DOCSLIB.ORG

Haunting and Hyperreality in Lunar Park

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Haunting and Hyperreality in Lunar Park Chapter 10: Textual Terrors of the Self: Haunting and Hyperreality in Lunar Park If any contemporary novel was to define the genre Gothic- postmodernism as it manifests itself today, none could do so more succinctly than Bret Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park. A follow up to his sensationalist and highly controversial novel American Psycho, it unnervingly rediscovers the psychological aspects of terror through traditional Gothic tropes: the haunted house, the tyrannical father figure, the doppelgänger, the serial killer, the un-dead, the atmosphere of mystery and suspense, supernatural occurrences, and the dominating presence of the Gothic sublime. Interestingly, this is superimposed upon a strong postmodernist perspective on narrative self-consciousness and the confounding metafictional status of the novel often parodies the Gothic elements. This results in a text that hovers on the boundaries of the Gothic and of postmodernism, using anachronistic Gothic devices in a post-MTV generation context, fluctuating between the two genres, often occupying the liminal position of being ‘both / and’. This chapter will focus on identifying how postmodernist narrative devices function to reinforce a traditional Gothic aesthetic in Lunar Park, promoting the need to see the novel as a development of Gothic-postmodernism to its most climactic point to date, and clarifying grounds for its classification as an exemplary Gothic-postmodernist work. Lunar Park presents itself as the pseudo-biography of ‘the author’ Bret Easton Ellis and follows his mental deterioration, beginning with an account of his early fame as creator of best-selling novels Less than Zero, Glamorama, The Rules of Attraction and the infamous American Psycho. Fluctuating consistently between ‘reality’ and fiction, as it periodically accounts for Ellis’ marriage to actress Jayne Dennis, and his move toward suburban family life in post-9/11 New York, the novel develops into a postmodernist ghost-story, outlining the haunting of the main character and the return of his dead father to complete the destruction of his identity. 172 Gothic-postmodernism: Voicing the Terrors of Postmodernity The development of a Gothic aesthetic in the novel begins in the opening chapter, not with the establishment of standard Gothic literary devices and symbolism as one would expect, but when the narrator, Bret Easton Ellis, informs us that ‘my sisters and I discovered the dark side of life at an unusually early age’. The world lacked coherence and within this chaos we were ‘all doomed to failure’ (Easton Ellis 2005, 8). He continues: ‘My father created me, criticised me, destroyed me, and, then after I reinvented myself and lurched back into being, became a proud boastful dad’ (Easton Ellis 2005, 9). This perspective on the creation and destruction of subjectivity, establishes an age-old Gothic premise that harks back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the dark side of life and of identity is set as the focal point for what is to become an extremely egocentric and arguably megalomaniac narrative voice. Bret’s paranoia and edgy over-sensitivity creates an atmosphere of tension and suspense early on in the novel, explained away in his account of his father Robert Ellis, a typical Gothic patriarch, who, ‘locked in a demented fury’ (Easton Ellis 2005, 8), and obsessed by status, rage and his own loneliness (Easton Ellis 2005, 181), caused the real world to melt away for his son, opening up a path of self destruction through excess. In this sense, Bret is introduced to us as something of a hybrid character, bred from something akin to Frankenstein’s creature and Dorian Gray. His character is one that is, like Frankenstein’s hideous progeny, both monstrous, for his part in the horrifying and sadistically violent fantasies of Patrick Bateman, yet also deserving of sympathy for the hurt that his relationship with his father caused him. This is exemplified in his wife’s enraged comment: ‘Is there anything more pathetic than a monster who keeps asking please? please? Please?’ (Easton Ellis 2005, 291). Arguably, the fact that character Bret is conflated to a certain extent with the author Bret deconstructs the idea of authorship and furthers this idea of hybrid or blurred identity. It also effects an added hauntology, reinforcing the monstrous subject as a specific conceit of Gothic-postmodernism. But Bret’s character is also one that is defined by self indulgence, obsession, recklessness, and paranoia. His encounter with himself, in the figure of Clayton, which leads to the ultimate terror of the novel, is evocative of the crucial issues raised in Wilde’s illustration of his protagonist, Dorian. One might, subsequently, consider him as a typical Gothic- postmodernist anti-hero; trapped in a terrifying void of hyperreality .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Reading the Body in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991): Confusing Signs and Signifiers
