Johannes Malkmes
American Consumer Culture and its Society From F. Scott Fitzgerald`s 1920s Modernism to Bret Easton Ellis` 1980s Blank Fiction
Diplomica Verlag Johannes Malkmes American Consumer Culture and its Society: From F. Scott Fitzgerald`s 1920s Modernism to Bret Easton Ellis` 1980s Blank Fiction
ISBN: 978-3-8428-0566-8 Herstellung: Diplomica® Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, 2011
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Zusammenfassung:
Die vorliegende Studie stellt eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der amerikanischen Konsumkultur des 20. Jahrhunderts dar. Dabei wird ein Schwerpunkt auf die historische Entwicklung von der Ständegesellschaft des späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts bis hin zur Klassengesellschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts gelegt, da dieser epochale Wandel in bisherigen vergleichbaren literaturwissenschaftlichen Diskussionen zur Konsumkultur trotz seiner themenbezogenen Relevanz keine adäquate Berücksichtigung fand. Der Begriff der Konsumkultur als interdisziplinäres Problem wird nicht als gegeben verstanden und ausführlich definiert.
Die soziokulturelle Entwicklung wird im Rahmen von F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby (1925) und Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho (1991) nachvollzogen, da beide Werke ihre Hauptdarsteller anhand ihrer sozialen Herkunft, ihrer sozialen Milieus und ihres Konsums als stereotypische Vertreter der jeweiligen Epoche charakterisieren und versinnbildlichen. In beiden Werken wird der jeweilige kulturelle Hintergrund – das amerikanische Jazz Age sowie die Reagan Administration mit ihrer Yuppie Kultur – äußerst kritisch abgehandelt. Eine vergleichende Analyse beider Werke in Bezug auf die gravierende Entwicklung ihrer literarischen Darstellung von Konsum im Verlauf des 20. Jahrhunderts unter kritischer Berücksichtigung des jeweiligen volkswirtschaftlichen, politischen und gesellschaftlichen Hintergrunds wurde in dieser Form noch nicht veröffentlicht. Ein Fokus dieser Arbeit betrifft die Zwischenkriegszeit in Jahren von 1920 bis 1930, da diese Dekade maßgebend war für den epochalen Wandel der amerikanischen Klassen- hin zu einer Konsumgesellschaft und des amerikanischen Lebensstils zum Ende der 1980er Jahre. Detailliert betrachtet werden in diesem Zusammenhang konkrete Konsumverstärker wie fortschreitende Technologien, Entwicklungen zu Mode- und Freizeitbranchen, finanzielle Marktentwicklungen und der geografische Wandel. Die Entstehung der World Trade Organisation symbolisiert letztendlich den Sieg von Demokratie und amerikanisierter, globaler Konsumkultur. Anhand der genannten Werke wird nicht nur der Umgang mit Konsum interpretiert, sondern auch dessen Versprechen, die propagierende Darstellung des amerikanischen Traumes, die eine gravierende Veränderung hin zum kapitalistischen Materialismus aufzeigt.
Table of Content:
1. Introduction...... 1
2. Consumer Culture...... 7
2.1 Consumer Culture as an Interdisciplinary Problem...... 8
2.1.1 Consumerism ...... 11
2.1.2 Consumption...... 13
2.1.3 Conspicuous Consumption ...... 14
2.1.4 Materialism...... 16
2.2 Outline of Consumer Culture ...... 17
3. The Rise of Consumerism...... 22
3.1 The Commercial Revolution ...... 24
3.2 A Consumer’s Republic...... 29
4. The Great Gatsby and the 1920s...... 38
4.1 Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s Life...... 40
4.2 Consumer Culture and the Roaring Twenties...... 44
4.2.1 The Jazz Age...... 45
4.2.2 The Market Place in The Great Gatsby ...... 49
4.3 Geography in The Great Gatsby...... 62
4.3.1 Upper Class and Middle Class ...... 67
4.4 From the American Dream to the American Nightmare ...... 73
5. American Psycho and the 1980s ...... 80
5.1 Bret Easton Ellis...... 85
5.2 MTV, Blank Fiction, the Perversion of Emulation, and loss of Identity ...... 91
5.2.1 Blank Fiction, Consumerism and Culture ...... 93
5.2.2 American Psycho as Blank Fiction...... 97
5.3 Consumerism in American Psycho: Bateman doomed to Failure...... 101
5.4 The Perversion of Emulation: `I Want to Fit In´...... 113
5.5 Bateman’s American Nightmare...... 116
6. Conclusion ...... 121
7. Works Cited ...... 127
8. Appendix...... V
8.1 Appendix I: Geography in The Great Gatsby ...... V
8.2 Appendix II: American Psycho / Visual Art: “HAUTE COTURE” ...... VI
8.3 Appendix III: American Psycho / Visual Art: “COMPLAINING” ...... VII
8.4 Appendix IV: American Psycho / Headlines...... VIII
1. Introduction
Today, materialism, consumption, status symbols, or omnipresent advertising are all central aspects of western culture and of our postmodern daily life. This statement can be justified by showing self-explanatory examples of such impact. Wolfgang König lists examples that demonstrate America’s ascendancy in the postmodern world of advertisement to show the importance of American consumer culture to the globalized world. For example, at the Seoul Olympics in 1992 athletes had to perform in the early hours, not to comply with their physical abilities of exercising in the morning, but to yield to America’s television prime time during the morning hours. During the 1994 soccer World Cup USA referees had to wait for television commercials to finish before starting the matches. The 1996 Olympics in Atlanta nearly became a Coca Cola spectacle. This list can be completed with American global symbols representing an American way of life. American consumer items such as Starbucks, fast-food restaurant McDonald’s, Pepsi, Microsoft, or the Levi’s Blue Jeans influence today’s living. In addition to this list television series such as Miami Vice or Dallas, television channels such as commercialized MTV, and hotel chains like Hilton or Sheraton, show how consumer culture is established within today’s global society. According to the 2008 CIA country comparison estimate, America’s PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) of 14.44 trillion US Dollars makes it today’s largest economy in the world. China was second with 7.992 trillion US Dollars. Only the European Union as a group of countries amounts to an estimated 14.940 trillion US Dollars (CIA 1). Today, America makes up 5% of the world's population but it consumes about 25% of the world resources (CIA 1; König 399 -410, 430-31).
