commodities despite the fact that he counts on their glamor and prestige. The short sentences and dialogues, as used in the excerpt above, further enhance a feeling of blankness. Ellis’s attention to these brand names highlights the attitude of the label

Victor and the rest of the models adopt which hence leads to their humiliation and undermining of personality. Ouzounoglou 22

The loss of selfhood also becomes evident in the novel in the way Victor’s girlfriend gradually transforms into a brand name. Chloe Byrnes appears to be one of the most significant brand names in Glamorama since her name appears in every newspaper, runway show, film and magazine. Victor mentions the names of the fashion industries interested in employing Chloe to advertise their products: “Banana Republic (no), Benetton (no), Chanel (yes), Gap (maybe),

Christian Dior (hmm), French Connection (a joke), Guess? (nope), Ralph Lauren (problematic),

Pepe Jeans (are we kidding?), Calvin Klein (done that), Pepsi (sinister but a possibility), et cetera” (Ellis 32). Her connections with the fashion and entertainment industry increase Chloe’s fame and market value. They also transform her into a famous fashion icon which has nothing to offer except for her image. Victor’s playful way of naming these fashion industries highlights

Chloe’s devaluation into a depthless celebrity object. Victor’s yes/no short answers and his sarcasm and ironies towards those labels undervalue Chloe’s human qualities. The way Victor views these job opportunities makes us aware of the superficiality of the celebrity system.

Through Victor’s fast-pace narration, as presented above, Ellis wants to expose the thoughtlessness of the MTV generation his novel attacks.2

Moreover, Damien’s, Victor’s boss, enthusiasm when he mentions Chloe’s name shows his interest in her name and not her real self. Actually this is why Victor dates her. It is the fame of her name that places Victor at the center of attention as well. Damien’s words, “‘You’re dating

Chloe […] Byrnes,’ […] ‘How do you do it, man? What’s your secret?’” (Ellis 47), make us view

Chloe as a brand name and not as a real human being. Victor dates with the image of Chloe

Byrnes and not the real Chloe. Chloe’s dehumanization is also enhanced through the following words in which she explains that she has never stopped being a brand: “‘My soul isn’t on the

2 Kuan-Hsing Chen talks about the MTV as follows: “ecstasy of communication, fascination, desire, schizophrenic corruption of temporality and spatiality, obscenity (of sexuality), collage, quotation, fragmentation and non-unity are the key terms to describe the dominant characteristics of MTV” (176). Ouzounoglou 23 cover of fucking Harper’s next month. My soul’s not negotiating a Lancôme contract’” (40, italics in original). Through Chloe’s complaints Ellis demonstrates the falsity of the media-driven society that exploits celebrity identity just for its own consumerist interests.

Moreover, in a different instance in the novel, Victor identifies Anjanette, another fashion model, with Uma Thurman, a well-known celebrity personality, when he says in the novel,

“You’re looking very Uma-ish” (18). Anjanette’s outfit covers up her own identity, making her look like another famous celebrity. Anjanette’s looks seem more important to Victor than her real self. The adoption of somebody else’s attitude and manners creates a real confusion since nobody in the novel is who she or he really is. Everyone pretends to be somebody else. Baelo-Allué argues that “when celebrities become language signs, adjectives, verbs or nouns they lose all human qualities” (149). The Uma-ish outfit transforms Anjanette into something and not simply into someone else. She is no longer herself but a commodity. She has become a copy of herself preventing Victor and everyone else from seeing who she really is. The following words depict the shallowness of the world Victor, Anjanette and the other models in the novel live in:

“‘There’s always a car waiting. There’s always a Steven Meisel photo shoot. Jesus, how do we do it, Victor? How do we survive this mess?’” (Ellis 18). Although Anjanette seems to be aware of her condition she continues being addicted to what a media-driven lifestyle promises for her.

All models in Glamorama work as cover boys and girls for famous fashion magazines which secure large contracts for them. However, they sacrifice their real self for the fame that comes with being a brand name. This highlights the fact that celebrities succumb to a label system which consumes their individuality by turning them into consumable, empty objects.

Apart from celebrities turning into commodities, Ellis touches upon the issue of commodities’ transformation into signs too. In the novel, Victor is surrounded by commodities and labels. The brand clothes Victor wears, his cell phone, music stereo, sunglasses and other Ouzounoglou 24 material objects have a special market value for him. They are all brands which constitute part of his celebrity identity. Ellis’s protagonist always pays too much attention to commodities. In particular, attention is paid to the messages these commodities are enveloped with. Chloe’s and

Alison’s “Todd Oldham wraparound dress” (23), Baxter’s “Audiovox MVX cell phone” (33) and

Chloe’s “Ericsson DF” (33) are brands that accompany the celebrities appearing in the novel.

Ellis’s description of the commodity brands Chloe uses brings to the readers’ attention once again the popularization of a commodity-ruled lifestyle: “two Toshiyuki Kita hop sofas, […] six

Baccarat Tastevin wineglasses, […] a Fabergé Imperial egg, […] a Helmut Newton photo of

Chloe […] giant posters for the movies Butterfield 8, The Bachelor Party with Carolyn Jones,

Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (39, italics in original). Ellis highlights here the obsessive consumption of commodities. All commodities in Chloe’s house are brands. They are mere objects constituting an extension of her celebrity identity. In Victor’s case, it is only commodities that matter. He cannot exist without them but he only exists through them. Ellis’s emphasis on the way Victor dresses, speaks, and eats in the novel shows that he exists through appearances only. This brings to mind Mike Featherstone’s comments in his book Consumer

Culture and Postmodernism (1991) where he claims that

consumer commodities in late capitalism have developed the capacity to take up a

wide range of imagistic and symbolic associations which overlay their initial use-

value and hence become commodity-signs […] which leads to the loss of a sense

of concrete reality as the consumer-television culture with its floating mass of

signs and images produces an endless series of simulations which play off each

other. (99)

These lines focus on the absurdity and depthlessness of contemporary everyday reality as this is reproduced via the mass media. This has led to the disorientation and manipulation of the Ouzounoglou 25 consumer. The infinite materialistic choices as these are projected on the TV screen have substituted the individual’s sense of reality with artificial images that do not correspond to real needs. As a result, the individual is pushed towards compulsive consumption. In Ellis’s novel,

Victor’s obsession with brand names reflects youth’s obsession with materialism and the pursuit of a celebrity materialistic lifestyle. Ellis’s attention to the world of commodities and brands exposes the emptiness that characterizes contemporary consuming reality.

Another issue that Ellis highlights in the novel is the depiction of fake manners and lifestyles. Victor as well as the other models/celebrities in the novel appear to be happy and beautiful but actually they are not. Chloe has a nervous breakdown before the MTV awards;

Anjanette is a heroin addict; Alison is driven mad because Victor is having an affair with Chloe;

Victor is addicted to Xanax and Klonopin; he has no money, no job, no real life. All characters in

Ellis’s novel are miserable and unhealthy. They all live in the superficial reality of celebrity culture in which everything is dictated by the media that surround them.

Ellis exposes this superficiality via the depiction of Victor’s fakeness. Victor and Chloe seem to have a perfect showbiz affair; however, they pretend to be happy for different reasons.

Their connection, as Ellis describes, does not rely on real love and respect but on profit. Victor pretends to be in love with Chloe because she is rich-and-famous. The only reason why he wants to be with her is because she is a million contract for him. Chloe’s connections enable Victor to enter the world of celebrities. She is the golden ticket for Victor’s social success. She pays for

Victor’s cards and expensive outfits. She supports him financially: “Chloe picks up the check and in order to downplay the situation I lean in to kiss her, the swarming paparazzi causing the kind of disturbance we’re used to” (Ellis 39, my emphasis). Victor’s and Chloe’s celebrity affair appears to be perfect in their mediated reality, but in real life it falls apart. As a couple they cannot stop arguing. They both lack real communication. Victor pretends to care about what Ouzounoglou 26

Chloe has to tell him. In particular, Chloe’s complaints in the novel show the blankness that exists in their seemingly perfect relationship: “‘You’re looking at me but you’re not talking to me’” (38, italics in original). Victor pays attention only to Chloe’s external beauty and not inner needs. As a result, their relationship falls apart.

Victor’s falsity is even more pronounced when he talks to Chloe about meaning and depth: “‘Beauty is in the soul’” (40). For Victor Ward beauty is not an internal but external only personality trait. Characteristic is the example with the MTV interview which exposes the falsity of the couple’s perfection:

MTV (long pause, mild confusion): “You and Chloe Byrnes have been together

how long now?” ME: “Time is meaningless when it comes down to Chloe. She

defies time, man. I hope she has a long-term career as an actress-slash-model.

She’s gorgeous and, er, is my … best friend.” (Sounds of Details reporter

laughing). (141, italics in original)

What Victor tries to convey here is that his relationship with Chloe is honest and unique.

However, the MTV reporter’s laughs behind the cameras reinforce the fakeness of Victor’s relationship. Everybody else knows that Victor and Chloe are not a real couple but a joke.

Victor’s hypocrisy does not end here. Victor cheats on Chloe, the one he claims to love in front of the cameras, by having an extra affair with Alison Poole, his boss’s fiancé. Victor’s falsity is further highlighted when he tells Alison that he needs to pretend that he is still in a relationship with Chloe: “‘Why do I always need to remind you that I’m basically still with, y’know Chloe, and you’re still with Damien?’” (26, italics in original). He plays his role in this world of manners which wants him to be with Chloe Byrnes, the super-model, so as to be someone, while Alison Poole cannot offer him the prestige he needs. Moreover, Victor betrays

Damien, his best friend and Alison’s boyfriend, but he still appears to be Damien’s trustworthy Ouzounoglou 27 assistant. Victor’s roles change in the novel and he never becomes his real self. He pretends to be

Chloe Byrnes’s official boyfriend, but he also pretends to be Alison Poole’s lover and Damien’s confidant. The role everyone has to play in Glamorama’s world works as a survival mechanism, since none of the characters can exist outside the world of spectacle and glamor.

Ellis’s argument about false manners and appearances is further enhanced in the section where Victor is interviewed by an MTV reporter:

“Super,” the VJ says. “Can we work it in?” “You will work it in,” I answer for

Mutt. “And no questions about my father.” “You’re shooting from the hip,” the VJ

says. “And I like it.” “And I’m camera ready.” MTV: “So how does it feel to be

the It Boy of the moment?” ME: “Fame has a price tag but reality’s still a friend

of mine.” MTV: “How do you think other people perceive you?” ME: “I’m a bad

boy. I’m a legend. But in reality everything’s a big world party and there are no

VIP rooms.” MTV (pause, confusion): “But aren’t there three VIP rooms at your

new club?” ME: “Um…cut. Cut. Cut.” […] MTV: “How old are you?” ME:

“Twentysomething.” MTV: “No, really. Exact.” ME: “Twen-ty-something.”

MTV: “What really pisses Victor Ward off?” ME: “The fact that David Byrne

named his new album after a ‘tea from Sri Lanka that’s sold in Britain.’ I swear to

God I heard that somewhere and it drove me nuts.” MTV (after polite laughter):

“No. What really makes you mad? What really gets you angry?” ME (long pause,

thinking): “Well, recently, missing DJs, badly behaved bartenders, certain

gossipy male models, the media’s treatment of celebs…um…” MTV: “We were

thinking more along the lines of the war in Bosnia or the AIDS epidemic or

domestic terrorism. How about the current political situation?” ME (long pause, Ouzounoglou 28

tiny voice): “Sloppy Rollerbladers? ... The words ‘dot com’? ...” (140-42, my

emphasis and italics in original)

It is through the interview that Victor’s superficiality is exposed. He has no real self to rely on.

He appears deluded every time he is asked to comment on his lifestyle. What he appears to be enjoying the most though is the shooting process. Although the rolling of the MTV camera seems to be a background feature in the interview, it actually plays a dominant role as it exposes

Victor’s double identity. His experience in the fashion and media industry has taught Victor to manipulate his viewers’ vision by presenting himself differently. He pretends to be the “bad boy”

(140), as Victor claims in his MTV interview, because this is how the consumer industry wants him to be. Moreover, we watch Victor setting up the scene, determining from the beginning the list of questions and answers he wants, while avoiding the embarrassment even when his own hypocrisy is exposed. He warns the MTV reporter to avoid the questions about his father as he is interested in constructing a particular image about himself. As a result, we get to see only certain facets of his personality since what we experience is only Victor’s screen image.

Another issue Ellis comments on in Glamorama is the commodification of the individual via photographic representation. Photos constitute an important part of Glamorama’s illusionary culture. In Victor’s case, they construct his identity and public image. Photos become the medium which link Victor to the outside world. His photographed image appears on the cover of famous fashion magazines, like the YouthQuake, and it is due to this image that he participates in

MTV shows, TV commercials and movies. Victor believes in the powerful impact of photographs because, as he states in the novel, “a photo exists” (14). He is thrilled to have his image captured by the photo camera because the visible reality of the photos makes Victor’s image seem real as well. He enjoys being photographed because he gains in this way prestige and glamor. Victor’s photos with celebrities, super-models and famous movie stars reinforce his Ouzounoglou 29 celebrity status. The photo images connect Victor’s identity with this world of consumption.

Turning into a material object himself via his photo images, Victor becomes powerful but only superficially. Ellis refers to him as an “‘It Boy’” (60) mainly because he trades his self with a photographic version of it, as when he participates in the CK One ads and when he eats Pringle chips. Thus, photographic representation becomes part of Victor’s celebrity lifestyle. According to Jonathan E. Schroeder,

photography shapes experience: it guides how people see, what they see, what

they remember, what they consider worth seeing, how they imagine things look,

how they think about their own identity and that of others, and how they think of

their ancestors. Photography surrounds consumption: it informs, it shows, it

communicates, it structures choice, it dazzles – and it offers a creative way of

thinking about consumer experiences. Yet photography is relatively invisible – we

take for granted that most of our information about the world is delivered to us via

photography in the forms of still pictures, television, film, video, and Webpage

design. (67)

These lines shed light on the false impressions photography creates. Victor’s perception of reality, as Schroeder stresses, blends with the illusionary images photography constructs. Photos in Glamorama construct multiple versions of reality for Ellis’s protagonist. They shape the way he experiences reality as well as dictate his consumerist likes and dislikes. Victor feels real only when the photographic lens captures him. He feels safe only when advertisements tell him what to eat or drink. He views himself as important only when he watches his image on the camera.