    Reading the Body in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991) David Roche To cite this version: David Roche. Reading the Body in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991): Confusing Signs and Signifiers. Groupe de Recherches Anglo-Américaines de Tours, Groupe de recherches anglo-américaines de Tours, Université de Tours, 1984-2008, 2009, 5 (1), pp.124-38. halshs-00451731 HAL Id: halshs-00451731 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00451731 Submitted on 6 Sep 2010 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 124 GRAAT On-Line issue #5.1 October 2009 Reading the Body in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991): Confusing Signs and Signifiers David Roche Université de Bourgogne In Ellis’s scandalous end-of-the-eighties novel American Psycho , the tale of Patrick Bateman—a Wall Street yuppie who claims to be a part-time psychopath— the body is first conceived of as a visible surface which must conform to the norms of the yuppies’ etiquette. I use the word “etiquette,” which Patrick uses (231) and which I oppose to the word “ethics” which suggests moral depth, to stretch how superficial the yuppie’s concerns are and to underline, notably, that the yuppie’s sense of self is limited to his social self, his public appearance, his self-image, which I relate to D.
    [Show full text]
  • Bret Easton Ellis's Glamorama and Jay Mcinerney's Model
    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
    [Show full text]
  • Unreliable Narration in Bret Easton Ellisâ•Ž American Psycho
    Current Narratives Volume 1 Issue 1 Narrative Inquiry: Breathing Life into Article 6 Talk, Text and the Visual January 2009 Unreliable narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho: Interaction between narrative form and thematic content Jennifer Phillips University of Wollongong, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/currentnarratives Recommended Citation Phillips, Jennifer, Unreliable narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho: Interaction between narrative form and thematic content, Current Narratives, 1, 2009, 60-68. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/currentnarratives/vol1/iss1/6 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Unreliable narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho: Interaction between narrative form and thematic content Abstract In this paper I analyse the narrative technique of unreliable narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991). Critics have been split about the reliability of Patrick Bateman, the novel’s gruesome narrator- protagonist. Using a new model for the detection of unreliable narration, I show that textual signs indicate that Patrick Bateman can be interpreted as an unreliable narrator. This paper reconciles two critical debates: (1) the aforementioned debate surrounding American Psycho, and (2) the debate surrounding the concept of unreliable narration itself. I show that my new model provides a solution to the weaknesses which have been identified in the rhetorical and cognitive models previously used to detect unreliable narration. Specifically, this new model reconciles the problematic reliance on the implied author in the rhetorical model, and the inconsistency of textual signs which is a weakness of the cognitive approach.
    [Show full text]
  • There Is an Idea of a Patrick Bateman, Some Kind of Abstraction, but There
    1 “…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.” Bret Easton Ellis, author of the controversial book American Psycho (1991) puts forward the thought that mind and body are distinct. The quote I shall be discussing is one of the protagonists’ (Patrick Bateman’s) key self-analysis, in which he believes that even though he physically exists, he is nothing more than an illusion and an abstraction. Bateman’s feelings of absence are reinforced by his numerous internal monologues, this quote being one of them. I will use Rene Descartes’ meditations along with the concept of the self in order to differentiate between mind and body, and to conclude whether Bateman is really not there. Firstly I will look at the concept of the self. Self-analysis is the first step to understand who you are, and self-conceptualization is a cognitive component of oneself. Once one is fully aware of oneself, that person then has a concept of himself/herself. This concept is usually broken down into two parts: The Existential Self and The Categorical Self. The existential self is the sense we get of being different from those around us, and the realization of the constancy of the self. The categorical self is when one realizes that he or she is distinct as well as an object in this world, thus having properties that may be experienced, just like any other object.
