ABSTRACT |
Popular
and consumer culture have always played an important role in youth
culture. The nature of this role has been understood in very different
terms by different critics. On the one hand, for Stuart Hall and Paddy
Whannel (1964) it may be an expressive field for the young through which
they shape their own subcultures (Dick Hebdige 1988). For John Fiske
(1989), commercial entertainment culture carries the interest of the
economically and ideologically dominant but it also contains the
possibility of resistance, which allows people and the young to make
their own meanings. On the other hand, more conservative critics like
Allan Bloom (1987) deem popular culture responsible for the general
moral decadence of the young. In this paper I want to explore these
debates through Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero (1985), a
novel that deals with the 1980s consumer cultural excesses of the young
and rich in Los Angeles. They are part of a wealthy society that has
achieved all consumer culture dreams but which has created jaded and
nihilistic youth. Besides, there is no moral guidance coming from adults
since they are just as corrupt as the young. Thus, I will explore the
role that mass and consumer culture play in the novel for these young
people who have lost youth’s greatest power: the very possibility of
rebellion.
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