Victor becomes real only through his participation in photo-shoots, advertisements, magazines and movies. His absurd reality gains new meaning when he is practically “‘doing nothing’” (74), Ouzounoglou 30 as the paparazzi remark in the novel. However, Ellis’s protagonist cannot realize that what the camera projects is distorted.

Photos make Victor and the rest of the characters see what they want to see. The “pseudo- reality” that the camera creates is what makes Ellis’s characters experience the world of the spectacle as real. Boorstin argues that, “pseudo-events, from their very nature, tend to be more interesting and more attractive than spontaneous events” (47). As a result, we have all been enslaved by the images media construct. The individual has learnt to believe in the reality the camera projects while what happens off the camera is considered to be unrealistic. In this way, the artificial has taken the position of the real. In the case of Ellis’s characters, it is their image that makes them look real. In Victor’s artificial reality, in particular, it is how others view him that matters. The fact that he has cheated on his girlfriend or betrayed his best friend/employer is not of major importance. It is his photographed image that determines who he is. In the world of the spectacle, the real self is never fully exposed but succumbs to the destructive effect of media glamor.

In the novel Ellis suggests that only when Victor identifies with what is projected on the camera he becomes enlivened. Through the reproducibility of Victor’s photographic images, Ellis comments on the impact the mediated culture has on the individual as what he or she is exposed to is just his or her own copy:

I’m looking for a copy of the Flatliners tape I left over here last week but can only

find an old Arsenio that Chloe was on, two movies she was in, Party Mountain

with Emery Roberts and Teen Town with Hurley Thompson, another documentary

about breast-implant safety and last week’s “Melrose Place.” On the screen now, a

commercial, grainy fuzz, a reproduction of a reproduction. (40-41, italics in

original) Ouzounoglou 31

The reproductions of Victor, Chloe and the rest of the models in the novel have pushed them towards an imitation of manners and behavior. Victor gets dressed according to fashion trends, he attends fashion shows, he gets interviewed by the paparazzi, he is on the cover of famous magazines and he dates top models. His identity is surrounded by mediated images and reproduction becomes his lifestyle. The commodities he consumes, the girlfriend he sleeps with, the VIP friends he gets acquainted with are what the celebrity world they live in wants them to be. Victor is just interested not in who they are but in what they represent. Representation is what defines Victor’s vision and existence in the novel.

In Glamorama, Ellis’s protagonist is trapped into the artificiality of representation.

Victor’s unrealistic perception about life and individual existence challenges the way he views the world around him. This becomes quite apparent in his following words: “‘But in is out,’ I explain, squinting to see where we’re heading. […] ‘Out is in. Got it?’ […] ‘No, in is out. Out is in. Simple, non?’” (15). The confusion created by the subversion of the inside and the outside image becomes even more powerful when later in the novel Victor considers what defines existence to be meaningless: “‘The new trend is no trend.’ […] ‘No, no trend is the new trend,’

[…]” (53, italics in original). This line reveals the process of scattered meanings that characterizes Victor’s world. The subverted reality the camera records or photographically captures also affects the reception of Victor’s image. Victor is presented to take part in social events that he has never been before. Although he explains that this is a misunderstanding, nobody seems to believe him because of the documentation his photos provide. Photographs haunt Victor in the novel while their simulated quality erases any sense of self. Victor appears to be at the same time in the WWD fashion show, in Miami hotel, on the YouthQuake cover, in the

Wallflowers concert, in the Brigitte Lancôme photo shoot and in the L.A. Sky Bar. In these photos, what people see is Victor’s photographic double. However, everyone believes what one Ouzounoglou 32 sees. Victor appears with Stephen Dorff and David Salle in the WWD show “wearing ’50s knit shirts and sunglasses” (60). He then appears in a Miami hotel “wearing a bathing suit” (80). After that, he appears “standing next to a pool wearing shorts and a vest with no shirt” (224). These are all instances of photomontage that do not correspond to objective but to an artificially- constructed reality. Joel Snyder and Neil Walsh Allen claim that

[a] photograph shows us “what we would have seen” at a certain moment in time,

from a certain vantage point if we kept our head immobile and closed one eye and

if we saw with the equivalent of a 150-mm or 24-mm lens and if we saw things in

Agfacolor or in Tri-X developed in D-76 and printed on Kodabromide #3 paper.

(152, italics in original)

What this suggests is that everything in photography is relative since what finally gets printed is subjected to a number of processes that distance us from the original image.

In the case of Ellis’s novel, the blurriness that is created between Victor’s objective and photographic image leads to his withdrawal from the world of objectivity and insertion in the world of illusion. In Glamorama’s part one, Victor is conscious of the media activity around him.

He participates in this mediated reality willingly. In the next parts, however, he loses control. The moment he boards the ship in order to find Jamie Fields, he starts moving towards the extinction of his self. Things get worse when he is replaced by his own photographic images. He sees his photos with the Korean ambassador’s son that Bobby Hughes, a fashion model/criminal, and the other models construct and he cannot believe his eyes. The world of representation has completely eradicated any trace of Victor’s presence. As Bobby argues in the novel, “Victor has to reconcile” with the hyperreality so as to survive in the world of representation (Ellis 286).

What Victor once viewed as ideal and perfect, it now turns into a nightmare. While Victor feels torn between his real and artificial self, readers become entrapped into the illusionary reality Ouzounoglou 33 constructed here that mixes up reality with illusion and the visible with the non-visible. As Terry

Barrett highlights,

people believe photographs, whether for better or worse, and whether with or

without proper justification. That is, when viewing photographs people generally

tend to grant to photographs more credence than they would to paintings,

drawings, prints, or sculptures. In experiencing photographs, viewers blur

distinctions between subject matter and pictures of subject matter and tend to

accept photographs as reality recorded by a machine. (14)

These lines explain that the false reality of reproduction makes the viewer take the power of the engineered image for granted rather than view it as a mechanical effect. The same applies in

Victor’s case. Bobby suggests that Victor should accept the reality of his photos with Sam Ho because people are taught to accept artificiality as being the real thing. Ellis questions the validity of Victor Ward’s vision when specific photographic material comes to confirm his real presence.

In this way, he places both the readers and his protagonist into a game of visibility and invisibility emphasizing the absurd reality of engineered aesthetics. The photos unrealistically demonstrate Victor’s double image but no one can see the difference between Victor and his double. What this reveals though is the hallucinating reality of the reproducible image and the duplicity of what is visible.

The photographic projection of Victor’s double image further intensifies the uncertainty created by what is seen or depicted. The point here is not what one sees but what one chooses to see as real, while, on the other hand, there are times that the viewer becomes the tragic victim of the spectacle itself. The photos showing Victor with Sam Ho coincide with Victor’s own version of reality. Victor sees his image in a series of events too. He sees himself in the “CK Show”

(Ellis 357), in the “Dogstar concert w/K Reeves” (357), in the “Union Square w/L Hynde” (357), Ouzounoglou 34 in the “QE2 series” (357, italics in original), in the “GQ Shoot w/J Fields, M Bergin” (357), in the “Café Flore w/Brad, Eric, Dean” (357), in the “Institute of Political Studies” (357) and in

“80th and Park w/A Poole” (357). All these photos expose Victor’s presence in famous places he has never visited before. Victor is uncertain about what he sees. He is shocked when he sees his double killing Sam Ho. He is certain that people are going to believe in these images just because they exist; nobody is going to question their authenticity. As a result, Victor starts doubting about himself too. What he knew as real has turned into a nightmare. Truth and lies, fantasy and reality are now mixed and Victor is unable to distinguish fact from fiction, since his reality is taken over by his double. The issue that Ellis exposes here is the media manipulation of identity. According to Patricia Pisters,

Glamorama witnesses the implication of the media in our “culture of real

virtuality” and the embeddedness of the network enterprises when the surplus

value – glamour through commodities and cameras – turns into a paranoid

nightmare of manipulation and fascist violence through the camera’s never ending

surveillance. (135)

This quote underlines the dominance of media and the loss of freedom inflicted on the individual due to a consumerist lifestyle. As the writer explains, the consumerist society in conjunction with the media manipulates the consumer providing a false sense of autonomy. The consumer is never free since the market bombards him/her with advertised messages and ideas even after the process of consumption. In a similar manner, it is the media that determine Victor’s existence throughout the novel, since it is his mediated image that haunts him in the end. Victor’s life is governed by other factors and not by his own free will, since his manners, actions and behavior are modeled on what others want from him. Ouzounoglou 35

One last negative effect of the 1990s fashion culture that Ellis tackles in Glamorama is narcissism. The materialistic pursuit of happiness and success, as Ellis exposes it in the novel, has transformed all characters into narcissists. Characteristic is the childish dialogue between models and their stylists which exposes their self-centeredness: “‘I want extreme,’ Didier says. ‘I want

Red Hot Chily Peppers. I want energy.’ ‘I want a big fat spleef,’ Scooter mutters. ‘I want garish and sexy,’ Didier says” (Ellis 59, my emphasis and italics in original). Their dialogue exposes their obsession with appearances and an egocentric lifestyle. Their superficial demands make them sound like spoiled children who cannot stop wanting more and more until their requests are fulfilled. Ellis treats his characters like children. They are all immature and self-centered. They lack common sense or seriousness, since it is only their needs they care about. This example reveals the absurdity of the fashion system which transforms young people into immature personae. The system of materialistic fulfillment disorientates people and creates false priorities.

Among all narcissists in the novel, Victor Ward is the greatest of all. In Glamorama, he narrates his experiences, what he likes and dislikes, what he wants, what he dreams and what he believes in. We hear nothing but Victor’s voice. We watch him always being busy with himself, with the outfits he will choose, the car he will drive, the drinks he will order and the image of himself he is interested in communicating to those around him. Victor is concerned just about appearances. Nothing matters except for himself and his image. We come across his egocentric attitude everywhere in the novel, while the first person narration intensifies this effect. Victor talks about himself and his position in the fashion world. He refers to the opening of his new club, he describes the steps towards becoming the cover boy of famous magazines, he cites his

MTV interviews, he explains why he rejects non-cool jobs and he focuses on his sex life. While reading the novel, we feel like the whole world revolves around Victor. His words, “‘I’m on the cover of YouthQuake magazine this month’” (30, italics in original), “‘my own club’” (53, italics Ouzounoglou 36 in original), “‘I want calves and thighs and definitely abs today’” (55, italics in original), expose a self-centered man who cares only about himself. Even when somebody asks Victor about his club’s opening Victor ignores him and answers that “‘he wants to rock ’n’ roll all night and party every day’” (60). The repetition of this phrase further emphasizes Victor’s superficiality and decenteredness.

What Victor focuses on is what makes him feel happy. Real life for Victor is nightclubbing, drugs, parties and money. His ego is all that matters to him. This brings to mind

Alex E. Blazer’s commentary on Ellis’s Victor when he writes that

the psyche of the current “It” boy has been taught by his glamorous lifestyle and

cult of celebrity media that he is the center of the world, so much so that he

manipulates and exploits everyone in his life without a second thought. (179)

This is further highlighted by the dialogue between Victor and Lauren Hynde, his girlfriend’s friend, which exposes his self-centeredness: “‘So you remember me from Camden?’ I ask. ‘Oh yeah,’ she says half-scornfully. ‘I remember you.’ […] ‘You really don’t remember who I am, do you, Victor?’ […] She’s about to turn away when I ask, ‘Am I the same?’” (Ellis 84, my emphasis and italics in original). Victor does not care about who Lauren really is. What he cares for is to know how she finds his looks. It is through their conversation that Victor’s narcissism is fully exposed. What becomes clear here though is that when one is surrounded by commodities this is how one treats those around him.

Victor’s obsession with his own self continues to be evident throughout the novel. He is in love with his body, his Prada and his fancy friends. Anything outside his world does not affect him. When any real issues are mentioned in the novel, Victor chooses to focus on himself: “So many people we vaguely knew died or disappeared the weeks we were there – car accidents,

AIDS, murders, overdoses […] – that the amount for funeral wreaths on Chloe’s Visa was almost Ouzounoglou 37 five thousand dollars. I looked really great” (89, my emphasis). Being a narcissist, Victor does not acknowledge anything else as real but himself. The irony here though is that what he considers real about himself is a mere construct. This makes his condition even more tragic. He continues taking everything and everyone for granted. He assumes that Chloe will never expose his infidelities with the rest of the models and he takes for granted Damien’s support even though he betrays his trust. In his world, he only sees himself. His motto in the novel, “‘The better you look, the more you see’” (56), not only reveals his self-centeredness but also his total blindness towards himself and others. As a result, he loves being at the center of media attention showing how handsome and successful he is. However, everything around him is completely false and fake.

Victor is so addicted to his appearance and self-image that ignores the needs of those around him. Even the financial and emotional support he receives from Chloe does not count for

Victor. Blazer stresses that,

the pathological, schizophrenic narcissist is one who can invest emotional and

sexual energy only in himself, his own ego rather than others in the world: “The

libido that has been withdrawn from the external world has been directed to the

ego and thus gives rise to an attitude which may be called narcissism.” (179)

This explains that contemporary identity focuses on self-love. The subject, as the writer describes, cannot have feelings for others because the market has substituted its human qualities with commodities. Thus, Victor keeps on going due to the narcissistic reality he lives in which has taught him how to manipulate others.3 As the narrative reveals, Victor stays with Chloe until

3 “The conscience of the narcissist is dominated by self-interest. Unlike the sociopath, who is without an internal beacon, without an internalized body of scruples and principles, the narcissist does indeed have a conscience, but it is a flexible conscience. He sincerely believes himself to be highly principled and scrupulous, but can change positions and commitments rapidly as ‘circumstances change’” (Post 104). Ouzounoglou 38 he feels competent to stand on his own feet. Victor Ward would not exist if it had not been for

Chloe Byrnes whose public image gives Victor the opportunity to become famous as well. In other words, the energy of those around him becomes for Victor his survival mechanism.