    [Show full text]
  • Periodization in the Bret Easton Ellis Decades
    The Privilege of Contemporary Life: Periodization in the Bret Easton Ellis Decades Theodore Martin Only the Utopian future is a place of truth in this sense, and the privilege of contemporary life and of the present lies not in its possession, but at best in the rigorous judgment it may be felt to pass on us. — Fredric Jameson, “Marxism and Historicism” He’s helping de!ne the decade, baby. — Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama Presents and Absence Is it possible to orient the un!nished present in history? The widen- ing net of globalization and the consequent fragmentation of everyday life have made it increasingly dif!cult, as Fredric Jameson observes, to grasp the historical signi!cance of the present: “The sense people have of themselves and their own moment of history may ultimately have noth- ing whatsoever to do with its reality.”1 But it seems equally likely that this inaccurate or even impossible self-presentation has been there all along, not only under the global diffusion of postmodernity but for as long as we have divided history into past, present, and future. The ability to organize historical events into a narrative of successive epochs or ages — a process of historical retrospection generally called periodization — seems logically unavailable to the present: in the immediacy or the embeddedness of the day-to-day, there is no place from which to make the external, totalizing judgment of history. “The present,” Jameson explains, “is not yet a historical period: it ought not to be able to name 1 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Dur- ham, NC: Duke University Press, "##$), "%$.
    [Show full text]
  • Sympathy for the Devil: Volatile Masculinities in Recent German and American Literatures
    Sympathy for the Devil: Volatile Masculinities in Recent German and American Literatures by Mary L. Knight Department of German Duke University Date:_____March 1, 2011______ Approved: ___________________________ William Collins Donahue, Supervisor ___________________________ Matthew Cohen ___________________________ Jochen Vogt ___________________________ Jakob Norberg Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of German in the Graduate School of Duke University 2011 ABSTRACT Sympathy for the Devil: Volatile Masculinities in Recent German and American Literatures by Mary L. Knight Department of German Duke University Date:_____March 1, 2011_______ Approved: ___________________________ William Collins Donahue, Supervisor ___________________________ Matthew Cohen ___________________________ Jochen Vogt ___________________________ Jakob Norberg An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of German in the Graduate School of Duke University 2011 Copyright by Mary L. Knight 2011 Abstract This study investigates how an ambivalence surrounding men and masculinity has been expressed and exploited in Pop literature since the late 1980s, focusing on works by German-speaking authors Christian Kracht and Benjamin Lebert and American author Bret Easton Ellis. I compare works from the United States with German and Swiss novels in an attempt to reveal the scope – as well as the national particularities – of these troubled gender identities and what it means in the context of recent debates about a “crisis” in masculinity in Western societies. My comparative work will also highlight the ways in which these particular literatures and cultures intersect, invade, and influence each other. In this examination, I demonstrate the complexity and success of the critical projects subsumed in the works of three authors too often underestimated by intellectual communities.
    [Show full text]
  • A Retrospective Reading of Glamorama's (1998) Reception1
    Re1•ista de Estudios Norteamerica11os. 11. º JO (2004), pp. 47 - 56 WHEN CONTEXT HIDES CONTENT: A RETROSPECTIVE READING OF GLAMORAMA'S (1998) RECEPTION1 SONIA B AELO ALLUÉ Universidad de Zaragoza This essay aims at studying the reception of Glamorama (1998), the Iatest novel to date of Bret Easton Ellis, one of the most controversial contemporary US authors. The analysis of this reception and its conclusions goes well beyond the specific case of a single author and constitutes, rather, a reflection of a cultural trend that usually takes place in the reception of literary works. This study delves into a series of questions: do contemporary authors' public personae play an important role in the way their works are interpreted? Is there an obsession with considering a literary work in relation to previous works of the same author? Do reviews of literary works deal with literary merit/demerit at ali? These are questions that pop up as we analyze the type of immediate reviews that the publication of Glamorama brought forth in the media, especially newspapers and magazines. The study of this reception will be used as basis to answer these introductory questions and to examine the role that context plays in the reception of literary works. The fact that these questions arise may support the belief that literary texts cannot be studied on their own anymore. As Tony Bennett claims, when analyzing a literary work one has to take into account «that everything which has been written about it, everything which has been collected on it, becomes attached to it - like shells on a rock by the seashore forming a whole incrustation» (1982: 3) (Klinger 107).
