Download or read book American Consumer Culture and Its Society From F Scott Fitzgerald s 1920s Modernism to Bret Easton Ellis 1980s Blank Fiction written by Johannes Malkmes and published by Diplomica Verlag. This book was released on 2011-05 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Abandon All Hope Consumerism and Loss of Identity in Bret Easton Ellis s American Psycho As an Example of Blank Fiction written by Anja Schiel and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-04 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,5, University of Hamburg (Sprach-, Literatur- und Medienwissenschaft), language: English, abstract: Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho has been labeled many things from "Brat Pack Fiction" to "Generation X" to "Minimal Realism". While the classification of the novel might be difficult and it has often been misunderstood for its extremely violent scenes, what is clear to the attentive reader is its critique of consumer culture Critics have acknowledged an emergence of a large number of writings dealing with this topic in contemporary American literature in the recent past. These novels focus on the relationship of American youth with consumer culture with a seemingly non-elaborate content and style. Attempts of explaining this kind of writing, which has also been called "fiction of insurgency", "new narrative", "downtown writing" and "punk fiction", range from millennial angst to the classification of this literary movement as part of the postmodern culture. What seems clear is that these narrations are closely related to the society they have been created in. The way these texts incorporate products of their time as a constant accompanying element places them very clearly in a specific time period. The apparent non-existence of complexity concerning the style, which at times reminds the reader of a movie script or a sequence of an MTV video, has, in the case of American Psycho, caused many critics to classify the novel as boring and deny the author the status of an artist. Exactly this seeming meaninglessness of these novels argues in favor of a term introduced by critics James Annesley and Elizabeth Young: Blank fiction, or Blank Generation Fiction. The term Blank fiction seems to capture perfectly the emptiness created by consumer culture that has found its way into these narratives not simply in its context but also by means of its language, incorporating consumer goods i
Download or read book Bret Easton Ellis s American Psycho written by Julian Murphet and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2002-01-11 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years - from ‘The Remains of the Day' to ‘White Teeth'. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question.
Download or read book Myself is fabricated an aberration written by Reinhard Goebels and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-03-05 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Mannheim, course: Neorealism, language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the novel American Psycho by the American author Bret Easton Ellis and his place amongst other writers of the “blank generation”. The term “blank generation fiction” will be defined by citing those literary critics who extensively examined this trend, namely Elizabeth Young, Graham Caveney and James Annesley. Based on their work it will be shown how violence in blank generation fiction has not to be taken literally but can adopt symbolic meaning. Furthermore we shall see in an anlysis of American Psycho how this symbolic meaning develops in this novel in direct relation to the vast consumerism and the hyperreal quality of life in the 1980s. It will be closely examined how the seemingly unmotivated murderous behaviour of the novel ́s main protagonist can be interpreted as a direct, logical, if exaggerated result of mass culture and the principles of the free market. Finally it will be examined how Ellis integrates chapters written in the style of music journalism into his novel to stress both the fragmentation of the main protagonist ́s mind by the media and the perversity of the consumer who can easily switch from witnessing an act of extreme violence to unworriedly reflecting on something like music, another mass cultural phenomenon.
Download or read book Finance Fictions written by Arne De Boever and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finance Fictions takes the measure of what it means to live in a world ruled by high finance by examining the tension between psychosis and realism that plays out in the contemporary finance novel. When the things traded at the center of the economy cease to be things at all, but highly abstracted speculations, how do we come to see the real? What sorts of narrative can accurately approach the actual workings of a neoliberal economy marked by accelerating cycles of market crashes, economic and political crisis, and austerity? Revisiting such twentieth-century classics of the genre as Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, De Boever argues that the twenty-first century is witnessing the birth of a new kind of realistic novel that can make sense of complex financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and digital algorithms operating at speeds faster than what human beings or computers can record. If in 1989 Wolfe could still urge novelists to work harder to “tame the billion-footed beast of reality,” today’s economic reality confronts us with a difference that is qualitative rather than quantitative: a new financial ontology requiring new modes of thinking and writing. Mobilizing the philosophical thought of Quentin Meillassoux in the close reading of finance novels by Robert Harris, Michel Houellebecq, Ben Lerner and less well-known works of conceptual writing such as Mathew Timmons’ Credit, Finance Fictions argues that realism is in for a speculative update if it wants to take on the contemporary economy—an “if” whose implications turn out to be deeply political. Part literary study and part philosophical inquiry, Finance Fictions seeks to contribute to a new mindset for creative and critical work on finance in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book American Psycho written by Bret Easton Ellis and published by Picador. This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho is one of the most controversial and talked-about novels of all time. A multi-million-copy bestseller hailed as a modern classic, it is a violent and outrageous black comedy about the darkest side of human nature. With an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting. I like to dissect girls. Did you know I'm utterly insane? Patrick Bateman has it all: good looks, youth, charm, a job on Wall Street, and reservations at every new restaurant in town. He is also a psychopath. A man addicted to his superficial, perfect life, he pulls us into a dark underworld where the American Dream becomes a nightmare . . . Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.