However, Victor’s self-centeredness is not fulfilled; he always asks for more and he does not hesitate to ignore the people who have really supported him. Victor rejects Chloe’s real problems of alcoholism and drug addiction, criticizing them as human flaws that distance her from the fashion world and place her back into the world of normality. As Andrew D. Brown notes,

given that mortality, vulnerability, and limitation are existential facts of the human

situation of each individual, no individual can ever in reality attain the ego ideal.

[…] individuals have a need to maintain a positive sense of self, and they engage

in ego-defensive behavior in order to preserve self-esteem. (644-45)

This observation enables us to understand why Chloe’s miseries do not develop Victor’s sensitivity; on the contrary, he tries to keep her problems outside his illusive vision in order to keep his own self-image unharmed. Victor does not listen to Chloe’s problems because her issues do not concern him. As Chloe angrily says in the novel, “‘you don’t care about things that don’t have anything to do with you’” (Ellis 158). Her words demonstrate the shallow personality of her boyfriend who is always interested in his own “I” and not in their “We”.

Victor pretends to love and appreciate his girlfriend whereas it is only his own success that matters for him. In particular, Victor’s pretentiousness becomes visible when he undermines

Chloe’s photographs:

“Yeah, but Madonna dropped those photos and let’s just say thank you to that and

there’s a major difference between my pubic hair […] and your tits, baby. […]” Ouzounoglou 39

[…] “Well, I didn’t do Playgirl.” “Congratulations. But that wasn’t for me. That

was because of your father. Don’t pretend.” (37, italics in original)

When the modeled image breaks down, the masculine ego takes over. Even in this case, it is

Victor’s dysfunctionality that is further highlighted here. His narcissism and Chloe’s unhealthy appearance highlight the falsity of his own self as well as the constructedness of the media- powered world that envelopes him. The reproduction of his image has transformed Victor into an egotistic personality. As he confesses proudly to the MTV reporter, “‘success is loving yourself’”

(141). What this means is that Victor’s world is that of the lonely narcissist. People do not have others to love them. The consumerist lifestyle has taught the individual to love its own self. But even in this case, this is not a sign of self-love since what Victor loves is the mere image of his non-existent self.

From the shallowness of external appearances readers move in the second half of the novel to the total disappearance of any sense of reality since they follow now the actions of

Victor’s duplicate. The novel now transfers readers from the fashion show runways to a film stage. The section that follows focuses on the development of an inset film narrative in an attempt to comment on the destabilization of the main story so as to enhance the novel’s insistence on the superficiality and hollowness of contemporary reality. The next part explains what happens when the individual image gets lost into the chaotic process of filmic representation and the subject is pushed to confront its own technologically-generated duplicity, as this will be explained next.

1.2 Reading a Novel Or Watching a Movie?

After demonstrating the feigned world of modeling manners, Ellis tackles the various realities the novel can construct. So far we have seen the world of the spectacle transforming

Victor Ward into a commodity, a brand name, a fragmented image. Now we come to examine Ouzounoglou 40 how Ellis’s narrative intensifies this effect from a filmic point of view. Throughout reading the novel, we realize suddenly that another medium intervenes. In parts two to six of Glamorama, a film narrative becomes part of Ellis’s main plot. This is achieved mainly through the use of a cinematic writing style where Ellis resorts to specific movie effects, such as cues, soundtrack, montage, captured images, props, flashbacks in order to reinforce the visual language of his narrative. Ellis introduces this way of writing so as to reflect on the blankness, emptiness and dehumanization of postmodern culture. His metafictional devices make readers question the reality the narrative constructs which enhances its postmodern hollowness.

As the novel progresses, Ellis tackles the issue of nested appearances. The world of

Glamorama splits in two stories: the story about fashion and glamor, and the story about a model turning into a film star. While in part one readers are confronted with the glamorous lifestyle of

Glamorama’s fashion models, the remaining parts of the novel present the story of a model implicated with a group of criminals. Ellis follows “the-story-within-the-story” device as a means through which to question the reality Glamorama presents. In part two of the novel, Victor re- emerges as a film actor; now his double plays the role of a young man who tries to find Jamie

Fields, the student he met during his college years in Camden. Hired by an unknown man named

Palakon, Victor views this mission as an opportunity to escape from the distorted reality of his fashion activities. The film story presented in part two interferes with the story of Victor’s glamor and lifestyle presented in part one of the novel. Thus, we deal with the emergence of “a movie of forking paths” (McHale 112) which fuses with the fiction of the main narrative. However, this new narrative intends to distort Victor Ward’s perception of himself, others and the world around him further.

Readers enter the world of the movie with Victor boarding the QE2. Victor’s words make clear to us the relocation of the camera and the protagonist’s transformation into a film actor: Ouzounoglou 41

Occasionally the crew converged and the camera would follow me at a discreet

distance, shots mainly of Victor on the upper-deck starboard railing, trying to light

cigarettes, some rolled with marijuana, sunglasses on, wearing an oversized

Armani leather jacket. I was told to look sad, as if I missed Lauren Hynde, as if I

regretted my treatment of Chloe, as if my world were falling apart. I was

encouraged to try and find Lauren in Miami, where she was staying with

Damien, and I was given the name of a famous hotel, but I feigned seasickness

and those scenes were scrapped since they really weren’t in character anyway.

(Ellis 192-93, my emphasis)

Here, Ellis informs us that his protagonist dwells in a double reality; he lives in the constructed reality of the fictional film and the constructed reality Glamorama itself constructs. He dwells in two fictional plots. Objective reality has totally vanished and Victor constitutes the double version of the filmic narrative. The camera splits Victor in two images; the one which sees the camera of the fictional film crew, and the other which is captured by the camera’s eye. These two images float over the narrative letting us wander in-between the reality of the literary story and the realities the film constructs. Another point here that mixes Glamorama’s primary plot with the filmic versions are the names contained in Ellis’s filmic scenario. Chloe, Lauren and Damien have been removed from Ellis’s primary diegesis and they have become part of the second fictional plot enhancing the distorting effect of the camera in this blending of realities. Our perspective moves from the celebrity lifestyle Victor has been leading up until now and we now watch him performing in accordance to the script the film crew dictates to him. In the secondary fiction that intervenes in Glamorama’s primary plot, Victor is going to meet Felix, the cinematographer, who is supposed to shoot the movie Victor stars in, the Wallaces, the couple that pretends to know Victor’s dad, and Marina Cannon, a model who Victor is supposed to Ouzounoglou 42 follow in Paris. All characters presented above are going to enhance the feel of representation the narrative evokes.

The filmic narrative that part two presents attempts to cover up the script of the primary narrative. In the main narrative we watch many sub-plots shedding light on different facets of the story. First, we view Palakon’s mission to be interrupted by the filmic scenario of a fictional director. Second, Victor meets Marina Cannon, the model who travels with Victor but she seems to have other plans in her mind. After Victor’s meeting with Marina, he meets the Wallace couple that pretends to be his dad’s acquaintances. The scene changes again when Victor decides to change direction and Palakon reappears again. Then Marina disappears suspiciously, Jamie

Fields, Bobby Hughes and other fashion models appear on the film set. Scenes of violence overflow Victor’s narration but he still cannot understand why all this is happening. The sub- plots that Victor experiences on and off the camera get blurred exposing the chaos of representation in Glamorama. The words of the fictional cinematographer Felix come to warn

Victor about the small letters of the script: “‘Haven’t you read the rest of the script?’ […] ‘Don’t you know what’s going to happen to you?’ […] ‘Just be prepared,’ Felix said. ‘You need to be prepared.’ […] ‘You need to pay attention’” (194, italics in original). The warning here prepares readers for the existence of a multi-layered narration, hence a multi-layered perception of reality, as this is presented throughout the novel.

Moreover, Palakon’s insertion in Victor’s reality makes us question the reality of the filmic narrative itself. In part one, Palakon exists only in the filmic scenario. It is only the camera that makes Victor see Palakon as real while Felix confirms that there is not any such character in the script. Victor protests to Felix that “‘the script keeps changing’” (231) and everything he knew as real has now been subverted. Victor seems certain about Palakon; he also seems certain to have met a model named Marina Cannon and he claims to have been in Fashion Café. Ouzounoglou 43

However, Felix’s denial of knowing Palakon makes Victor doubt as he is still not aware of the transformations he is going to experience. He believes that he is in real action; he poses, he follows the cues and he listens to the director. However, like his modeling status presented in part one of Glamorama, Victor’s filmic performance is going to fail too. The filmic scenario in the narrative creates a feeling of blankness since the sub-plots the camera constructs interrupt the filmic flow which intensifies the blurriness the whole story creates.

Non-linear narration constitutes part of the general socio-cultural context to which the novel belongs. Victor continues asking in the novel, “‘What’s the story?’” (220), while the script of the film crew continues to interrupt the script of the main narrative. Palakon’s mission, Felix’s cinematic shots, the invisible couple on the ship’s restaurant, Marina’s disappearance from the ship, the extra pages found on Victor’s bed and Bobby’s cast of models/criminals constitute parts of all the other film scripts that are inserted into the primary story. The constant shifts of the camera from one scenario to the other confuse our vision. First, we watch a guy named Palakon presented in part one paying Victor for a job. Then we watch Victor boarding QE2 and traveling to London to find Jamie Fields. Suddenly, another filmic scenario pops up and interrupts the main narrative again. People appear and disappear on the ship challenging Victor’s vision and the narrative’s cohesion. Victor is close to change his direction but Marina suddenly disappears from the ship and Victor sticks to the plans of Palakon’s version of reality. Although Felix confirms to

Victor that there is no character named Palakon in the script, Palakon reappears in the next chapters challenging Victor’s version of reality. The script is full of plots and sub-plots that blur our reading and understanding of the story. We go back and forth returning to the place we started from. As Brian McHale states in his book Postmodernist Fiction (1987),

recursive structures may raise the specter of a vertiginous infinite regress. Or they

may dupe the reader into mistaking a representation at one narrative level for a Ouzounoglou 44

representation at a lower or (more typically) higher level, producing an effect of

trompe-l’oeil. Or they may be subjected to various transgressions of the logic of

narrative levels, short-circuiting the recursive structure. (114, italics in original)

Thus, we do not really know which plot constitutes the primary diegesis or the final one. Does

Palakon, the unknown man whose plans are not revealed yet to Victor, belong to the main narrative, the filmic one, or none of the two? Are the Wallaces sent by Palakon to watch out

Victor? Are they real actors playing in the movie or fictional secret agents? Why does the director have to re-shoot the couple’s reactions when they hear that Victor is going to change his direction? The production of these questions constitute sub-plots which intend to make readers question the reality of the main narrative. The sub-levels that interrupt the main narrative disorient us and prevent us from realizing that there is no linearity in the novel. Ellis produces all these levels of reality so as to expose the shallowness of contemporary reality. Victor thinks that he acts autonomously into these plots; however, he cannot realize that he is under the surveillance of the camera. The camera’s eye changes the plots and the main narrative, infinitely placing the protagonist in the chaotic reality of representation. Here Ellis wants to depict that contemporary identity is not independent but controlled by others.

But, how do we realize that what we are now reading is a filmic text? How does Victor transform from a fashion model into a tragic movie star? What condemns Glamorama into blankness? Ellis uses the filmic language in the narrative so as to reflect on the illusionary impact of representation. We watch the protagonist talking about the captured actions taken on the ship, the retaken shots, the director’s instructions, the backstage and the setting up of the scenes. Ellis refers ironically to Victor’s spontaneous actions since he acts in accordance to the cues of the fictional film crew. He jokes about how Victor is told to turn around instinctively (Ellis 214) and to “‘laugh heartily’” (215) with the rest of the actors following the director’s cues. Victor’s words Ouzounoglou 45 and moves are all set up by the film crew exposing the superficiality of filmic action. Moreover, the word “‘Action’” (202) is heard in the narrative so as to make us believe in the authenticity of the film. However, it further reinforces the superficiality of the story the camera records. We are not supposed to view any real action in this plot or in any of the sub-plots but we only need to believe in it.

Characteristic is also the scene with the table and the camera creating the illusion of an office space: “The crew directs me to Security but because there’s not really such an office on board, this scene is shot near the library at a table meant to simulate an office” (226). The camera makes us believe the blankness of Victor’s actions when looking for Marina in the fake security office. The camera distorts our vision by projecting images of a constructed reality. We are made then to believe in the simulated effect created viewing the table as part of a real office. Here attention is paid to the power the camera has to manipulate perception and present things differently. Clarence John Laughlin in his article “The Camera’s Methods of Approaching

Reality” writes that “the camera can make ‘real’ things look ‘unreal’; it can reverse what is usually called reality–although most people might not believe this, since it violates one of their established prepossessions about the camera” (301), which is that it records what it sees. In the case of Ellis’s novel, this intensifies the unreliability of everything that takes place in the novel.

However, it is the insertion of the filmic narrative that overthrows any sense of stability by blurring any kind of distinction that existed until this point in the narrative for what is real or mediated.

In addition to the filmic experience, it is the soundtrack, montage and flashback that reinforce the artificiality of the narrative. The sense of freedom the narrative conveys, as presented in the novel, is far from realistic since it is constructed on the basis of what the fashion or media industry dictates. Victor is never free in Ellis’s story; first, his reactions are cued by the Ouzounoglou 46 fashion world as evidenced in part one of Glamorama, and then by the cinematic script. Victor is always defined by someone or something else; by Bobby, the model who implicates Victor to suspicious agendas, Palakon, and the camera. Although Victor’s vision is blurred, the viewers are able to view Victor’s past and judge his actions through the use of close-up shots. The camera close-ups on Victor’s face, manners and actions before and after the fashion models’ attacks enhance his feelings and affect the way the readers perceive him. In his book Anatomy of Film

(1998), Bernard F. Dick argues that the close-up shots, “[…] are such an extreme form of emphasis that a preponderance of them is like the speech pattern of someone who gives equal emphasis to every word, including a and the” (38, italics in original). This underlines Ellis’s effort to present Victor’s hallucinatory reality as real. As Dick explains, Ellis uses the close-up shots so as to record Victor’s despair in order to create a sense of ambiguity in the novel, while

Victor’s sentiments and vacuousness seem to clash. The viewers are confused by Victor’s visual duplicity.

