1 UNIVERSITÉ CHARLES-DE-GAULLE – LILLE III UFR ANGELLIER FICTIONALISATION AND IDENTITY IN BRET EASTON ELLIS’S GLAMORAMA Note de recherche présentée en vue de l’obtention du diplôme de Maîtrise Frédéric AUBERT Directeur de recherche : Mme I. BOOF-WERMESSE Septembre 2003 2 3 UNIVERSITÉ CHARLES-DE-GAULLE – LILLE III UFR ANGELLIER FICTIONALISATION AND IDENTITY IN BRET EASTON ELLIS’S GLAMORAMA Note de recherche présentée en vue de l’obtention du diplôme de Maîtrise Frédéric AUBERT Directeur de recherche : Mme I. BOOF-WERMESSE Septembre 2003 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................6 PART I: THE HERMENEUTIC QUEST ................................................................11 1.1 Victor’s picaresque adventures ..................................................................................12 1.1.1The web of characters..............................................................................................13 1.1.1.1 Introduction of the two sets of characters........................................................13 1.1.1.2 Defamiliarization .............................................................................................14 1.1.1.3 The conspiracy.................................................................................................15 1.1.1.4 A three-layered conspiracy ..............................................................................16 1.1.1.5 The actors of the conspiracy ............................................................................16 1.1.2 Retroactive meaning and unstability.......................................................................18 1.1.3 Movies and camera teams.......................................................................................19 1.1.4 Places ......................................................................................................................20 1.1.4.1 Symbolic places ...............................................................................................24 1.2 The narrative as a system in constant evolution .......................................................26 1.2.1 The question of the narrator: the search for meaning .............................................27 1.2.1.1 Language..........................................................................................................27 1.2.1.2. Beyond the “here and the now”(G 60): narratorial supplement .....................29 1.2.2 The two movies.......................................................................................................31 1.2.3 Noise and truth........................................................................................................33 1.2.3.1 Redundancy and noise .....................................................................................33 1.2.3.1.1 Chapters and sections................................................................................33 1.2.3.1.2 Language as source of noise .....................................................................35 1.2.3.1.3 The extradiegetic voice.............................................................................36 1.2.3.2 Entropy.............................................................................................................38 1.2.3.3 The role of the reader.......................................................................................40 PART II: FICTIONAL WORLDS INTERFERING..................................................45 2.1 The delimitation of the spheres and the crossing of borders. ..................................46 2.1.1 The intertext............................................................................................................46 2.1.1.1 Pop Culture ......................................................................................................46 2.1.1.1.1 Pop culture in the plot...............................................................................47 2.1.1.1.2 Musical intertext .......................................................................................48 2.1.1.1.3 Magazines and advertising........................................................................50 2.1.1.1.4 The “universal third person”.....................................................................53 2.1.1.2 The literary intertext ........................................................................................54 2.1.1.2.1 Self-references and auto-parody ...............................................................54 2.1.1.2.2 Other literary references ...........................................................................56 2.1.1.3 Recycling characters........................................................................................57 2.1.1.3.1 Autochthones ............................................................................................58 5 2.1.1.3.2 Immigrants................................................................................................58 2.1.1.3.3 Auto-immigrants.......................................................................................59 2.1.1.3.4 Non-invested characters............................................................................60 2.1.1.3.5 Single and multi-facetted characters.........................................................61 2.1.1.4 Mixing literary genres......................................................................................62 2.1.1.4.1 A collection of styles ................................................................................62 2.1.1.4.2 Glamorama: a mock tragedy ...................................................................66 2.2The blurring of identities .............................................................................................69 2.2.1 Names and gender...................................................................................................69 2.2.2 Victor’s ready-made language................................................................................75 2.2.3 Mottos and lists: patterns of distinction..................................................................77 2.3 Confrontation of different levels of fiction in a hypersphere of fictional worlds...81 2.3.2 Glamorama as double fiction .................................................................................81 2.3.3 Demultiplication of the self through the media: “real TV” ....................................84 2.3.3.1 “Dramatic reconstructions”..............................................................................85 2.3.3.2 Multiple images: cinematographic devices......................................................87 2.3.4 Lost in fiction?........................................................................................................90 PART III: THE SATIRE OF FASHION AS TERRORISM .....................................93 3.1 The satire of the fashion industry...............................................................................94 3.1.1 The ultimate conspicuous consumption..................................................................95 3.1.2 Immaterial labor and immaterial characters ...........................................................97 3.1.2.1 Victor as an Ellis-ian antihero .........................................................................99 3.1.2.2 Interchangeability and identity ........................................................................99 3.1.3 The culture of images and the artificiality of desires............................................101 3.1.3.1 An ensemble of hyperrealities .......................................................................101 3.1.3.2 The artificiality of desire................................................................................102 3.2 The terrorism industry..............................................................................................105 3.2.1 Fashion as terrorism..............................................................................................105 3.2.2 Conspiracy and paranoia.......................................................................................109 3.2.2.1 Fate and the writer as terrorist .......................................................................109 3.2.2.2. Paranoia as a fictionalising device................................................................111 3.2.3 Motive and the self-defusing of the plot...............................................................113 3.2.3.1 The absurdity of moving through layers of fiction........................................114 3.2.3.2 The exclusion of the narrator from the diegesis and his redemption.............115 3.3 Celebrity and terrorism: the metaleptic dimension of Glamorama ......................118 3.3.1 Autobiographic irony............................................................................................118 3.3.2 Art as an exit.........................................................................................................120 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................123 Selected Bibliography....................................................................................................1237 Index..............................................................................................................................12331 6 INTRODUCTION 7 Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth. William