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 into the narrative as secondary characters, in the case of American Psycho ascribing more character to these objects than to the protagonists.
Table of Contents
0 Introduction
1 Blank Fiction
1.1 A new direction of culture and literature
1.1.1 Blank Fiction and Postmodernism: attempts to classify a new literary movement
1.1.2 Fiction within a cultural context: Consumer Culture as a defining factor of Blank Fiction
1.2 American Psycho as Blank Fiction
2 Consumer Culture in Literature – A Recent Development?
3 Consumerism and Loss of Identity
3.1 Belongingness or: Trying to Fit In
3.1.1 Labels
3.1.1.1 Fashion
3.1.1.2 Otherness
3.1.1.3 Looks
3.1.1.4 Narcissism
3.1.1.5 Choice: Shopping and Accumulation
3.1.2 Food and Restaurants
3.1.3 Drugs and Drinks
3.1.4 Producer or Product?
3.2 Reality
3.2.1 Narrator Reliability
3.2.1.1 Violence
3.2.1.2 Voice
3.2.1.2.1 Changes in Tense and Point of View
3.2.1.2.2 Music
3.2.2 Media
3.3 “This is not an Exit”
3.3.1 Circularity
3.3.2 “Abandon all Hope”
3.3.2.1 Values
3.3.3.2 History. Or: Past, Present, Future
4 Conclusion
Objectives and Topics
This paper examines the correlation between consumer culture and the erosion of personal identity in Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho, categorizing it within the literary movement of "Blank Fiction." The study explores how the protagonist’s immersion in a consumerist society leads to a total collapse of individuality, using F. Scott Fitzgerald's modernist works as a comparative framework to highlight the specific nature of this postmodern deterioration.
- Analysis of "Blank Fiction" as a literary movement rooted in postmodernism.
- The symbiotic relationship between commodified language and the subject.
- Comparative study of consumer culture in Modernism vs. Blank Fiction.
- The impact of mass media, labels, and status symbols on self-identity.
- The blurring of reality and the desensitization toward violence.
Excerpt from the Book
3.1 Consumerism and Loss of Identity
As the main objective of this paper is to show the loss of identity in a consumerist environment in the novel American Psycho, in the following chapter I am going to discuss at length the different aspects of the novel that underline the identity-threatening effects the consumer culture of the 1980s as depicted in American Psycho has on its protagonist, Patrick Bateman. There are three main aspects which push Bateman’s loss of identity and trigger his deterioration: His compulsive need to fit in with his peers driven by the need of identity-formation through the use of specific products in consumer society, which manifests itself in the obsession with the “right” item and the rejection of anything different from the current fads and fashions, the resulting loss of a sense of reality caused by the inability to understand the difference between consumer objects and human life and the final deterioration of a character with no personal identity and no hope of escape from a life of pure surface.
Summary of Chapters
0 Introduction: Introduces the novel as a work of "Blank Fiction" and outlines the core argument regarding the critique of consumer culture and the resulting loss of identity.
1 Blank Fiction: Defines the literary movement of "Blank Fiction" within the context of postmodernism and discusses the influence of 1980s consumer culture on literature.
2 Consumer Culture in Literature – A Recent Development?: Compares the treatment of consumerism in modernist works by F. Scott Fitzgerald with the more extreme, totalizing immersion found in Blank Fiction.
3 Consumerism and Loss of Identity: Analyzes how the protagonist, Patrick Bateman, loses his identity through the compulsive need for status symbols, labels, and the commodification of his own self and those around him.
4 Conclusion: Summarizes the findings, asserting that Bateman's loss of identity is a direct consequence of a culture defined entirely by surface, where redemption and escape are impossible.
Keywords
American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis, Blank Fiction, Consumer Culture, Loss of Identity, Postmodernism, Patrick Bateman, Commodification, Consumerism, Materialism, Yuppie, Status Symbols, Narrative Reliability, Modernism, 1980s.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the primary focus of this academic work?
The paper focuses on the effects of 1980s consumer culture on personal identity as portrayed in Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho, categorizing it as "Blank Fiction."
What are the central thematic fields explored?
The central themes include the relationship between the individual and consumer goods, the loss of individual identity, the influence of media, and the specific socio-cultural environment of the 1980s.
What is the main research question or goal?
The goal is to demonstrate how Patrick Bateman’s existence is defined solely by consumption, leading to a complete erosion of his self and a detachment from reality.
Which scientific methods are employed?
The author uses a literary analysis approach, employing comparative studies between Blank Fiction and Modernist literature (specifically F. Scott Fitzgerald) and incorporating cultural theory.
What is addressed in the main body of the work?
The main body examines the role of labels, the obsession with looks and status, the failure to distinguish between persons and products, and the circular, hopeless structure of the protagonist's life.
Which keywords best characterize this research?
Key terms include Blank Fiction, Consumer Culture, Loss of Identity, Postmodernism, Commodification, and Yuppie-culture.
How does the author define the "Blank" in Blank Fiction?
The author uses "Blank" to describe an emptiness created by consumer culture, where the characters are defined entirely by superficial, external markers rather than an inner self.
Why is F. Scott Fitzgerald used as a point of comparison?
Fitzgerald’s modernist novels provide a contrast to illustrate how consumerism has shifted from being a "prop" or status symbol to becoming a total environment that consumes the subject itself.
How is the narrator’s reliability assessed?
The narrator, Patrick Bateman, is considered extremely unreliable because he loses touch with reality, confuses identities, and provides a narrative stream that mirrors his own fragmented, consumer-driven insanity.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Anja Schiel (Autor:in), 2005, “Abandon All Hope” - consumerism and loss of identity in Bret Easton Ellis’s "American Psycho" as an example of blank fiction, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/90034