Actually, Victor’s exaggerated visual representation decentralizes the viewers’ focus from the narrative: “a shot of me on a train, […] A shot of Victor forcing a smile, looking down, a subtle refusal, a small movement of the head, a gesture that says I’m not interested” (Ellis 318).

The different angles the camera records of Victor’s image distort the readers’ perception. We are not aware if Victor’s shots come from the filmic narrative or the main one. We are totally distanced from Victor’s real image since we are accustomed to taking as real the images the camera constructs of him. These shots create the illusion that we see the real Victor, while what we are only familiar with is his artificial image.

The language of the filmic narrative is further enhanced by the use of montage in the novel. Ellis’s short film montages superimpose over the primary scenario of Victor’s glamorous lifestyle. This device is used by Ellis to inform his readers/viewers about the various Ouzounoglou 47 developments and transformations his narrative undergoes. In a few lines, we view Victor detach himself from objective reality and live in the reality the film camera constructs. We see Victor

“walking by the Gap” and “having a drink at a brasserie on Rue Saint-Antoine, playing with his

Ray-Bans” (319). We also view Jamie and Victor in another montage “walking along Quai de la

Tournelle” (322). Although the montage device speeds up Ellis’s narration, the version of reality that is projected cannot be trusted. The montage creates a distance between the readers and the protagonist since the character they see is a mere reflection. Moreover, we are not really aware of the time and space these montages respond to. For example, has the scene with Jamie and Victor been shot once or more by the film crew? Dick suggests that “in a montage sequence, the shots are arranged so that they follow each other in rapid succession, telescoping an event or several events of some duration into a couple of seconds of screen time” (63). Therefore, screen time does not correspond to real time. The montages show that Victor’s action transforms into what the camera wants to depict. This results in the projection of a constructed version of events that disorient Victor’s identity and coerce him and the readers to a specific aspect of reality.

As for the soundtrack hearing of the “ABBA’s ‘Voulez-Vous’” (303), it comes to fill in the gaps of Victor’s mediated narrative. Ellis uses music to authenticate the filmic representation of his story by mixing vision with sound. Geoff King argues that “sound plays an important role in this process of construction, also functioning both to increase the continuity effect and to establish the modality as that of the real/authentic” (53). The sound, as the writer describes, empowers the images the narrative constructs. The filmic reality the protagonist lives in becomes more authentic when the music starts playing. The scenes of the film are set up naturally and the readers/viewers believe in what they view. However, these sounds that pop up in the narrative blur the reality of the film as they tell their own story that interrupts the main narrative. As Stan

Link highlights in his essay “Nor the Eye Filled with Seeing: The Sound of Vision in Film,” Ouzounoglou 48

“each image is accompanied by diegetic sounds enhanced well beyond any natural acoustic projection or the acuity of embodied hearing. Their hyperamplification suggests essentially zero distance from their visual sources” (80). This citation comments on the collision of sound and image which enhances the collision of vision and hearing. As a result, the visual/acoustic scenes in Glamorama blur reality with illusion which is enhanced by the confusion the simultaneous activation of various senses creates. As a result, we are deceived by the sound Ellis uses in his narrative, while it makes us believe in its authenticity. The cinematic techniques described above reinforce one of Ellis’s main arguments: media representation influences individual vision.

The filmic sequence in Ellis’s Glamorama is also enhanced by the line repeated throughout, “I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND I KNOW WHAT YOU SAID” (Ellis

120) which disturbs the reality effect of the story. Whereas in the first part of Glamorama the readers have the premonition that something dominates the primary story but they cannot really see it unfolding, in the following parts their suspicions are confirmed. The threatening voice which inserts into the script interrupts or alters its progress. We do not really know where this voice comes from. Although it increases the viewers’ suspense, this voice distorts their understanding of the narrative. Being caught in-between the reality of the film and the reality of the novel, readers are exposed to Victor’s visual and hearing hallucinations. The readers are lost inside the narrator’s images/worlds that prevent them from separating fact from fiction. Victor’s vacuous character obstructs them from realistically experiencing what he talks about in the film.

Victor’s filmic representations produce a blurry effect as everything is viewed via something else, either this is the camera or Victor Ward’s double. Considering David Schmid’s point of view,

[…] the reader is given the task of choosing from a range of possible

interpretations, all of which come with their own set of consequences, and all of Ouzounoglou 49

which are thoroughly mediatized, that is, contaminated by the possibility that they

have been manipulated […] by media technologies and are therefore not true by

any conventional standard. (79)

Thus, we are to draw our own conclusions since what Victor Ward does (or he does not) is a consequence of his hallucinatory experiences. Through Victor’s illusionary projections, Ellis shows that there is not only one version of reality. Glamorama seems to present reality either in sequences or fractions. So its representation does not deal with one and only reality but multiple reflection(s) of it. Ellis explains the duplicity of representation which decentralizes the self and strips off the novel from any sense of objectivity.

In the last parts of Glamorama, the multiple realities triggered create a quasi-realistic world that renders the narrative in the novel ambiguous and blurry. In the narrative, Victor trusts

Palakon and the rest of Glamorama characters until he finds out that he lives into their own realities. Palakon betrays Victor’s trust at the end while he plays a double role in the narrative.

Bobby who was praised by Victor as a super-model in the beginning, he is now exposed to be someone else. In the narrative, Victor realizes that he lives in the distorted realities of the rest of the characters. All characters have their own reason. That is why, the sense of reality that the narrative produces is never stable or valid. At this point, characteristic is Jamie’s role in the final parts of the narrative where she appears to play different roles too. Baelo-Allué remarks that,

Jamie is a double, or rather, triple agent working against Bobby, which is why she

had to work for him. She works for the group Marina worked for and for Bobby’s

and for Palakon’s. Jamie explains that people are not what they seem and that

Lauren Hynde wasn’t Lauren, since the real Lauren died in December 1985 in a

car accident. (169) Ouzounoglou 50

What becomes evident here is that the narrative works on many reality levels. All characters in

Glamorama tell different stories that constantly affect or modify its reality. For example, how can

Jamie be a double or a triple agent while Palakon and Bobby have been working together? Their actions appear to collide confusing thus the readers. We are not certain about the reality this narrative exposes since it is split into multiple fractions. This further highlights the fragmentation and superficiality of the whole narrative. McHale marks in Postmodernist Fiction, that

[…] for soliciting the reader’s involvement in “unreal,” hypodiegetic worlds, there

are other devices designed to encourage him or her to mistake nested

representations for “realities.” Among the simplest is the device of the missing

end-frame: dropping down to an embedded narrative level without returning to the

primary diegesis at the end. (117)

This focuses on the lack of resolution in the main narrative since the sub-plots that intervene in the primary one keep on generating further plots. As the writer explains above, Victor has been lost into representation. Although Victor appears to be the dominant narrator in the story, he is actually trapped into the hyperreality of the narrative and his double. The abrupt ending, distorted images and false omniscience that we get in Glamorama explain the constructed ambiguity Ellis brings forth with his novel. The narrative’s own indeterminacy depicts the hallucinatory reality of a media-oriented culture.

Victor has allowed the media to affect his existence and drive him to complete paranoia.

It is difficult, however, for readers to distinguish which scenario is the real one, which reality is invisible or visible. This constant exposure of the readers to mixed reality planes and the superimposition of one script onto another enhances Ellis’s depiction of a distorted reality. For

Ellis this creates a particular narrative effect as multiple layers of reality create a multi- perspectival effect. Ellis presents the individual as a deconstructed identity which is obsessed Ouzounoglou 51 with the false idols and manners the media promote. The process of representation dominates the text blurring the novel’s multiple narrative realities. Ellis’s novel attacks the media construction of multiple realities which push the individual to total chaos and confusion. In the 1990s, the consumerist society has turned the body into a visual cue. Alan Bilton marks that, “we no longer possess any kind of inner core […], but rather [we] are simply a nexus for all the thoughts, words and feelings existing out there in culture […]” (8). Thus, Ellis’s depiction of visual culture reveals the destabilization of the internal self. Victor has exchanged his real existence with artificial superficiality. He concentrates on the projection of false images and false role models which produce false self-images.

Victor together with the readers enters a hyperreal world. The changes of Victor’s voice from third person to first person and vice versa enhance the multi-layering effect that Ellis resorts to so as it further blurs the story. Through his character’s experiences, as presented throughout

Glamorama, Ellis reflects on the unstable reality of contemporary living. The narrative undermines Victor’s credibility. In this way, Ellis by intersecting different versions of reality shows that reality is not one- but multi-dimensional. In particular, Victor’s self is fragmented by the intervention of fictional plots that cover up, multiply, and hence, distort his actions. This does not lead to a clear resolution, leaving the whole novel in a state of flux.

The mediated process of the novel/film has identified Victor’s subjectivity with Victor’s objectivity; absorbing the objects’ value and imitating copiously a media-generated lifestyle,

Victor has become a copy of a copy. This is exactly what characterizes Ellis’s postmodern reality, as presented in his novel. According to Bilton, “postmodernism tells us that ours is the age of the sequel, the remake, the copy, preoccupied with a kind of manic recycling and rebranding, desperately trying to disguise the fact that notions of originality or authenticity have been used up” (1). In other words, people have become obsessed with other peoples’ lives, manners and Ouzounoglou 52 professions losing, as a result, their own sense of self. The devices Ellis resorts to in Glamorama signal an interesting shift from tangible to image-driven reality. Ellis’s scenarios popping up from other scripts further highlight the hybridization of literary expression as part of postmodern shallowness. The next chapter approaches the representation of contemporary identity from a different perspective. While Victor Ward has troubled us with his untrustworthy image, Connor

McKnight in Jay McInerney’s novel encourages readers to believe in the power of representation, as will be explored next.

Ouzounoglou 53

CHAPTER TWO

Revisiting Reality in Jay McInerney’s Model Behaviour (1998)

Ideology only corresponds to a corruption of reality through signs; simulation corresponds to a

short circuit of reality and to its duplication through signs. It is always the goal of the ideological

analysis to restore the objective process, it is always a false problem to wish to restore the truth

beneath the simulacrum.

―Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

In the age of pseudo-events it is less the artificial simplification than the artificial complication of

experience that confuses us. Whenever in the public mind a pseudo-event competes for attention

with a spontaneous event in the same field, the pseudo-event will tend to dominate. What

happens on television will overshadow what happens off television.

―Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image or What Happened to the American Dream (1962)

2. Introduction

Following up from Chapter One, Jay McInerney’s novel Model Behaviour (1998) emphasizes the transformation of identity into a superficial and illusive marker. McInerney’s concentration on the deceptiveness of fashion life and culture exposes the distorted reality of materialism and consumption. He talks about the media constructedness of the fashion industry and the way commodities affect human perspective and attitude to life and others. This novel describes a materialistic world full of insecure males and females who have paid much more attention to the possession of things than to their relationships with others. McInerney presents different groups of people which are all trapped into the hallucinations the fashion-driven reality Ouzounoglou 54 creates. We watch models turning into actors, journalists turning into screenwriters, models turning into dance strippers, and literary characters into film protagonists. They all end up playing double roles without realizing that doubleness distorts their perception of reality. The approach of McInerney’s male protagonist to female issues turns the readers’ attention to a series of age-old matters, such as individual objectification and quest of the real self. It is the contemporary society’s addiction to commodities, as exposed in the novel, that challenges the authenticity of the surrounding world. The writer’s attention to the protagonist’s involvement with supermodels, magazine article writing and screenplays highlights 1990s obsession with image reconstruction, consumerism, and mediated reality.

McInerney’s novel is about Connor McKnight, a thirty-two-year old celebrity writer, who dates Philomena, a famous fashion model. He works for a fashion magazine, Ciao Bella, interviewing celebrities. Connor worries that his model girlfriend is having other affairs and that her sudden business trip is an excuse for breaking up with him. Actually, he manages to expose her infidelities and it is in the end of the narrative that Philomena abandons Connor.

The main characters around which Model Behaviour revolves are young people who have lost their orientation in life. They are all insecure due to their reliance on fake appearances. The hypocrisy and cynicism that the fashion industry generates in McInerney’s novel do not make

Connor and the rest of the characters real. They are all caught into the process of reproducibility which has consumed their identity. They have lost any sense of trust to one another. Connor’s identity is caught up between reality and fantasy. He often takes the role-models media construct as real. He indulges in hedonistic lifestyles which offer him a false sense of fulfillment; he takes drugs, drinks alcohol, and is sexually promiscuous. Unlike Bret Easton Ellis’s male protagonist,

McInerney’s Connor McKnight is intentionally reckless proving thus the superficiality of the celebrity world he inhabits. In this world everything is permitted since everything can be Ouzounoglou 55 constructed in the way one wants. Model Behaviour concentrates on what is hidden behind images in an attempt to bring on the surface human hollowness. McInerney’s writing style manages to expose the embarrassments and idealizations of fashion behavior and lifestyle, while condemning the dangers inherent in such a world. He wishes to expose the depthlessness and decadence of a world governed by its own images. This is why, Connor McKnight, the main male character in the novel, faces various dilemmas in his effort to come to terms with the inner traumas superficial reality creates.

Towards the end of the narrative readers are confronted with a romantic film script. This works as an illusive scenario that further highlights the characters’ emptiness and superficiality.

Connor is surrounded by images; in particular, he lives into images. He is obsessed with his own fantasies so he fails to see the tricks these play on him. As a result, readers become mere viewers of Connor’s and Philomena’s filmed version of reality. Philomena’s mirror images, Connor’s emails to his missing girlfriend, his nightmares about Philomena’s infidelities, his fears of his sister’s, Brooke’s, suicidal attempts and his dream of revenging Chip Ralston’s snobbish celebrity behavior, signal the transition to a screened version of the narrative.