Download or read book Simulacra and Nothingness in Bret Easton Ellis Less Than Zero written by Katharina Wagner and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2020-02-05 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar I), course: American Postmodern Literature, language: English, abstract: With his debut novel Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis set a milestone for a generation, who needed a voice. First published in 1985 when he was 21 and still at Bennington College, Ellis is now considered as the 'celebrity author' of the postmodern era, using the minimalist style for which the novel became famous. Writers of postmodern fiction, also called 'Blank Fiction', elegantly use a minimalist plot with flat characters in a simple style and as validated member of the 'Brat Pack', Ellis combines urban life, violence, drugs and consumerism. In the novel we follow Clay, the 18-year-old protagonist and student at Camden College in New Hampshire, coming back to Los Angeles for Christmas break. Experiencing several parties, concerts, affairs and drugs with his old friends, Clay explores the apathy, boredom and alienation from his old life. Although criticized for Ellis's straight nihilism, integrating his own celebrity persona into his art and creating a universe of immature characters who seem to grow older but without any growing effect, it is questionable, if Less Than Zero is only just that – a world inhabited by rich and shallow characters without any purpose. With the help of Jean Baudrillard's simulation theory and Sartre's theory of Being and Nothingness, which will be introduced before analyzing the novel, this paper will address Clays world of simulacra and Nothingness and argue for this being the purpose of the novel; creating a meaningless world. Through conversations and media, a Clay becomes visible, who seeks for more beyond the surface and shallowness and although the novel does not seem to follow a red thread, it suggests that Ellis as an author of 'blank fiction' is well aware of what he is doing with Less Than Zero. How can a novel be a how-to-torture, but also a book of serious ambition? (Baelo-Allué 2011) This paper will show that an 'in-between' is possible; an 'in-between' between “pornographic gore” and “serious postmodern literature” - and maybe the two phrases do not contradict each other so much as assumed.
Download or read book American Psycho and Social Criticism Illusion or Reality written by Lena Groß and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2014-02-24 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, language: English, abstract: The filming of Bret Easton Ellis’ bestseller novel American Psycho caused a major scandal after its publication in 2000 (Lee Brien). It covers the story of the serial killer Patrick Bateman, who enjoys a good reputation everywhere in Manhattan. Bateman is a young, athletic, handsome, successful, and stereotypical 1980s yuppie, who you are able to see in magazines, journals, advertising for Calvin Klein or Hugo Boss, and on Wall Street. On the other hand, he murders, rapes, tortures, mutilates, and cannibalizes his victims, but his cruel acts remain undetected. At first sight, Patrick’s behavior seems very irritating because he neither provides the audience with any reasons for his murders, nor with any psychological insight into his character to justify his actions. Taking a closer look, his behavior and violence are an expression of the materialistic, superficial nature of the American society to which Bateman wants to belong “and into which his sickness and inhumanity do actually ‘fit’” (Horsley 222). Although a lot of Bateman’s brutal actions are shown, at the end of the movie the audience comes to question if all these murders really happened because some inconsistencies in his story become apparent e.g. Bateman outlines the murder of a man, who at this point was not even in town. Therefore, the question is raised as to whether the murders are real or just a product of Bateman’s imagination, and if they are real, is the society so over the top that not even the crime matters and he is able to escape unpunished? In this paper, this question and especially what the murders are about to express either way will be analyzed in view of social criticism. Therefore, first of all, American society in the 1980s will be outlined to help the reader better understand the contemporary historical background to which the movie refers. Subsequently, the amoral materialism in American consumer society pictured in American Psycho will be described to clarify the social circumstances Bateman lives in. Accordingly, Bateman’s cruel actions will be analyzed and its truth content will be discussed to later on conclude that this kind of society is not able to fulfill his life and by the help of violence Bateman wants to escape the conformity of America’s superficial society.
Download or read book Bret Easton Ellis s Controversial Fiction written by Sonia Baelo-Allué and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-04-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both literary author and celebrity, Bret Easton Ellis represents a type of contemporary writer who draws from both high and the low culture, using popular culture references, styles and subject matters in a literary fiction that goes beyond mere entertainment. His fiction, arousing the interest of the academia, mass media and general public, has fuelled heated controversy over his work. This controversy has often prevented serious analysis of his fiction, and this book is the first monograph to fill in this gap by offering a comprehensive textual and contextual analysis of his most important works up to the latest novel Imperial Bedrooms. Offering a study of the reception of each novel, the influence of popular, mass and consumer culture in them, and the analysis of their literary style, it takes into account the controversies surrounding the novels and the changes produced in the shifty terrain of the literary marketplace. It offers anyone studying contemporary American fiction a thorough and unique analysis of Ellis's work and his own place in the literary and cultural panorama.
