Consumed Lives: The Relationship Between Consumerism and Violence in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho

Abstract

In this thesis, I examine the relationship between consumerism and violence in Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho. When American Psycho was first released, it was widely criticised for both the vacuousness of its narration and its scenes of extreme violence. It was commonly argued that the novel lacked any real content due to its lengthy descriptions of various consumer products, while some critics claimed that the novel was misogynistic because of its detailed descriptions of violence against women. The purpose of this thesis is to show that there is, in fact, a strong and meaningful connection between the novel’s excessive focus on consumer products and its portrayals of violence. The hypothesis presented in this thesis is that through its shallow characters, heavy emphasis on empty consumerism, and graphic violence, the novel satirises the postmodern consumer culture. The theoretical framework employed in this thesis consists of various studies written on postmodernism and consumer culture, with heavy emphasis on Fredric Jameson’s theories on postmodernism and late capitalism as well as Jean Baudrillard’s theories on the simulacrum and simulation. As the novel can be seen as an example of postmodern literature, it is also analysed through three key devices of postmodern fiction that play a major role in the way that it constructs its satirical portrayal of consumerism: fragmentation, the erosion between high culture and mass culture, and pastiche. The analysis of the novel is divided into four parts: The first part focuses on the novel’s setting and the way that it represents the postmodern consumer society. In the second part, the emphasis is on the dehumanising effects of consumerism and the way that it is portrayed in the novel’s characters. The third part focuses on the novel’s criticism of the idea of finding personal identity through consumerism. And finally, in the fourth part, some of the novel’s violent scenes are analysed in close detail, with emphasis on the idea that the excessive nature of these scenes can be explained by the findings from the previous chapters. The key findings of this thesis are that the relationship between violence and consumerism is visible in the novel on two levels: Firstly, it discusses the violence of the capitalist system by showing the dichotomy between the novel’s main characters, who are wealthy Wall Street bankers, and the underprivileged people they come across throughout the novel. Secondly, it employs the hyperviolent segments in a satirical way, suggesting that for the novel’s main character, violence is a means of coping with the pressures caused by the incessant consumption and his vain efforts of finding a personal identity and keeping up his social status through consumer products.