Connor cannot distinguish the difference between real and unreal. His fantasies reveal his alienation and total dehumanization when he visualizes in the film script inherent in the narrative the happy ending of his cinematic alter ego with his unfaithful girlfriend. This pushes him however to a double position; he wants his girlfriend as well as his real life back. When he realizes that reality and fantasy cannot coexist, he breaks down. What McInerney attempts to do here is expose the falsity of an image-driven world through his two-tier narrative. In his narrative world, one finds supermodels, idols and multiple story-lines so as to connect what is visible with what remains unseen, what is superficial with what stays hidden. Connor, the narrator, cannot distinguish Philomena’s image from her real one. Readers view their troubled relationship and his Ouzounoglou 56 implication with the hidden realities of her fashion activities as well. The various roles he adopts, that of the magazine writer, abandoned boyfriend and celebrity, and the groups he moves through, the writers, the fans, the magazine employers, the designers and the screenwriters, serve as sub-plots in the primary narrative mixing up the protagonist’s real image with the image of his cinematic self. This also blurs the way Connor views Philomena either as a celebrity, unfaithful girlfriend, domestic wife or sexual object. This reveals his confusion with either accepting

Philomena’s public image as real or just as unreal. The film version of the narrative enhances the constructedness of the main story line and vice versa.

Unlike Ellis’s Glamorama, as presented in Chapter One of this project, McInerney is not happy with Connor’s obsessions. Unlike Ellis who subjects Victor Ward to an endless self-quest,

McInerney in Model Behaviour hears his protagonist doubting himself. McInerney explains how effectively this novel captures all various shades of its contemporary reality by adopting a three- dimensional point of view narrative. In his online review of the novel, Mark Lindquist underlines:

I predict that 40 or 50 years from now, when most of the critics’ current favorites

are forgotten, McInerney will be enjoying a posthumous comeback and “Model

Behavior” will be a popular computer disk, particularly among college students.

McInerney will be read in the future for his humanistic understanding and

rendering of the buzz of our era. (1)

McInerney’s quest, as this online review describes, will be well-known to future generations since his method of alternative narrations in the novel demonstrates the hollowness of a media- dominated world. McInerney enlightens and tricks his readers as he moves them to the position of the narrator and then to the position of the filmic spectator. This contributes to the fast pace of Ouzounoglou 57 his scenes which also increases the fuzziness between the various planes of reality each one constructs.

Considering this, McInerney’s narrative is constantly reshaped. Nothing is fixed or tangible. Just like Connor is duped by the false world of celebrity success and comes out of this process completely changed, so are the viewers taken in by the title of the novel – Model

Behaviour – finally realizing the falsity of appearances. The effectiveness of the novel lies in the destabilization of perception and superficiality of what is visible. The media have come to dominate, shatter and re-construct reality. The novel concentrates on the fluidity and contingency of external reality by breaking it down to multiple other versions which also affects the way individuals perceive themselves and others. McInerney’s examination of media power starts with the exploitation of youth which will be explored next.

2.1 Media Dominance and Youth Entrapment

From the very beginning in Model Behaviour, McInerney concentrates on the double image of the celebrity and the idealization of false manners as well as the connection that there is between fashion models and advertising. The bombardment of viewers with TV messages and falsified images places people at the center of a chaotic economic system that exploits human consciousness and equates the individual body with commodities. People are easily taken in by advertising companies which only care about the promotion of their commodities and the exploitation of the consumer. Everything turns into a label with a monetary value. Human relationships turn into commercial deals as well. It is into this consuming reality of images and products that youth has to battle against the fashion misconceptions that entrap it into a pointless existence. This process has put extra pressure on young people who, although they appear to be autonomous, are still pressurized by oppressive mentalities. The way femininity and masculinity Ouzounoglou 58 is tackled in the novel raises a number of questions as to the integrity of the individual. Through

Connor and Philomena McInerney approaches femininity and masculinity from a consumerist perspective. Connor in the novel represents on the one hand the model of the young writer, the intellectual, who is undervalued in the world of the spectacle; Philomena on the other hand stands up as the female model whose fashion status is praised and envied by all.

The first issue that McInerney deals with in Model Behaviour is fake appearances.

Connor’s reality is distorted by the superficial lifestyles and manners of the fashion industry and he treats others like commodities. The modeling status of Philomena has made Connor view her as the ideal female figure. Their relationship is non-realistic since Connor fantasizes his girlfriend to be the perfect female. Her mediated beauty makes others view her as a mere happy image.

However, her words, “‘I’m sick of all this pointless glamour’ […] ‘I want the simple life’”

(McInerney 2), reveal in the narrative a kind of emotional emptiness. The success and fame her advertised image has secured for her cannot ensure her self-fulfillment and happiness. As Connor narrates in the novel, it was the advertised image of Philomena that blurred his vision making him view her as a fulfilled female: “While she has been waiting for the big question, he is waiting to be worthy of such an honor; he does not believe that anyone, let alone Philomena, could really want to hitch her shining carriage to his lame gelding” (9). These lines suggest the superficiality of the consumerist system which falsely presents models as happy figures. Philomena’s advertised image distorts Connor’s perception. He cannot realize that the modeling status of his girlfriend does not fulfill her.

The narrative is full of fake appearances and manners exposing the shallowness of contemporary lifestyles and reality. Through Philomena’s advertised image, McInerney shows what happens when one is constantly subjected to or exposed to public opinion. The way fashion models are treated in the novel expose the commercialization of female identity: “Philomena Ouzounoglou 59

Briggs, born Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 13 July 1971. Height: 5' 10''. Hair: auburn. Dress size:

4. Shoe size: 8. Measurements: 34– 24– 34” (54). What becomes apparent in this line is the transformation of the fashion model into a commodity. Philomena is not treated as an individual but as an object which fulfills the purposes of a profit-driven market. Her natural features are treated as raw data of information which expose the hollowness of the consumerist system. As

Connor explains, they depict fashion artificiality which is responsible for the construction of a hallucinatory reality for the individual:

The above data come from her composite, the photo-illustrated business card

distributed by Phil’s modeling agency, and in fact is not raw at all but cooked to a

turn. The actual birth date is 1969. The place of birth was a town too small to

show up on any map. The measurements are obviously suspect. And the last time I

bought her a dress I had to return the 4 to Barney’s and get the 6. (54)

As these lines indicate, Philomena becomes the role model via which the media connect with the public. The construction of her image is what is going to secure the effective promotion of commodities to the public. Advertisements have recreated Philomena’s identity by creating a double image and a double existence for her. Philomena has no real self any more. She is an empty spectacle. Her depthless image is media constructed to expose its beauty so as to arouse viewers’ enthusiasm for the eventual promotion of the product. McInerney depicts here how the advertising system has undervalued human existence and condemned it to mere surface. This has created a substanceless image whose power rests upon the power of the screen. Philomena’s framed image creates confusion as to the number of roles the individual is called to play – the public and the private, the real and the constructed – which creates a confusion as to the kind of person she is. The narrator calls his readers to reconsider the image-driven reality they live in as it rests on individual exploitation by trading humanity and individuality with materialism. Ouzounoglou 60

In the narrative, Connor’s job to interview celebrities exposes the falseness of the fashion system which produces fake images: “‘Physically he resembles a human being – in fact he often plays one – but he’s a nasty little shit with lifts in his shoes and a silicone-enhanced ego’” (28, italics in original). Here Connor refers to Chip Ralston, a movie star, who is self-centered and rejects Connor’s calls to arrange for his interview. Connor’s job is to construct Chip’s and other celebrities’ profile in order to promote them to the public as ideal. He emphasizes the double image of these icons that fashion constructs for sales purposes only. The fashion system has made viewers care only for external appearances. They do not see Chip’s real self due to his celebrity disguise. The media manipulate truth and present reality differently. Connor’s following words focus on the celebrity constructedness and the blurring reality the market imposes on viewers:

“I’m always amused when someone asks me about some actor I have interviewed: ‘What’s he really like?’ To which the only honest response is ‘What’s he like? He’s an actor, for Christ’s sake’” (25, italics in original). Through Connor’s ironic remarks, the pretentiousness of the media-generated culture is exposed.

This also becomes evident in the way models behave, as Connor’s words reveal:

Sometimes Phil would become friendly with another model; they would spring up

like daffodils in our lives, briefly, their long legs sheathed in ripped jeans, long

arms around their dark Euroboys … dinners at Raoul’s and B Bar … Bonsoir,

there’s Linda and Kyle… How was Milan? So sad about Richard and Cindy. […]

Generally these acquaintanceships would trail off, or end badly. “Whatever

happened to Veronica,” Connor would ask, only to be told that she turned out to

be a real bitch. Not that he missed these brilliant nights as the dimbulb boyfriend,

the awkward beauty accessory, the anonymous companion. So nice to have met

you, Collin. … What is it you do, Cullen? You must be very proud of Philomena, Ouzounoglou 61

Curran…. What do you write, Kiran? Of course, you must know Court?

(McInerney 87-88, italics in original)

These lines describe a world of false manners and appearances; everybody pretends to know everyone. Fashion models, as shown in the example above, hide their true emotions when they find themselves in the company of other models. They pretend to be polite and sincere. This is the image they project in certain occasions, as in VIP parties, so as to deceive the public for their true super-qualities. However, they are all competitive, mean and egocentric. What they see is total blankness. In Connor’s case, this is exactly what he experiences. In his girlfriend’s fashion world, he always stays invisible because he does not adopt its modeling standards. The italicized words used in the excerpt above emphasize the snobbish behavior of the fashion models who consider themselves superior than others. Connor is the only real person between these models but he is non-existent. Philomena’s star quality places her in a leading and controlling position in relation to Connor’s, since she is the one who supports him socially. As a result, it is the fashion body that overrules personality. Jean Baudrillard’s point in his book The Consumer Society is that

the body as instituted by modern mythology is no more material than the soul.

Like the soul, it is an idea or, rather […] it is a hypostasized part-object, a double-

privileged and invested as such. It has become […] the privileged substrate of

objectivization – the guiding myth of an ethic of consumption. (136, italics in

original)

This reflects on the elevation of the body to a dominant sign in a system of consumptive objects.

In Connor’s and Philomena’s case, the external overrules the internal. Thus, Connor’s personality is undermined since it cannot be exchanged and sold.

Moreover, the fan’s email Connor gets exposes the falsity of media-assisted communication. Connor serves the fashion magazine Ciao Bella by telling others what to look Ouzounoglou 62 like. The reality fashion magazines construct lures consumers to believe in false qualities and manufactured ideals. The enthusiasm raised by Connor’s female fan makes readers reconsider the role-models fashion projects as real:

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: A Fan!

Dear Connor:

[…]

My actual name is Jennifer Rodriguez but I’m thinking about changing it. […] But

first before you start thinking who is this crazy grrrl and why is she emailing me

let me just say I am a HUGE FAN! (That doesn’t mean I’m FAT on the contrary

I’m quite slim!) […] I especially loved your interview last month on Jennifer

Lopez, not just because we share the same first name and are both Latinas […] I

really felt like you got inside her head. Anyway it must be really cool getting to

meet so many interesting stars and celebs and spending “quality time” with them.

[…] I’m still waiting for my big break it seems like its all about “who you know”

and “connexions” instead of natural born talent. (McInerney 48-50)

This email reveals the hallucinatory reality media construct for the consumers. Media bombard them with false images that usually cover up other important issues. Like Connor’s fictional fan, people want to change themselves into the models media project as real. These lines reflect on the multiple roles the individual is forced to adopt nowadays. Consumers live in constructed realities that fragment their real sense of self. Characteristic are also the email addresses Connor and his fan use so as to communicate and exchange their viewpoints. Connor uses the email name Ouzounoglou 63

Scribbler while Jennifer Rodriguez, his fan, the email name Jenrod. This exposes the falsity and pretentiousness of their email exchange.

It is through Pallas, the strip dancer, that McInerney further highlights this point of ineffective communication between individuals due to false appearances:

“Did you know that until relatively recently, historically speaking, actors were

viewed as occupying a lower position on the great chain of being than, say,

tapeworms or silverfish? They were viewed – and this is pretty hard to dispute

when you think about it – as pretenders, poseurs, dissemblers; their moral

character therefore highly suspect. I mean how to explain this fucking

international epidemic of thinking that people who are paid to simulate real life

on-screen are somehow more real than the rest of us. We’re suffering from a mass

hysteria, an epidemic of surrogacy, vicariously living the lives of Pamela

Anderson and Charlie Sheen.” (110-11, italics in original)

Actors and celebrities, as these lines suggest, have been entrapped by their own mediated images since what the market is after is to lure consumers to imitate them. Through Pallas, McInerney touches upon the side-effects of a consumerist-driven lifestyle which leads to alienation and loss of meaningful communication.

McInerney takes this whole argument a step further in the intimate scene played between

Connor and Jillian, his boss. Although Jillian knows Connor’s girlfriend, she is still trying to seduce him. When she finds out that there is a chance of Connor breaking up with his girlfriend she is no longer interested in him: “‘I didn’t realize you were unattached.’ ‘Is that … a problem?’

[…] ‘If your girlfriend comes back, you can consider my offer open. And if she doesn’t, well …

I’m sorry.’ […] ‘Next time you’re shopping for steady companionship, I would advise you to avoid the narcissistic professions’” (129). In the world McInerney portrays, it is one-night stand Ouzounoglou 64 affairs which are fashionable while romance is considered to be outdated. The showbiz lifestyle that McInerney exposes in his story relies on instant pleasure and gratification that makes the word commitment sound old fashioned.

The consumerist lifestyle seems to have affected Connor himself via its falseness.

Connor’s job and relationship have taught him to criticize others via appearances. Brooke’s outburst towards Connor’s laughing comments on Doug, Brooke’s doctor and friend, come to expose her brother’s cynicism:

“You’re always pissing and moaning about the fashionable people you claim

you’re forced to associate with,” she says in an even, uninflected tone, still staring

at the TV. “But I’m afraid you’ve become one of them.” […] “You make fun of

him because he’s not cool, because he doesn’t have an ego that sticks out six feet

in front of him like an erection when he walks down the street.” “I hate like hell to

say it, but right now Doug’s a better person than you are, Connor.” (180)

These lines highlight the influence the fashion world has exerted on Connor who criticizes Doug for his looks. The male protagonist undermines Doug’s status by calling him “Mad Dog” (14,

180) because he does not project the same star qualities as the fashion models Connor goes out with. Doug is not superficial as Brooke protests. He is honest and shows compassion to his dying patients. Unlike Connor, Doug is real while he remains detached from the hollowness of fashion glamor.