    [Show full text]
  • AMERICAN PSYCHO by Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner
    AMERICAN PSYCHO by Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis Fourth Draft November 1998 INT. PASTELS RESTAURANT- NIGHT An insanely expensive restaurant on the Upper East Side. The decor is a mixture of chi-chi and rustic, with swagged silk curtains, handwritten menus and pale pink tablecloths decorated with arrangements of moss, twigs and hideous exotic flowers. The clientele is young, wealthy and confident, dressed in the height of late-eighties style: pouffy Lacroix dresses, slinky Alaïa, Armani power suits. CLOSE-UP on a WAITER reading out the specials. WAITER With goat cheese profiteroles and I also have an arugula Caesar salad. For entrées tonight I have a swordfish meatloaf with onion marmalade, a rare-roasted partridge breast in raspberry coulis with a sorrel timbale... Huge white porcelain plates descend on very pale pink linen table cloths. Each of the entrees is a rectangle about four inches square and look exactly alike. CLOSE-UP on various diners as we hear fragments of conversation. "Is that Charlie Sheen over there?" "Excuse me? I ordered cactus pear sorbet." WAITER And grilled free-range rabbit with herbed French fries. Our pasta tonight is a squid ravioli in a lemon grass broth... CLOSE-UP on porcelain plates containing elaborate perpendicular desserts descending on another table. PATRICK BATEMAN, TIMOTHY PRICE, CRAIG MCDERMOTT and DAVID VAN PATTEN are at a table set for four. They are all wearing expensively cut suits and suspenders and have slicked-back Script provided for educational purposes. More scripts can be found here: http://www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/library hair.
    [Show full text]
  • Consumerism's Serial Annihilation of Women and the Self in American Psycho
    Fast Capitalism ISSN 1930-014X Volume 13 • Issue 1 • 2016 doi:10.32855/fcapital.201601.008 “Inside Doesn’t Matter”: Consumerism’s Serial Annihilation of Women and the Self in American Psycho Reagan Ross That…consumption is no longer restricted to the necessities but, on the contrary, mainly concentrates on the superfluities of life…harbors the grave danger that eventually no object of the world will be safe from consumption and annihilation through consumption. — (Arendt, 1958: 133) Perhaps no film more radically reveals the “serial killer” (cannibalistic) nature of consumerism than American Psycho (2000, Mary Harron). The implications of this disturbing “reality” are cataclysmically far reaching: The end of the world may not come from some tangible material catastrophe (at least insofar as it isn’t a corollary of this dehumanization process); rather, more insidiously, it may come via a psychological de-humanization process whereby we literally lose our humanity from the inside out. To understand this development, the film didactically reveals an all- consuming consumption fixation that begins with a food fetish but then is extended to the consumption of women in particular, Others in general, and, most disturbingly – and informing the first two – the “self.” The Political Didactic Before I discuss this film, I want to defend the importance of the popular political film (and I would strongly argue that American Psycho is one of the most radical political films ever to come out of Hollywood as I will show in this paper). Indeed, I would argue that the progressive (and subversive) potential of popular cinema in general is substantial.