I would also like to point out that in the course of this study the impression could arise that I consider consumer culture to be a central problem in America’s heritage. In fact, I embrace consumerism as a blessing to the American and global economy, but I think it should be discussed and critically reviewed. The United States has traditionally been a country of intensive and most valuable criticism of consumption, as can be seen in the early Puritan belief system, Prohibition, the simplicity movement, the 60s hippies movement, and the consumer rights movement. Early critical reflections upon consumerism such as Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854), Karl Marx’s Das Kapital 1
(1867), or Thorstein Bunde Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and their impacts on academic disciplines show the early importance of interest in the study of consumer culture. In order to approach consumer culture in 20th–century America the first part of this study is devoted to consumer culture’s terminology as an interdisciplinary problem. I will show that under the broad umbrella of consumer culture, attributes such as consumerism, consumption, conspicuous consumption, and materialism flourish, and will then proceed to outline a working definition of consumer culture. An in-depth analysis is inevitable because definitions that attempt to delineate the terms vary according to their academic approach. Also I will argue that in the mood of a conspicuous consumer the use of consumer items serves as a way to maintain social status. Yet what does this impression hold? It is exactly this question that will accompany this study, as one of the core questions. To examine the history of consumer culture in 20th-century America, the second chapter of this study will trace the emergence of consumer culture in the course of the American history. I will highlight the fact that it is impossible to create a historical record of consumer culture, and therefore this study touches certain aspects of history, politics, and literary insight in order to access an otherwise immense topic. Therefore, I will chronologically illustrate a socio-historical development which is divided into consumerism within modern times, which led to the commercial revolution, and subsequently into an analysis of consumer culture in 20th–century America, thus labeled postmodernism. I will show that consumer culture, i.e. consumption of consumer items and material goods, is strongly linked to a given economy and their culture where individuals can identify with representatives of a given esteemed society. I will argue that cultural emulation is restricted to a society in which emulation, cultural swapping and adaption must be possible. Social classes must be close enough and images from the upper class must be available to the lower class in order to emulate an aspired society. I will identify the process of emulating and adapting the upper class as “trickle-down-Effeckt” (Kleinschmidt 20) to outline the development of late 18th and early 19th–century estate- based society to class society. In addition, I will show that fundamental alterations in regard to consumer behavior were strongly connected to the transition of estate-based society to class society, therefore, from mercantilism to social market society in the late
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19th century. More specifically, the emergence of consumer culture chronologically followed early industrialization in England and then diffused to America as can be seen when I comment on life in colonial America. With the rise of industrialization in the late 18th and early 19th century, cities expanded and took new forms. Urbanization, affordable innovative public transportation, and later the rise of the automobile all promoted consumer culture as can be seen in the increase of the service industry by the turn to the 20th century. After stressing the importance of Henry Ford, his revolutionizing of automobile industry and the rise of American advertisement companies on Madison Avenue, New York, I will comment on the importance of 1920s America. I will argue that leisure time, credit, technological innovations in information and communication, and the change from an America in wartime to peacetime after World War I promoted the 1920s Jazz Age which was a time characterized by optimism, extravagance, economic prosperity and consumerism. Also I will take a closer look at the Great Depression and its impact on consumer culture to finally assess how the strained relationship between the former Soviet Union and the United States affected consumer culture. I will explain that America’s promotion of global trading and their eventual outspending of the Soviet Union led to the establishment of the World Trade Organization which symbolizes democratic success. Consumer culture thus reached global scale.
