Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

American Psycho or Postmodern Gothic

1999; Editorial Universidad de Sevilla; Volume: 2; Issue: 13 Linguagem: Inglês

10.12795/ph.1999.v13.i02.03

2253-8321

Sonia Baelo Allué,

Themes in Literature Analysis

Throughout two centuries the term 'gothic' has undergone an evolution.Hornee Walpole's Castle of Ostranto (1764) is generally considered the first gothic novel, showing a fascination with the Jacobean, medieval, sentimental and sublime.After this novel, there was a proliferation of gothic motifs such as the graveyard, the castle, spectres, monsters, corpses, monks and nuns.Ever since, horror stories have changed to adapt themselves to the atmosphere, style and setting dictated by the social reality that they have encountered. 1 The 20th century has transformed sorne of these motifs, increasing their realism.On many occasions the modern city has replaced the gothic castle and forest and the villains are now psycho-killers.The contemporary gothic still presents narratives of darkness, desire and power, although these effects are achieved through new techniques and have extended into different genres and media.This paper focuses on one of these narratives, American Psycho, a narrative that encompasses and combines 20th-century gothic techniques and effects, together with a sharp social critique of the decade of the 80s in America.Most critics agree that the 20th century has seen the expansion of the gothic, which is now used in a wider range of contexts: cinema, musical videos, advertisements, comics (Jancovich 83; Botting 154; Punter 119; Bloom 3).Clive Bloom even mentions the art deco of New York' s skyscrapers as a real-life equivalent to the gothic castles (2).What was once a literary genre is now present in a wide range of cultural manifestations and this has produced a self-awareness of the genre.Literary characters make reference to cinematic ones.Thus, saying that cinema and literature have drunk from each other for inspiration would not be too far-fetched.The first cinematic adaptations of gothic literary classics such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) or the adaptations of Stephen King's novels seem to confirm one side of this theory.On the other hand, these last decades have also seen how the cinematic tradition of the slasher movies, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer (1989) or Halloween (1978) among others, has influenced many literary writers.David Punter names Thomas Harris, Iain Banks, Will .American Psycho (1991) is the best known novel of Bret Easton Ellis.It reflects with great accuracy how the gothic traits have extended to embrace also other characteristics mainly developed through cinema, magazines, newspapers.The book reflects these tendencies through its own uncertain generic form, which is a trait typical of postmodern gothic 1 Gothic may produce two effects: terror and horror.Terror is a mental effect, an elevation of the soul.1t is positive because it reconstitutes the limits of the self and of society.On the other hand, horror is more dangerous since there is no elevation of the soul but a physical reaction.Terror developed especially in the first manifestations of the genre, nowadays horror is more widespread (Botting 9-10).