    [Show full text]
  • Glamorama Free
    FREE GLAMORAMA PDF Bret Easton Ellis | 496 pages | 01 Apr 2011 | Pan MacMillan | 9780330536318 | English | London, United Kingdom Glamorama - IMDb Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Glamorama if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Glamorama Page. Preview — Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis. Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis. The author of American Psycho and Less Than Glamorama continues to shock and haunt Glamorama with his incisive and brilliant dissection of the modern world. In his most ambitious and gripping book yet, Bret Easton Ellis takes our celebrity obsessed culture and increases the volume exponentially. Set in 90s Manhattan, Victor Ward, a model with perfect abs and all the right friends, is s The author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero continues to shock and haunt us with his incisive and brilliant dissection Glamorama the modern world. Set in 90s Manhattan, Victor Ward, a model with perfect abs and Glamorama the right friends, is seen and photographed everywhere, even in places he hasn't been and with people he doesn't know. He's living with one beautiful model and having an affair with another onthe eve of opening the trendiest nightclub in New York City history. And now it's time Glamorama move to the next stage. But the future he gets is not the one he had in mind. With the same deft satire and savage wit he has brought to Glamorama other fiction, Bret Glamorama gets beyond the facade and Glamorama us, unsparingly, to what we always feared was behind it.
    [Show full text]
  • Autofictional Thought Experiments in Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
    Johannes Franzen Alternate Lives: Autofictional Thought Experiments in Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis Fictional narratives can be used to experiment with real lives: In 2005, after a seven-year hiatus, controversial American author Bret Easton Ellis published his fifth novel, Lunar Park. The publication of the book was met with some astonishment. In contrast to the cool detachment with which the author had evoked the cruelty of modern greed and consumerism in his other books, this novel seemed psychologically intimate and emotionally frank. Furthermore, the distinctive minimalism of Ellis’s style had been replaced by a reflective, almost garrulous narrator, who identified himself as the author Bret Easton Ellis. Especially this last detail seemed unsettling since thus far, Ellis had been known for his elaborate autobiographical evasions. His many media appear- ances and his well-publicized life as the enfant terrible of the literary world projected a highly artificial persona, more of a fictitious character than a real person. Lunar Park seemed like an aggressive break with this game of public hide and seek. On its first 30 pages, the book offers straightforward autobiography. Ellis tells the story of the early breakthrough with his first novel Less than Zero, which was published in 1985, when he was still in college. What follows is an account of his ascent to literary stardom, in which the author became part of the American celebrity culture. The shocking content of his books – the amoral attitude of his characters to drug abuse and sexual encounters as well as the depiction of extreme violence – gave him some notoriety.
    [Show full text]
  • Fandango Portobello
    Mongrel Media Presents THE CANYONS FILM FESTIVALS 2013 VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 100 MIN / U.S.A. / COLOR / 2012 / ENGLISH Distribution Publicity Bonne Smith Star PR 1028 Queen Street West Tel: 416-488-4436 Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 1H6 Fax: 416-488-8438 Tel: 416-516-9775 Fax: 416-516-0651 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] www.mongrelmedia.com High res stills may be downloaded from http://www.mongrelmedia.com/press.html SYNOPSIS Notorious writer Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) and acclaimed director Paul Schrader (writer of Taxi Driver and director of American Gigolo) join forces for this explicitly erotic thriller about youth, glamour, sex and surveillance. Manipulative and scheming young movie producer Christian (adult film star James Deen) makes films to keep his trust fund intact, while his actress girlfriend and bored plaything, Tara (Lindsay Lohan), hides a passionate affair with an actor from her past. When Christian becomes aware of Tara's infidelity, the young Angelenos are thrust into a violent, sexually- charged tour through the dark side of human nature. THE CANYONS BIOS BRAXTON POPE Braxton Pope is feature film and television producer who maintained a production deal with Lionsgate. Pope recently produced The Canyons written by Bret Easton Ellis, directed by Paul Schrader and starring Lindsay Lohan. The film generated national press because of the innovative way in which it was financed and produced and was the subject of a lengthy cover story in the New York Times Magazine. It will be released theatrically by IFC and was selected by the Venice Film Festival.
    [Show full text]