The aim of this study is to examine to what extent people’s, and especially Americans’ lives are affected by consumer culture. I will investigate, on an elaborate scale, two crucial and essential decades constituting consumer society: namely the 1920s Jazz Age and the 1980s capitalistic yuppie era. As throughout the century, but especially in both these periods people used consumer items to communicate with each other in order to show, or to overcome, their social status. While consumer oriented lifestyles have influenced society in modern and postmodern times, the 1980s introduced an unprecedented consumer hype, which is exemplified with the emergence of the yuppie. One core question of this study is how the meaning and use of consumer items changed in the course of the century. I will show that consumer culture enables society to emulate the aspired class, to overcome social classes and its boundaries, which in the case of the 1920s mostly resulted in personal frustration, in the case of The Great Gatsby (1925) even unfolds into an American Nightmare. It will be seen that American Psycho (1991) illustrates the latter then as a perversion. 3
According to the formulation above, the third chapter is mainly concerned with F. Scott Fitzgerald who evidently illustrated consumer culture of his Jazz Age in his fiction. He not only became the literary spokesman of the Jazz Age, but The Great Gatsby became his most pervasive and appealing novel capturing both the Zeitgeist of modern American life and the constitution of consumer culture within its depicted society. Fitzgerald’s fiction must be read against its historical background and therefore I will take a closer look at his life, especially at consumer culture during Jazz Age, to then establish that he wrote about a decade he deeply derived from. As a result I will show that his writing transcends a milieu which gives insight to an important decade constituting consumer culture. Comparing the novel with the socio-historical development of consumer culture I will come to the conclusion that its outcomes match, thus justifying the classification of The Great Gatsby as a novel which perfectly reproduces time, society, social class boundaries, and characters that epitomize the formation of modern American mass culture. By analyzing the American Dream’s meaning I will come to the conclusion that James Truslow Adam’s definition of the non-fiction American Dream consists of a double nature in itself. Stressing its materialistic aspect and defining 1920s society and its pursuit of extravagance as corrupting the American Dream I will finally show that in the case of Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby the American Dream turns into an American Nightmare, as Peter Freese terms it. Retrospectively, Peter Freese’s crucial thinking about the American Dream, which can be “praised as fascinating promises or condemned as dangerous temptations” (Freese 58), becomes valuable to this study.
The fourth chapter of this study will outline the most important events contributing to the political, social, and cultural importance of the 1980s dream consumer: the yuppie and its conspicuous consumer culture. Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho is the ideal novel to analyze consumer culture during the 1980s. As Elizabeth Young argues: it is a “classic of the 1980s, in a sense it is the 1980s” (Young, Jungle 88) and it depicts American consumer society in a perspective that is so accurately that the novel embodies “the decade and all its clichés […] – the rampant self-serving greed, relentless aggression and one- upmanship; the manic consumer overdrive, exhaustion, wipe-out and terror” (88). Like Fitzgerald, Ellis must be read against his cultural background and the Reagan administration. Therefore, a closer look at Reagan and Ellis will be the access to a new literary movement. Due to his early literary success with Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis 4
has been labeled the literary spokesman of the `Generation X´ and the `MTV Generation´. I will explain that during the 1980s an unprecedented literary movement emerged which distinguished young writers from the contemporary literary scene at the time. Along with Ellis, New York writers such as Jay McInerney, and Tama Janowitz formed a distinguished group of writers which soon was commercially labeled as the `Brat Pack´. Many critics refer to the Brat Pack’s writing as reading a movie script, because of its style which is mostly commercialized, `blank´, youthful, and because of its content which consists of an emphasis on the extreme, marginal indulgence, decadence, sexual excess, consumerism and commerce, and the violent. Above all it is written as if to be skimmed, in a blank `commodified language´. The New York writer group’s style has been labeled a number of names including `Downtown´, `Post-Punk´, `New Narrative´, `Lost Generation´, and finally `Blank Fiction´. I will argue that it seems to be insufficient to simply call American Psycho postmodern, and that the encompassing term `Blank Fiction´ perfectly defines what American Psycho consists of.