Download or read book American Psycho written by Jason Huff and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Violence and Consumerism in Bret Easton Ellis s American Psycho and Chuck Palahniuk s Fight Club written by Michael Frank and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-11-08 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examination Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,5, University of Heidelberg, language: English, abstract: "Art has always reflected society. [...] Fight Club examines violence and the roots of frustration that are causing people to reach out for such radical solutions. And that's exactly the sort of discussion we should be having about our culture. Because a culture that doesn't examine its violence is a culture in denial, which is much more dangerous." This assessment of Fight Club by Edward Norton, who plays the narrator in the novel’s movie adaptation, explains the reasoning behind this thesis, which examines the basic principles of today’s consumer culture, its connection to aggression and violence, and the way these topics are presented in two contemporary novels: Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. In these books, the respective protagonists face similar deadlocks connected to life in the consumerist world of the 1980s and 1990s. Despite, evidently, having everything a person could ask for, both main characters’ lives remain unfulfilled, leaving them frustrated and dissatisfied. As it turns out, acts of violence become the only thing that lets them get away from the boredom of their daily routine and gives them a sense of satisfaction.
Download or read book Less Than Zero written by Bret Easton Ellis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-06-09 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The timeless classic from the acclaimed author of American Psycho about the lost generation of 1980s Los Angeles who experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. • The basis for the cult-classic film "Possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality." —The New York Times They live in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money in a place devoid of feeling or hope. When Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college, he re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark. Look for Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, The Shards!
Download or read book American Psycho Less Than Zero written by and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Psycho written by Bret Easton Ellis and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chokerende afsløring af den amerikanske drøms bagside. Hovedpersonen er en ung finansmand i New York, og romanen registrerer minutiøst hans overfladiske yuppietilværelse og hans natlige eskapader af pervers sex, vold og mord.
Download or read book Lunar Park written by Bret Easton Ellis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2005-08-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of American Psycho and Less Than Zero comes a chilling tale that combines reality, memoir, and fantasy to create a fascinating portrait of this most controversial writer but also a deeply moving novel about love and loss, parents and children, and ultimately forgiveness. “John Cheever writes The Shining.” —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly Bret Ellis, the narrator of Lunar Park, is the bestselling writer whose first novel Less Than Zero catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed he found himself adrift in a world of wealth, drugs, and fame, as well as dealing with the unexpected death of his abusive father. After a decade of decadence a chance for salvation arrives; the chance to reconnect with an actress he was once involved with, and their son. But almost immediately his new life is threatened by a freak sequence of events and a bizarre series of murders that all seem to connect to Ellis’s past. His attempts to save his new world from his own demons makes Lunar Park Ellis’s most suspenseful novel. Look for Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, The Shards!
Download or read book Glamorama written by Bret Easton Ellis and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-12-10 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Glamorama, Bret Easton Ellis delivers a shadowy, looking-glass world. It is a world where fame and fashion, terror and mayhem meet – and begin to resemble the familiar surface of our own lives . . . The centre of the world: 1990s Manhattan. Victor Ward, a model with perfect abs and all the right friends, is seen and photographed everywhere. Even in places he hasn’t been, and with people he doesn’t know. On the eve of opening the trendiest nightclub in New York history, he’s living with one beautiful model and having an affair with another. Now it’s time to move to the next stage. But the future he gets is not the one he had in mind . . . 'Does for the cold, minimal ’90s what American Psycho did for the Wall Street greed of the ’80s. You name it, he manages to get it all in' – Vogue
Download or read book Transfigurations written by Asbjørn Grønstad and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many senses, viewers have cut their teeth on the violence in American cinema: from Anthony Perkins slashing Janet Leigh in the most infamous of shower scenes; to the 1970s masterpieces of Martin Scorsese, Sam Peckinpah and Francis Ford Coppola; to our present-day undertakings in imagining global annihilations through terrorism, war, and alien grudges. Transfigurations brings our cultural obsession with film violence into a renewed dialogue with contemporary theory. Grønstad argues that the use of violence in Hollywood films should be understood semiotically rather than viewed realistically; Tranfigurations thus alters both our methodology of reading violence in films and the meanings we assign to them, depicting violence not as a self-contained incident, but as a convoluted network of our own cultural ideologies and beliefs.