Another significant issue that McInerney comments on in the narrative is media manipulation. Connor’s words highlight Philomena’s ambivalent and problematic sense of self:

“When Philomena looks in the mirror she sees a creature fat and unattractive. This despite the fact that she is a woman whose photographic image is expensively employed to arouse desire in conjunction with certain consumer goods” (1). Philomena’s advertising image highlights her Ouzounoglou 65 transformation into a product so as to promote certain media-driven values, messages and ideas.

Thus, the individual gets attached to the object’s value. This brings to mind another comment from Baudrillard’s The Consumer Society where he says,

it’s not, then, its contents, its modes of distribution or its manifest (economic and

psychological) objectives which give advertising its mass communication

function; it’s not its volume, or its real audience […] but its very logic as an

autonomized medium, i.e. as an object referring not to real objects, not to a real

world or a referential dimension, but from one sign to the other, from one object

to the other, from one consumer to the other. (125, italics in original)

This refers to the reproducibility of the individual via advertising. Advertising, as Baudrillard explains, never ends since it transforms the individual into other images, leading the self to its own fragmentation. What the individual achieves is a mechanized sense of autonomy. In this case, Philomena is transformed into a desirable image and object. Advertising manipulates her image and blurs her vision.

In the novel, Connor views his girlfriend from two perspectives; the real and the constructed one. Even when they are intimate, Connor fantasizes that she is a different person.

This happens because Philomena’s ordinariness cannot fulfill their intimate relations. As Brooke explains to Connor, “‘[…] it’s like a stereoscope, one of those old optical devices, where you view photographs of the same object from two slightly different points of view, your two eyes putting together the images to create the illusion of depth’” (McInerney 103). In other words,

Connor creates a fantasy image about Philomena so as to fulfill his physical needs by imagining her as a super-lover. Philomena acts in Connor’s imagination as two different objects, that of the domestic and the sexual one. Baudrillard stresses in his book The Consumer Society that Ouzounoglou 66

[…] the current structures of production/consumption induce in the subject a dual

practice, linked to a split (but profoundly interdependent) representation of his/her

own body: the representation of the body as capital and as fetish (or consumer

object). In both cases, it is important that, far from the body being denied or left

out of account, there is deliberate investment in it (in the two senses, economic and

psychical, of the term). (129, emphasis and italics in original)

This explains that the consumerist system has blurred individual perception. Connor, as

Baudrillard suggests, has been led to view his girlfriend in a twofold fashion. He uses Philomena both as a subject and an object, since he transforms her image in accordance to his own needs and desires. His vision is split between the ordinary/real image of Philomena and her popularized one.

As quoted above, Baudrillard says that the dominance of a production/consumption system has turned the individual into a mechanized subject which is interested only in the satisfaction of its own desires. In order to fulfill these desires it imposes its perception of things on other subjects.

That is why we see Connor inhabiting an illusionary world within which he is free to fulfill every possible desire. However, his hallucinations come to distort his sense of reality which hence affects the way he expresses his feelings towards his girlfriend. In this case, even the love emotions he experiences are manufactured. The superficiality that surrounds the characters in

McInerney’s novel controls their senses and blurs their sense of reality. Connor’s fragmentation becomes even more evident when his commodified lifestyle finally results in losing his girlfriend.

Media manipulation is further enhanced in the novel when Jillian talks about the magazine’s fashion morality. Their magazine is not interested in revealing personal information about its reporters although she knows that such news would bring great sales to the magazine.

However, the question Connor poses to his employer reveals one of the main strategies the magazine resorts to, that of manipulation of its readers: “‘Is that the stance where we try to Ouzounoglou 67 convince young women to obsess about their appearance and weight while spending thousands of dollars on the clothing manufactured by our advertisers?’” (McInerney 124). Connor talks about the consumerist lifestyle that the fashion magazines project as real. He attacks advertising which manipulates consumers’ desires and weaknesses. He refers to the mediated messages that fashion magazines project to the readers as real so as to sell particular products to them. Consumers, as

Connor says, experience a media-controlled autonomy via advertising. Pramod K. Nayar in his book Seeing Stars: Spectacle, Society and Celebrity Culture (2009) suggests that,

the media sells us a personality to consume, but it sells us what we want to

consume. It channelises our abstract desire and focuses on the celebrity’s wealth,

looks and power as worth envying, striving for and fantasising about. They give a

shape to the audience’s amorphous desires, making her or him say, “this is

what/who I want to be.” (10, italics in original)

Therefore, the consumers believe to be autonomous but actually they become pawns of a consumerist lifestyle. Advertising constructs a false sense of reality leading consumers to finally consume or efface their real self.

Certainly, the problems individuals face reflect on their family relations. This is a subject

McInerney tackles in his novel. By paying attention to the characters’ family relations, he sheds light on family dissolution as this results from the falsity of contemporary reality. Connor’s lack of commitment, Jerry’s infidelities, Brooke’s divorce and anorexia, and Philomena’s betrayal highlight people’s detachment from one another as well as some of the troubles that youth confronts nowadays. McInerney’s description of Connor’s dysfunctional family relations reinforces his main argument as to how family ignorance and apathy can affect a person’s sense of independence and autonomy. In particular, McInerney’s descriptions of the McKnight’s alcoholic lifestyle and apathy make readers appreciate Connor’s and Brooke’s lack of autonomy Ouzounoglou 68 and problematic relations. For example, Brooke has completely lost her sense of propriety when she continues asking her mother about her intimate relation with her father, as is to be shown in the example below. The romantic story of their parents’ union has now transformed into a vulgar topic of common discussion which intrigues Brooke to learn all the secret details. The father’s intervention into the mother-daughter discussion is characteristic in the narrative, while his outburst of anger comes to expose the loss of any sense of propriety:

“Splendid. Hand jobs in the old Buick. Maybe over Christmas dinner we can talk

about oral sex. My daughter seems to favor that subject. Lovely. Why don’t we

just let it all hang out, as you kids say. Very modern. Silly of me to cling to these

old-fashioned notions of decency and modesty. Behind the times. Nothing’s taboo,

nothing’s sacred. It’s on television every day now, people falling all over

themselves to reveal their most intimate filthy secrets. Splendid. Tell America, tell

your own son and daughter all about their father’s sex life. Brooke, Connor,

anything else you’d like to know? Anything your mom’s left out? Maybe she’d

like to tell you about my private … parts. We could go on TV. That would be very

modern. Excellent. Why don’t we just have a show-and-tell.” (McInerney 165-66)

These lines expose the vulgarization of moral values. The mediated reality has transformed the individual into a curious and shameless figure that does not hesitate to cross any ethical boundaries. Through the outraged figure of the elder McKnight, McInerney attacks the new morality of a media-dominated reality.

Youth, as Connor and Brooke’s father protests, has exchanged morality with fast-paced manners and vulgar lifestyles. In this new production and consumption system, individual values have been decentralized. However, as we realize the vulgar manners projected via media as real do not expose an independent self but one driven by a media-controlled mentality. As Douglas Ouzounoglou 69

Kellner highlights in his book Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond

(1989), “individuals are so caught up in a world of commodity signs, media spectacles, representations and simulations that there is no longer any access to a ‘real’ which is itself presented as an effect of the code or system” (64). This comments on the new consumerist lifestyle which has tricked youth with its mediated manners and appearances. Young people, as the writer explains, believe nowadays that TV images are real. Aggressiveness and shamelessness are presented as realistic values which seem to free youth from old restrictions and values. The individual has been tricked to believe that speaking a more aggressive language makes it real.

However, the individual does not realize that these visual representations drive it to its own demoralization since they merely serve the production/consumption system. The shocked paternal figure, as shown in the example, continues arguing against the hallucinatory reality contemporary reality constructs. His protest is further enhanced when he starts stripping off in the middle of the restaurant: “‘Just trying to catch up with the times,’ he tells them. ‘Trying to satisfy the curiosity of my loved ones. My beloved family, such a goddamn comfort to me in my declining years ….’” (McInerney 166-67). His behavior here shows his indignation against the values the new generation has adopted.

Human affairs in the narrative seem to have lost any sense of good and evil. The novel’s youth has learnt to have infinite options. But, the question still remains unanswered whether this reality of limitless choices has spoiled the individual so that it has made it incapable of choosing.

The infinite choices have blurred and fragmented the self. McInerney’s young characters live in a subverted reality. They look mostly like living in a filmic scenario which intensifies the fakeness of the reality they construct for themselves. The self-fragmentation and the loss of humanistic values are also tackled in the next section of this chapter. This exposes McInerney’s writing techniques which reflect on the hollowness of the mediated reality. The writer highlights the Ouzounoglou 70 commodification of contemporary identity in the filmic version of his narrative. What is of interest in the next section is the loss of the individual in the illusionary reality of a now media- constructed romance.

2.2 Inset Scenarios and Media Constructedness

McInerney’s greatest effect in Model Behaviour rests upon his technique of enhancing the fictionality of his narrative with other inset alternative scenarios. As the story progresses and the novel’s protagonist gets acquainted with the world of celebrities and the media, the narrative gradually changes into a film scenario. The literary narrative about the relationship of a male journalist with a fashion female model suddenly changes into a filmic story of a successful screenwriter who regains his girlfriend. The readers of Model Behaviour who are aware of the unhappy ending of Connor’s and Philomena’s affair they are suddenly confronted with their reconciliation. The short narrative segments, the sudden units between them, the flashbacks, the third person narration and the happy-ending version are some of the techniques McInerney uses in the novel so as to create a cinematic effect that interferes with the rest of the narrative. The email messages, the answer phone messages, Connor’s introspection and fantasies are also devices implanted in McInerney’s story in order to introduce readers to another narrative strand of the story. Although Connor tries to come to terms with the loss of his girlfriend in the main narrative in the novel, the Connor McKnight of the filmic Model Behaviour makes up with his girlfriend and they live happily ever after. This double image of the narrative exposes the deceptive effect media have on perception, as what they project is what the audience craves for.

McInerney’s narrative mainly deals with Connor McKnight’s personal life and career. He is a young idealist who has to interview celebrities and write articles about them for his living.

The short chapters of the novel appear to be short episodes of Connor’s life experiences Ouzounoglou 71 juxtaposed with the celebrity status of his supermodel4 girlfriend. Throughout our reading we watch the way the protagonist’s family issues, professional dilemmas and capricious sexual life blur with his emotions, needs and desires. All episodes in the novel focus only on certain aspects of Connor’s and Philomena’s past and present without allowing us to see what happens next. The abrupt endings of the episodes remind us of TV snippets reducing Connor’s life to a few seconds of narration as if zapping between various channels and programs. As Douglas Kellner points out, “many individuals today use devices to ‘zap’ from one program to another, channel hopping or ‘grazing’ to merely ‘see what’s happening,’ to go with the disconnected flow of images”

(Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern

237). This line comments on Connor’s limited attention span. He just sees what he wants to see.

He does not see Philomena’s inner need for a “simple life” (McInerney 2) and her need for detachment from the fashion superficiality that surrounds her. He just sees that she needs an

“ecstasy therapy” (5), a few drinks and sex. Connor is unable to confront the truth about his relationship with Philomena.

In the beginning, we are briefly informed about their relationship. The main plot unfolds with Philomena’s outburst when she realizes that she has nothing to wear. The flow of the plot stops abruptly with Philomena snapping Connor’s glass of wine out of his hands, while he replies humorously “It’s all right, really. I drink too much anyway” (1). Next, we are transferred to another sub-plot, a VIP party the couple attends, “the Party You Have Been to Six Hundred

Times Already” (1). Then we quickly pass to a short story named “A Friendly Face” (3) which interrupts again the main narrative. In this plot, we view Jeremy Green, another short story writer like Connor, who talks about media and book reviews. Not until we do find out who Kevin

4 “Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Kate Moss, among others, became household names. They commanded vast fees, signed contracts with cosmetics giants, frequented chat shows and were routinely mentioned in gossip columns – just like the movie stars” (Worsley 106). Ouzounoglou 72

Shipley is and what his job is with Connor and Jeremy, the camera transfers us to the bar where

Connor gets a few Cosmopolitans for him and his friend.

Continuing with the next sub-plot, we follow Connor, Philomena and Jeremy to another party. Before we hear Philomena’s joke, we view the characters in the Baby Doll bar drinking and taking drugs. This episode with Philomena’s strip-show is interrupted again abruptly by the next few stories about Connor. We view Philomena’s VIP friends mocking Connor’s haircut,

Connor and Philomena having sex, and Connor helping his girlfriend pack for her business trip.

After Philomena’s departure, the readers are left with Connor’s short narrative vignettes that focus on his relationship with his parents and sister. The narrative is interrupted again by

Connor’s interior monologue following his thoughts about whether he trusts his girlfriend or not.

From all these we understand that linearity totally vanishes due to the narrative’s sub-plots.

The illusionary reality of the narrative is interrupted again by another sub-plot that places the main narrative into a motionless position. Connor describes the story of Pallas, a female strip dancer, that he meets in a club and his relation to her, while his story is interrupted again by other images. We come across Jillian Crowe, Connor’s boss, and her persistence to have him interview

Chip Ralston. Next, we watch Connor talking about John Galliano, the artist, that Jillian Crowe wants him to interview. We are then transferred to the scene where Connor as Jillian’s escort goes to a ball at the Metropolitan Museum. Connor’s point of view about these balls gets lost when another sub-plot emerges. We read quickly about the emails of Connor’s sister and the emails of his fans. The exchange of incoherent images and pieces of information affects the pace of the narrative. All the sub-plots mentioned above attempt to expose McInerney’s device of mise-en-abyme. The narrations that emerge in Model Behaviour through the mise-en-abyme device create a blurry effect which helps the narrator expose the shallowness and multiplicity of the reality he attempts to construct. As McHale highlights, Ouzounoglou 73

a true mise-en-abyme is determined by three criteria: first, it is a nested or

embedded representation, occupying a narrative level inferior to that of the

primary, diegetic narrative world; secondly, this nested representation resembles

[…] something at the level of the primary, diegetic world; and thirdly, this

“something” that it resembles must constitute some salient and continuous aspect

of the primary world, salient and continuous enough that we are willing to say the

nested representation reproduces or duplicates the primary representation as a

whole. (124, italics in original)

This refers to the reproducibility of postmodern fictional narratives with the mise-en-abyme device exposing the superficiality of the media-generated culture, as is the case with McInerney’s novel. Thus, the narrations that we read constitute parts of the primary narrative which both enhance and fragment it, managing in this way to bring on the surface various aspects of the narrative which could have been otherwise overlooked.