My analysis will be based on the assumption that, while during early formation of American mass consumption, consumer items were a means to an end, during the 1980s consumer culture was finally established in society to the scale where consumer items are the end. Fitzgerald and Ellis both criticized the culture they derived from. Fitzgerald described the world of the aristocratic upper class in terms of lavish parties, luxurious automobiles, impressive mansions, and tailored clothes. Blank Fiction writers, however, put a nametag and a brand name, on these consumer items. The misogynistic narrator Patrick Bateman introduces every character in the novel with an exact description and naming of the brand name, often also referring to the price. As a result everything else loses meaning; brand names and consumer items become characters, and characters become products of the world they live in. Patrick Bateman lives in a society where greed, market value, and most important brand names are the only values. Consumer items and commodities, become characters and characters are only defined through the “commodified language” (Annesley 7) and its perspective of consumption, which inevitably composes a loss of character and individuality. I will show that the line between character and consumer item and between object and subject almost vanishes. In the 1980s consumer life individuals identify each other only through consumer items and as a result a complete loss of character and identity becomes apparent. 5
Furthermore, I will argue that American Psycho resembles a literary, novelistic version, of consumer reports, which is mostly criticized as Blank Fiction’s weakness. The Brat Pack’s writing is seen as light and empty, and its exaggerated violence often caused public disputes. In the case of American Psycho the latter made it enormously successful. I will show that the term `blank´ does not necessarily mean an absence of intellectuality, or defines blank fiction as insubstantial, but that the `blank´, empty and commercial nature of these novels opens up a way of conceptualizing contemporary conditions and “turns the process of saying a little into the act of saying a lot” (Annesley 10).
Other than in Fitzgerald’s modernist fiction which is directed towards a solution, in American Psycho there is `no catharsis´, Patrick Bateman who seeks severe punishment and finally confesses his murders, but must eventually understands that he will be captured in a never ending cycle of ever increasing new consumer items creating a vicious circle in which Patrick Bateman -who represents the society he lives in- is captured. I will finally analyze that in the case of 1980s conspicuous consumer culture, the American Dream is not only depicted as a corruption but is simply invalid. For Patrick Bateman and his peers there are no social borders to overcome, there is nothing to pursue, there is no Daisy Buchanan who could run them over, there is no Wilson who could impulsively kill, and there is `no catharsis´ to be found. There is no escape, as the novel’s last words confirm: “THIS IS NOT AN EXIT” (Ellis, Psycho 399).
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2. Consumer Culture
“Men have become the tools of their tools” (Thoreau, 30) writes the American author, poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau in Walden, first published in 1854. In his most famous book he reflects upon the simple living in a natural environment. However, the statement above shows what this study is based on; no longer does humanity have the stability to stay over what they used to control. Thoreau’s forward-thinking message follows an underlying concept of `consumer culture´ as seen when he argues that “[t]he man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper” (30). What Thoreau depicts is what Karl Marx writes in his monumental work Das Kapital in 1867. Marx revealed that originally most people were both, producers and consumers. However, after the industrial revolution however social relations shifted. Marx analyzed this conflict and defined people into `producers´ and `consumers´, into those who owned the means of production, and those who worked for them. Taking these statements into account, a perceptible tendency will become apparent. In the case of `consumerism´ and its culture I will establish that American economy depends on the consumption of commodities to later examine that American society is overwhelmed by consumer items and therefore becomes a slave of its own product: `consumer culture´. Ann Smart Martin from the University of Wisconsin states that the interest in the study of consumerism shifted “from the traditional historical interest in producers (farmers, laborers, makers, factory owners) to consumers (buyers and users)” (Martin 142). This comment refers to a change from a Marxist “disinterest in bourgeois and nonutilitarian goods and services” (142) to a study of market segments and the interest back to the individual.
In general, one can speak of a culture whenever one talks about a society as an agent or as having an intention. When talking about culture or consumer culture it is important to understand that I am not referring to everyone in the given society. I am not saying that everyone shares the same values, ideologies and understanding of the discussed content. In the following paragraphs I will show that culture refers to values people can reject but mostly at a price. In addition, I will show that `consumption´ is a central value in `consumer culture´. 7
Douglas J. Goodman and Mirelle Cohen provide an excellent introduction to consumer culture in their reference handbook Consumer Culture. They recount that consumption seems to no longer simply reflect our cultural values; it is a cultural value itself. All forms of social life from education to politics, from job professions to crime are influenced and determined by `consumption´. Therefore, every public space, every occasion for public gatherings is an opportunity to encourage more consumption. As can be seen in western society nowadays consumer culture has been very successful. Consumer culture satisfies consumers in a way they do not even recognize, it even redefines and shapes consumers’ / a customer’s needs and desires (Goodman and Cohen 3-5).