Another device that McInerney resorts to in his narrative is that of flashbacks. All the flashbacks resemble short filmic scenarios. Our vision becomes distorted when throughout these flashbacks we travel quickly to Milan of ’95, Gotham of ’96, and then Tokyo of ’93. We move between the past and the present in order to see Connor’s and Philomena’s life, Connor’s and

Jeremy’s discussion about models and actors, and Connor’s and Philomena’s first meeting. Then, from the Tokyo scene, we are transferred suddenly to the Ciao Bella offices watching Connor checking out his messages. McInerney’s lines from his chapter named “Flashback” disturb the readers’ vision since they do not know if it is a flashback of the main or the filmic narrative:

At this point you were hard-pressed to speak up in Katrinka’s defense. In fact, it

did seem she once might have flirted with you a little, and you felt guilty that you

had not actively discouraged it, this flirting, partly because you were grateful to be Ouzounoglou 74

noticed at all. You would have to watch that kind of thing – you vowed to make

Philomena feel more secure. She would realize eventually that you loved her and

in the meantime it was just the two of you, you and Phil, dining à deux.

(McInerney 88-89)

Connor remembers Philomena’s jealousy scene which constitutes a trait of her real personality.

We watch Connor punishing himself for Philomena’s departure. Although he does not explain who Katrinka really is in his flashback, he admits that there was indeed some chemistry between the two. He accuses himself of not passing the right messages to his girlfriend who felt uncomfortable with Connor’s attitude. Here Connor’s flashback splits into different images; we see him as the guy who wants to be visible/likeable to others, we view him as the boyfriend who wants to be a comforting lover and we also view him as a lonely man torn with guilt. All the above presented in this flashback chapter expose Connor’s loss of selfhood via representation.

His memory moves back and forth so as to find out the truth about Philomena while at the end he loses his real self. The incoherent images these flashbacks generate in the novel deconstruct the linearity of the narrative. However, as the narrative flips back and forth it makes us loose any sense of time and space. We take a short glimpse of what has happened in the past or still happens in the present of the characters’ lives. In particular, we are not aware of the exact chronological order of events in the narrative. By moving too quickly between Connor’s work, home and VIP experiences, office work, restaurant dinners with his alcoholic family, the popcorn nights with his anorexic sister and his private moments with Philomena and Pallas, readers get only a fragmented sense of Connor’s multiple roles and experiences.

The flashbacks between episodes destabilize Connor’s image of his self and others. We view an insecure lover who struggles for social recognition. His image, however, becomes even more blurry when it gets mixed up with all the roles he has to play as a fictional journalist, a Ouzounoglou 75 worried brother, a betrayed boyfriend, a celebrity haunted by the paparazzi, a screenwriter and a troubled son. McInerney’s episodes keep on altering Connor’s image in an attempt to acquaint us with the multiple sides of his personality. This has the opposite effect since instead of appreciating Connor’s multiple character traits we just witness his gradual fragmentation. In particular, we are watching his degradation through these various novel episodes when for example he compromises his writing due to the magazine’s immoral professional plan, he turns into a psychoanalyst due to his sister’s anorexia and his parents’ alcoholism and then he accepts his girlfriend’s infidelities so as to cover up his own insecurities and loneliness. McInerney presents Connor to be trapped by his own illusive feelings, needs and desires.

Characteristic is also the first person narration that McInerney employs so as to enhance the multifaceted reality his main character inhabits. However, the transition from the first person to the third person narration further facilitates the transition between the various narrative strands in the novel. This facilitates Connor’s detachment from reality, allowing him to look at his life with Philomena as if he were a passive viewer. Viewing his life as an outsider, Connor tries to get in touch with objective reality so as to understand what went wrong in their relationship.

However, the quick exchanges of the third and first narration prevent readers from understanding

Connor fully. We watch Connor while he is waiting for Philomena’s phone call at home: “This message on my machine when I return from dinner. It’s the tone of voice that’s so disturbing”

(85). Then the narrator’s voice changes: “These past few days he has been able to suppress his anxiety about Phil. But hearing her voice, he knows his suspicions were well founded. He knows”

(85, italics in original). The italics McInerney uses here make readers question whether Connor really knows. Does he really know where Philomena is or what she is doing? Connor cannot see reality clearly. This is further highlighted in the novel with the emergence of Connor’s alter ego that suddenly enters the primary reality of the narrative: “If he were more attentive it’s possible Ouzounoglou 76 the narrator would pick up certain clues from the packing, or from her behavior, indications that this trip might be something more than advertised […]” (9, my emphasis). These lines explain that Connor’s detachment from objective reality is interrupted suddenly by his own emotions.

The image of the lover intervenes in the image of the observer and vice versa. At the end, Connor is totally fragmented and he loses any sense of his actions. What Connor could not see as a narrator of his story, he can now see in the filmic version of it. Thus, McInerney mixes up his fictional narrator/character of his literary narrative with the fictional narrator/character of his filmic narrative and hence the entire narration with the writer’s voice.

The readers see Connor talking about Connor, McInerney writing about Connor, Brooke talking to Connor and Connor talking about Philomena. The voices that pop up make readers question the objectivity of the narrative: “‘You’ve been with her three years. In all that time you’ve failed to demonstrate a commitment. But now that someone’s got his nose in your bowl you’re howling. I hate to say it, but this is kind of a guy thing’” (98). It is through Brooke’s point of view, Connor’s, or through the eyes of a cinematic self that Connor is challenged to see the reality he persistently avoids. This explains the true reasons behind their break up. In this way,

McInerney enables the reader and his fictional character to see what they cannot see in the primary plot. As we see in the next lines, this process facilitates and further enhances Connor’s fragmentation:

Is Connor guilty, as charged, of enjoying his model girlfriend’s trophy status?

Instead of encouraging her to do something that wouldn’t make her so crazy?

Instead of, for example, marrying her? Practically inviting her to escape into the

arms of some horny photographer or male model or whoever may be ramming it

up against her missing diaphragm at this very moment? Ouzounoglou 77

Or does his evasion of commitment reflect his aforementioned sense of his own

unworthiness? Should he give her credit for admiring those few qualities that he

values in himself: his intelligence, his impractical education and his lack of

malice? Or does he, out of self-loathing, despise her for admiring in him such

qualities as count for nothing in the marketplace? (102-3)

The thoughts these lines expose seem to be manufactured by Connor’s cinematic ego. This highlights the superficiality of Connor’s reality and destabilizes the plot of the whole text. In this way we are not certain as to whom this voice really belongs to. Is it Connor’s, McInerney’s or the alter ego’s? Unfortunately, nobody knows at the end who is truly speaking to whom or whether everything is the outcome of the camera’s intervention. The blending of narrations also mixes up the reality planes of the novel, while the filmic narrative further enhances the illusive sensation that envelops all the characters in the novel.

Moving up from the destabilization the narrative creates to Connor’s filmic version, the viewers turn to a cinematic happy-ending that finds Connor and Philomena back together again.

In this scenario, Connor has confronted his fears while Philomena is excused for her infidelities.

McInerney confronts readers here with two or more versions of reality. First, there is

McInerney’s version of Model Behaviour that ends with Connor’s abandonment from Philomena.

Second, there is Jeremy’s version of Model Behaviour, a fictional short story writer and Connor’s friend, who closes his story with his protagonist’s affair with a model. Here attention is paid to

Connor’s constructed version of reality which focuses on the reconciliation of his protagonists.

All of them have a different story line to complete. However, between these narratives, it seems that it is easier to believe in the filmic representation of the happily-ever-after-ending since it builds upon the romantic effect this version may have on the readers. The fictional Connor in an interview comments on the fake happy-ending of the novel: “[...] there was never any question Ouzounoglou 78 about the ending. That’s one thing you can say for the movies” (230). Although Connor’s image is fragmented through McInerney’s filmic episodes, he constructs the happy-ending version in his own Model Behaviour. McHale highlights that,

this ingenious transformation suggests something like a functional equivalence

between strategies of self-erasure or self-contradiction and strategies involving

recursive structures – nesting or embedding, as in a set of Chinese boxes or

Russian babushka dolls. Both types of strategy have the effect of interrupting and

complicating the ontological “horizon” of the fiction, multiplying its worlds, and

laying bare the process of world-construction. (112, italics in original)

The romanticized image of the happy-ending version of the story appearing at the end of the sub- narrative exposes, as the excerpt above highlights, the power media have to create multiple realities and erase bad memories. However, this version, as the writer emphasizes, exposes mainly the negative effect this kind of constructedness has on the individual. The unrealistic happy-ending entraps the narrator/protagonist into a fantasy scenario that further fragments his self. Connor cannot confront the reality of his break up so he erases the part he dislikes and creates an illusive scenario in which he reconciles with Philomena. Although this ending seems to affect positively both the readers’ mind and Connor, they are all subjected to media manipulation. Similarly to Philomena’s modeling lifestyle, even the scenario Connor creates is equally deceptive and superficial. As Connor explains, “he’s afraid their actual reunion may be less shapely and conclusive than the version he is conjuring for the screen” (228). The screen, as

Connor insinuates here, has the potential to distort reality and project flawless images. What

McInerney exposes here is the implication of fantasy with reality which may further distort readers’ vision and understanding of the novel. Ouzounoglou 79

Usually viewers hope the protagonists will survive despite the narrative’s superficiality and fakeness. The reader watches Connor always moving in-between reality and illusion as he cannot stay static in his fictional relationship with Philomena, nor can he move out from the idealistic relationship he establishes with her in his film scenario. Therefore, McInerney’s attempt to reconcile the fictional hero of Model Behaviour with the protagonist of the cinematic Model

Behaviour falls apart when Connor McKnight mixes up with the other images of his fragmented self. McInerney’s fictional plot of Connor’s and Philomena’s troubled relationship serves as a backdrop in Model Behaviour, while the filmic version gradually moves to the forefront. In this way, McInerney exposes the constructedness of reality and the extent to which the media have distorted the way we perceive and relate to our surrounding world. Model Behaviour focuses on the impact false projections have on the individual and the relationships he or she attempts to establish with him/herself and others.

This section has focused on the fragmentation of the protagonists’ identity. Connor loses any sense of self after his break up with Philomena. His fears and worries come true and his fantasies make him live in a destabilized reality. Connor does not know who he is in the novel or what he wants. He appears to be obsessed with Philomena but he is actually obsessed with his own self. His identity in the novel is fragmented by the various roles he has to play. That is why he refuses to see reality for what it is even in the end of the novel. His vision has been blurred; as for the readers, they transform from mere readers to film viewers. In the end of the novel, we are not aware of what is real or fake. Reality in McInerney’s novel is fluid and contingent. Similarly to Ellis, McInerney talks about the fictionality of reality and the multiple perspectives this generates which reveals the uncertain and hallucinatory nature of our mediated culture.

Ouzounoglou 80

EPILOGUE

The two novels that have been discussed in the present thesis expose the inauthenticity of reality and life of success. This has led to the disorientation and confusion of contemporary individuals with regard to their relation to others and the world around them. But, where do these novels actually meet or diverge? Although their narrative techniques vary and differ to a great extend, both Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama and Jay McInerney’s Model Behaviour expose the

1990s American world of fame and glamor. Certain issues such as fashion hypocrisy, youth commercialization, individual exploitation and marginalization, deconstruction of human values, dissolution of marriage/family, gender victimization and empowerment, and demoralization are touched upon in these two novels in an attempt to show to their readers the impact new social and cultural trends have on the individual. Their emphasis on the power of the screen to entrap the individual depicts the fake reality of representation, as this is constructed via the intervention of the media.

Glamorama and Model Behaviour are two contemporary novels which both describe the transition of the individual of an objective to a mediated version of reality. They similarly focus on the rising culture of the telecommunication systems (TV, mobile phone and Internet) in relation to consumerism in late twentieth-century America. The presence of commodities in these two novels exposes the consumerist lifestyle and manners of the 1990s MTV generation which led to the fragmentation of the self and the distortion of vision. Emphasis is placed on the modeling fashion world as part of the celebrity culture of the time which commercialized identity. In both novels, we view young characters/models who try to stand out in the world of the spectacle but they fail to discover their real self. All the model characters appearing in the two Ouzounoglou 81 novels communicate by copying the manners of others. This exposes a world of social manners in which authenticity and reality have been completely erased.

In Ellis’s and McInerney’s fictions, the narrators are two young males who expose the feigned world of fashion modeling. Both their protagonists, Victor Ward and Connor McKnight, are part of the fashion showbiz. In the two novels, readers are acquainted with their world of manners through their own eyes; we watch Victor and Connor being acquainted with VIPs, dating super-models, participating in parties, going to famous nightclubs, drinking alcohol and using drugs. Their attitude exposed in these two novels makes us view the 1990s decade as the decade of a hedonistic but media-controlled lifestyle. They both adopt these lifestyles so as to be visible and likeable by others. They do everything in order to retain their status. They both pretend to be someone else because the world of appearances does not allow them to develop their real personalities. Both Victor and Connor are visible but hollow, since their connection with their surrounding reality and others is loose and superficial.

Both protagonists try to escape from the hallucinations their enveloping media create so as to discover their true selves; however, this proves to be futile. Ellis’s and McInerney’s main characters seem to be confined into a game of power and lust, always acquainted with celebrities and sexually powerful fashion models. Being obsessed with themselves or others, the narrators make wrong choices always at the expense of their real self. For example, Connor’s obsession with Philomena as well as Victor’s obsession with his self leads to the dissolution of their sense of reality. The realities constructed by Victor’s MTV interviews, photos and videos, and

Connor’s camera and computer emailing interfere with the novels’ primary narratives. In this way, both writers depict a world full of embedded realities which ends up confusing their characters as to what is objectively real or not. The writers resort to the world of fashion celebrity Ouzounoglou 82 and glamor so as to highlight the constructedness of reality. As for the interweaving of novelistic and filmic narrative in the two novels, it intensifies the fakeness of reality.

Moreover, the two writers playfully exchange their third person narration with the first one in order to turn their subjects, narrators, or characters of their stories into the objects of their own narration. The greatest subject of their discussion appears to be the transformation of subjectivity either into a commodified or a mediated object. Although different circumstances take place in each novel, both Victor and Connor go through various image transformations which make them forget their real self. Maybe, through them Ellis and McInerney try to expose their own era’s instability with regard to seeing and representing external reality. The sentiments of insecurity, distrust and suspicion dominate the two stories while their fictional subtexts interfere with their main plots. The way McInerney and Ellis mix up fiction with reality makes readers forget the central structure of their texts. The filmic images, the cinematic language and the narrators enable the readers to view these two books from multiple perspectives. The multiple stories which interfere with the main plots of Glamorama and Model Behaviour expose the hallucinatory reality images construct in these two narratives. The blending of storylines also distorts the readers’ vision and understanding of the texts. The blurred realities of the narratives underline the superficiality of postmodern reproduction. The protagonists are incapable of freeing themselves from their inner confusion confining the readers into their own hallucinations as well.

Dealing constantly with the oppressive ideals of fame, beauty and image perfection, they both realize at the end that these superficial elements have positioned the individual into an endless questioning of truth and reality. Despite the similarities that exist between these two novels with regard to the characters and the themes they use, each text offers an interesting insight into the world of reproduction. Ouzounoglou 83

The short parts of Model Behaviour with its short subtitles make the story look like newspaper or magazine clippings that provide only fragments of the story’s content. One could also state that McInerney’s writing style emulates the short episodes of a TV series that tend to focus on particular instances of Connor’s life. However, the punctual recording of Connor’s daily activities resembles the form of a journal whose tone is often confused with McInerney’s mood as well. The continuous recording of the narrator’s feelings, assumptions, fears and passions reinforce even more the fragmented structure of the novel since Connor does not stop narrating his past, present and future even though he does not follow a chronological order. On the other hand, Ellis’s six parts of Glamorama divide the story into two separate narrative tiers each one of them refracting into multiple perspectives and versions of reality.

The first part of Glamorama presents Victor Ward’s/Johnson’s life as a fashion model, who, unlike Connor McKnight in Model Behaviour, blindly serves and defends celebrity culture.

Even when Victor Ward realizes that he becomes manipulated by others, he fails to solve the dark mystery surrounding his cursed image. As David Schmid underscores, “[…] Victor’s environment in the first part of Glamorama, like Victor himself, is saturated with ephemera: products, fashion modeling, nightclub openings, and celebrity parties. Both seem to be dominated entirely by surface and to possess no hidden depths of any kind whatsoever” (70). The drinks, the drugs, the golden tickets to famous VIP clubs offer to Victor a fake version of reality. The readers watch Victor’s denial to see what is hidden behind these wild celebrity parties. His world is full of commodities, celebrities and images that do not correspond to tangible reality, giving him a fake sense of safety that prevents him from seeing what is really missing from his life. Although

Victor, on the one hand, seems to enjoy this celebrity lifestyle, Connor on the other hand becomes disgusted by the selfish models that surround him. The main point here, however, is not Ouzounoglou 84 the characters’ likes or dislikes but the insights their observations offer into the fashion world which provides in both novels the context within which certain attitudes can be studied.

Connor’s role in the magazine forces him to write about beauty issues, diets followed by celebrities and arrogant models obsessed with their flawless appearances. Victor, however, is a male fashion model and friend to many VIPs. In other words, Victor constitutes an integral part of the fashion system, but he appears to know nothing about himself or others. He lives in the double reality of fashion without realizing it. Connor, unlike Victor, is aware of the falsity of his own reality. He views his girlfriend’s commodification by the market. He understands that the media control the models’ perception of reality. Although Victor pushes his girlfriend to continue her modeling career, Connor wants Philomena to quit her modeling career. Connor’s sophisticated character places him in a different position in the media system. Although his profession brings him face to face with this manipulative world, which relies on the moral exploitation of individuals by transmitting false messages to the public, Victor’s presence on the other hand comes to celebrate this frustrating superficiality. Connor talks about his life, the ups and downs with his girlfriend, acquaintances from the showbiz, his professional embarrassments, his family problems and the effort to sustain his morality, although this proves ineffable at times, and integrity inside the media world of hypocrisy and arrogance that surrounds him. Connor, unlike Victor, appears to be more human and natural, while Victor focuses on his world of appearances and modeling life. Victor’s narration focuses on his “I” which is above anything else. He does not view others as important figures in his life. He just uses them coldly so as to be successful. Victor’s vanity and naivety trick him into a world of hallucinations and dreams; what he acknowledges as real is that he is lucky to be a fashion model due to his great looks and great connections as being Chloe’s official boyfriend. Ouzounoglou 85

All this make Victor in Glamorama a hollow character, a representative example of this world of appearances, which defies emotional existence and takes advantage of any possible interpersonal relationship in order to fulfill his ego. Ellis’s protagonist is a real narcissist that cares only about himself. Although both Connor and Victor use their girlfriends so as to be accepted in the celebrity world, once again they differ in character as well; Victor exploits his relationship with Chloe both financially and socially by ignoring her true feelings and worries, while Connor’s worries about Philomena’s fate expose some kind of emotional depth. However,

Connor’s anxiety about Philomena does not come from his sentiments of true love, but his masculine distrust towards her female nature. While Connor believes in monogamy and the existence of social limits, Victor’s provocative behavior, his nude advertisements, his affairs with other sexual partners shape a demoralized personality which lacks values and standards. Victor cannot love anyone but himself; he wants to be at the center of attention and lures the media or better the media lure him.

The readers in Glamorama actually watch Victor Ward’s media manufactured image, while in Model Behaviour Connor McKnight exposes fashion immorality through his magazine articles or personal writings. Thus, the characters come to represent different facets of the media projections: Victor Ward’s character presents the visual façade of the fashion system, whereas

Connor McKnight becomes the spokesperson of the ills of a media-driven society. Connor actually enters the fashion world by writing about it as well as dating Philomena the super-model.

Connor’s profession is to comment on media reality, not just to appear in the fashion runways like Victor Ward does. As a result, Ellis’s plot unfolds under different conditions from

McInerney’s. They both have an interest in exploring the impact media have on identity, but they approach the subject from a completely different angle. Ouzounoglou 86

Even when Victor does not know who he really is, he continues to have faith in his media created images of himself, while Connor has completely lost faith in the world he lives in and the people he meets. Whereas in Glamorama Victor strives to be at the center of public attention, the protagonist of Model Behaviour feels embarrassed, unworthy and incomplete. Connor’s weakness to stand up in this celebrity world also stands as the perfect example of contemporary consumerist society that consumes, absorbs and effaces the individual. Victor appears to be the model “hero,” while Connor claims no rights to be the handsome character in the novel;

McInerney’s short references to the “ideal” characters in the “Physical Appearance” section of his novel shows his interest in restoring reality. Whereas Victor’s obsessions with glamorous lifestyles and beautiful celebrities dominate Ellis’s novel, McInerney prefers to picture a less handsome but as realistic as possible character. Connor’s preferences demythologize the reality his celebrity friends and partners live in. He downplays in the narrative his physical traits because he does not consider beauty necessary for human existence. In Model Behaviour, McInerney exposes his distrust towards immoral characters:

It’s always easier to visualize the minor characters, with their bestial analogues,

done in the broad strokes of caricature ― […] Then, too, as a reader I like to take

a certain amount of responsibility for filling in the details. I’d be most grateful if

you would endow me with rugged, slightly tragic features. (70)

In these lines, McInerney emphasizes the power of human imagination contrary to the superficiality dominating Ellis’s novel. Connor, unlike Victor, relies on his imagination and encourages readers to do the same, while Victor perceives media success and beauty as the ultimate ideals in life.

As regards the two novel structures, they differ in length: Ellis’s Glamorama concentrates on the fantasies of the main male character, whereas McInerney’s fiction tends to describe Ouzounoglou 87 celebrity culture in a gentle but not at all in a mindless way. Furthermore, McInerney’s novel does not develop the cinematic techniques of Ellis’s narrative. The filmic version of Model

Behaviour is exposed through the flashback technique used to connect the narrator’s past and present, and to construct images that perpetuate the camera’s presence. The narrative devices employed come to reinforce the readers’ vision about Philomena’s desire to be a fashion model and the ending of her relationship with Connor. McInerney exposes the emotional status of his characters in simple ways, while Ellis’s cinematic language places his protagonist into an oscillating position. Victor’s cues, shots, montages, close-ups, soundtracks constructed by Ellis manipulate Victor’s reality. That is, Victor Ward has become the machine of his own production which lets him enter the double and duplicitous reality media construct. Victor visualizes his un/realistic existence when he becomes montaged, cued or shot.

Although McInerney’s book is shorter than Ellis’s full-length novel, his Model Behaviour does not lack depth or variation of subjects. In his novel, he encourages his readers to visualize the pervasive impact of the media on the way his characters relate to or construct reality.

Philomena’s obsession with her public image, her drug addiction and infidelities are linked to her modeling career which exposes the media idealization of false lifestyles and manners.

McInerney’s narrator realizes the illusive reality at the end of the story, while Victor Ward in

Glamorama is lost into the hallucinations of his media reproductions. McInerney’s story exposes the dilemmas of the characters in greater depth than in Glamorama. Connor’s direct references to his girlfriend’s harmed self-esteem, his intense worries about his sister’s anorexia, his reconciliation with his superficially established familial connections, his disgust with celebrity aloofness, his inner quest for the true Connor and his inner struggle against showbiz immorality, make the readers sympathize with what Connor goes through in the novel. The readers can identify themselves easier with Connor’s reality than with Victor’s cold and distant character. Ouzounoglou 88

Victor’s and Connor’s various camera representations constitute another significant difference between the two novels. In the first part of Glamorama, Victor’s narration places him at the center of the plot. He appears to be the leader of the narrative while the readers wait for

Victor’s transformation into a violent figure in the following parts of the novel. One could say that such a transformation was expected to take place since, as the narrative unfolds, Glamorama takes the form of a movie script. The once narrator and protagonist of the novel now becomes the object of his narration. Ellis mixes Victor with his cinematic alter-ego. Victor senses his transformation but cannot actually admit it even when he sees his image on the videos or computers of the film group which follows him everywhere he goes. On the other hand, Connor’s transformation differs once again; Connor’s narration about his life, relationships, family connections, demonstrates that he is the one who controls or appears to be controlling his narration. It seems that Connor talks about himself to himself. McInerney playfully moves from a third to a first person narration and back again always questioning himself about himself.

Connor’s personal questions and worries place him in the position of the subject and object of the narrative.

The readers of Glamorama become shocked with the violence its filmed part constructs since it exposes the camera’s abuse of Victor’s body and identity. In Model Behaviour, however, the readers move rather gently through the narrative. Although McInerney’s narrative moves fast, the readers do not view shocking violence scenes as the ones Glamorama constructs. This difference makes one realize that we are talking about two different books, each one of them focusing on the impact of various media on the life and reality of the characters. The double realities constructed in the two books also sustain double endings for their main characters. In

McInerney’s novel, Connor does not manage to reconnect with his girlfriend, while in the filmic version of Model Behaviour the protagonist shares a filmic happily-ever-after-ending with his Ouzounoglou 89 beloved. In Ellis’s filmic version of Victor’s life, Victor loses everything knowing that he can never go back to his family. His double reality isolates him from the reality his family lives in.

McInerney, however, makes the readers believe in the unrealistic ending of Connor’s romance, while Ellis’s readers come to an abrupt ending in Glamorama.

In conclusion, both American writers have confronted the issue of reproduction resulting from the 1990s celebrity culture. Their focus on the celebrity images and lifestyles expose the power of media-controlled culture which is responsible for the production of identical lifestyles and manners in a multifaceted but fragmented reality. The emphasis Glamorama and Model

Behaviour place on the hollowness of celebrity identities highlights the superficiality of contemporary society. These two novels tackle the new materialistic ethos Ellis and McInerney bring forward here. Their focus on fashion models and their lifestyles underline the deception the individual experiences nowadays due to media domination. The multiple realities media construct distort the individuals’ vision and sense of self forever. Ellis and McInerney draw their material from the MTV youth experiences of the 1990s that they project a different attitude towards a reality of appearances. The fashion characters of these novels, which are all young models, make the constructedness of an image as their main priority in life. They all appear to be content with the imaginary reality fashion creates. They are surrounded by commodities, participate in fashion shows and take drugs. The novels project the catastrophic impact media have on tricking human senses and projecting the market’s logic of the demoralized consumer as real. The temptations of success and quick fame become the new ideals for the young characters in these novels. They are all celebrities relying on their image so as to increase their market value. However, as the two writers describe, these shallow figures live in a distorted and media-constructed version of reality.

On the basis of what has been mentioned so far, Ellis and McInerney point out in their writings that the fashion boys and fashion girls are not real personalities but commodities to be Ouzounoglou 90 consumed. The media world has made them sell their inner qualities for products and brand names. In this way, as these writers suggest, the individual is pushed towards an endless process of constructedness. The media produce infinite images, concepts and messages that the consumers are called to consume. What the two writers clearly point out is that contemporary society manipulates the youth by driving it to believe in the falsity of media-manufactured ideals.

The issues I have focused on in this project do not provide an exhaustive analysis of fashion constructedness. However, the attention that has been paid to mediated duplicity, fashion models’ commercialization, self-demoralization and self-decentralization has pinpointed the negative impact media have on consumers. Nowadays, the individual is coerced to adopt multiple role-models so as to be or feel real. This thesis has attempted to comment on the falsity of the consumerist system which idealizes false roles and entraps the individual into a hallucinating reality. McInerney’s and Ellis’s take on the fashion industry approaches postmodern superficiality from an interesting angle. Both novels reflect on the inauthenticity of mediated reality. Glamorama and Model Behaviour are two literary texts that attack the shallowness and cynicism that a media-generated culture constructs through its own spectacular images.

Ouzounoglou 91

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Sofia Ouzounoglou was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds a B.A. in English Language and

Literature from School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (AUTh). Due to her keen interest in contemporary American fiction, she continued her studies on a postgraduate level. She now holds an M.A. in American Literature and Culture from School of English

(AUTh) as well. Her M.A. focuses on Contemporary American writers, the fashion industry and media reproduction.