The fundamental aim of this chapter is to investigate, situate and to make sense of what is commonly termed `consumer culture´. The broad umbrella under which the terms `consumer culture´, `consumerism´, `consumption´, and `materialism´ flourish will be examined in order to evince common denominators. I will show that the concept and understanding of `consumer culture´ varies among all different academic institutions, governments and individuals. Before exploring the various theories on the term’s determination it must be explained what the term consumer culture entails. In the course of this chapter I will investigate core elements of consumer culture to then elaborate consistent features defining the term as it will be used throughout this paper.
2.1 Consumer Culture as an Interdisciplinary Problem
When investigating the term consumer culture one will come to the conclusion that there are many debates by many scholars who are trying to define `consumer culture´. This is due to a variety of academic disciplines taking consumer culture into the focus of their studies. “Consumer culture,” according to the encyclopedia on Jrank “[…] has been studied from the perspective of a variety of disciplines, including communication, cultural studies, theology, sociology, psychology, marketing, anthropology, and philosophy.” (Jrank 1). Each disciplinary approach differs from another in order to stay within one’s own discipline. There is sociology considering mankind, culture and individual
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relationships on the other hand, and business considering consumer and producer relationships on the other.
Peter Stearns, who is currently a professor at George Mason University, argues that there is also an ongoing dispute about how best to study the phenomenon itself. He notices that “many historians approach the topic [of defining consumer culture] from the standpoint of external manifestations such as stores, displays, and adverting.” (102). He accurately notes that they are relatively accessible and therefore they can be assessed with acceptable precision (Stearns 102-03).
Dr. Don Slater, who lectures at the London school of Economics and Political Science, defines `consumer culture´ as a “social arrangement in which the relations between the [lived cultural experience of everyday life and] social resources, between meaningful ways of life and the symbolic and material resources on which they depend, is mediated through markets.” Slater argues that `consumer culture´ is a system which is dominated by the consumption of commercial products. The system “is largely understood to be carried out through the exercise of free personal choice in the private sphere of everyday life.” Moreover, consumer culture is also connected with the idea of modernity; a world “no longer governed by tradition but rather by flux,” and in which “social actors who are deemed to be individually free and rational” (Slater 8 9) are the protagonists. The argumentation on Jrank goes on and points at the common consensus regarding the disciplinary approaches. It is declared that: “a central feature of consumer culture is the relationship between people and material goods” (1). `Consumer culture´ is a social classification “in which the buying and selling of goods and services is not only a predominant activity of everyday life but also an important arbiter of social organization, significance, and meaning” (1). Taking this definition into account and comparing the phrase above with the definition of culture one comes to the conclusion that they have one thing in common: the relationship combining individuals, common beliefs, and a well matching set of values.
Now, I will simply analyze what determines and features `culture´ in general. The following translation of culture suits the context of this chapter best. I am going to define the term culture as clearly as possible. As The Columbia Encyclopedia accounts, there
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have been cataloged over one hundred different definitions of the word by 1952. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines culture by four attributes a : the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations b : the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time
Margaret Finnegan states in The Oxford Companion to United States History that `consumer culture´ refers “to culture in which mass consumption and production both fuel the economy and shape perceptions, values, desires, and constructions of personal identity” (Finnegan 1). Furthermore, the scope and scale of `consumer culture’ is influenced by several factors such as economic development, demographic trends, and new technologies which will be the subject of the next chapter. According to Finnegan several attributes influence consumer society. “Social class, gender, ethnicity, region, and age all affect definitions of consumer identity and attitudes about the legitimacy of consumer centered lifestyles” (1).
Following the reasoning on Jrank to define and understand `consumer culture´ it is important to bring up that one should not be confused with two of consumer culture’s attributes, namely `consumerism and materialism´. Ann Smart Martin adds that: “[these] terms are used to describe the complex position that objects have in society, particularly, although not exclusively, describing modern or industrial society” (Martin 142). Therefore, I will clarify the meaning of these two attributes to show that `consumer culture´ subsumes both `consumerism´ and `materialism´. After the clarification of these terms I will outline `consumer culture´ to obtain a clearer overall picture.
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