Ellis's and Palahniuk's Literature Representation of Sexuality - Book Report/Review Example

SEXUALITY IN TONI MORRISON'S 'BELOVED' AND BRET EASTON ELLIS' 'AMERICAN PSYCHO' Late-twentieth century both men and women, have increasinglyused the themes of class, gender and sexuality for representing the prevailing, as well as the changing, social structures and exploitative social controls by one class over the other. Sexuality, a complex social construction using the sex/gender hierarchy, which operates both on the personal level of individual consciousness and interpersonal relationships, and on the social structural level of social institutions as families, presents potential scope as a theme for representing social control and domination, as individual perceptions, apprehensions and fears about sexuality could be used to portray larger systems of oppression [Foucault, 1980; p. 99], perhaps vice versa too. The late-twentieth century literature, particularly American novels, is replete with the use of sexuality as a form of self-expression of the characters, and also as a means of portraying social control, domination and exploitation. Toni Morrison's Beloved, dealing with the harrowing and haunting effects of slavery, and Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, presenting the sexual idiosyncrasies of a psycho-path, treat sexuality in distinctly different ways, former representing the oppressed and exploited 'black' sexuality, and the latter the domineering and exploitative 'white' sexuality. A comparative analysis of the two may prove useful in understanding and appreciating the social constructs of sexuality in American culture and literature. Toni Morrison, the most powerful Black woman writer of the 1980s and the 1990s, is acclaimed for her exceptional treatment of gender and sexuality, ingeniously combining it with race and class, in intensifying the gender roles and sexuality of her female characters [Christian, 1985]. Dealing with the social oppression of Black woman, Morrison uses sexuality, both as a means of entertainment and expression of the self and also as a symbol of freedom and power to exert influence and control by her socially oppressed and deprived women characters. Morrison even exemplifies sexuality as a glorious expression of love and freedom, going beyond the usual constructs of sex and gender, and as having an energy that may liberate the blacks from the shackles of oppression. In Beloved Morrison glorifies sexuality as a benign expression of love and freedom through the character of Baby Suggs, an inspired holy woman, who has emerged from her former life as a slave, realising the power of sexuality and love in emancipating the oppressed. Sexuality, as an expression of love assumes a kind of divinity, a construct that goes beyond the constructions of sex/gender, as she speaks to her people trying to heal their abused and mutilated bodies and shattered psyches: "This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved... feet... backs... shoulders... arms... neck... inside parts... the dark, dark liver--love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that tooLong notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh." [Morrison, 1987; p. 89] Even as Morrison imparts certain holiness to sexuality at the level of individual consciousness, she also employs the usual treatment of sexuality as a means of influence and control at the social structural level and also as a means of entertainment by the socially oppressed and deprived class - Sethe's sexual exploitation at Sweet Home by the schoolteacher and his nephews, and the sexuality between Sethe and Halle represent this usual treatment of sexuality in African American literature. Morrison also present unique possibilities of sexuality, as exemplified by the heterosexual relationships shared by Paul D, Sethe and Beloved - as a source of pleasure and healing at the social levels and as an opportunity for reencountering the past and identifying the essential self at the level of individual consciousness [Koolish, 2001]. 'Tense and distanced, complex and difficult, passionate and deeply tender, sexuality between Paul D and Sethe ignites in each of them an awareness both of the splitting self and of the possibility of healing" [Koolish, 2001]. Yet, afraid to love big and disappointed with Sethe's "thick" love, Paul D. encounters the irresistible and forceful sexuality of Beloved, "a girl young enough to be his daughter" [Morrison, 1987; p. 126] - her sexuality forcing him to touch the "inside part" revealing to him his own "red heart" [Morrison, 1987; p. 117]. Though caught in repulsion and personal shame, "he is thankful too for having been escorted to some ocean-deep place he once belonged to" [Morrison, 1987; p. 264]. Barbara Schapiro analyses Beloved's sexual approach as her "hunger" to be "recognized," and her need to be known, "in [her] inner being or essential self" [Schapiro, 1991; p. 201]. Nevertheless, Beloved, who loathes the presence of Paul D, deviously uses her sexuality to influence and control him, even to drive him out of the house and out of Sethe's life. Paul D remains strangely helpless to stop her as she moves him into the cold house and is unable to resist her when she comes in the night and says: "You have to touch me. On the inside part. And you have to call me my name." [Morrison, 1987; p. 264]. Beloved's sexuality, shatters Paul D's consciousness and opens the rusted-shut seams of his tobacco tin, revealing his red heart and reminding him of "something. Something,....[he is] supposed to remember" [Morrison, 1987; p. 234] -his suppressed self, the self who is unafraid to love big [Morrison, 1987; p. 10] . But, Beloved's sexuality "arouses Paul D's most terrifying fear: being made into an animal, into something smaller and more unmanned than a rooster." [Koolish, 2001] With the definite and startling expression of her sexuality Beloved craftily manipulates Paul D., controlling his masculine sensitivities and coercing him subtly into behaving in a manner, that she wants. If Toni Morrison's Beloved presents the sexuality as positive force, a tool for emancipation, influence and self-identification in a harrowing, hopeless world of oppression and abuse, Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, presents a horrid version of sexuality - a morally corrupting, shocking version of the free, abusive and voyeuristic white American sexuality. Dealing with violence, indulgence, sexual excess and all things superficial, 'American Psycho' belongs to what Young and Caveney called the "blank generation" genre of novels, [Young and Caveney, 1992] and presents the perverted aspirations of Patrick Bateman, a rich, white, heterosexual Manhattan yuppie - a symbol of the excesses of New York in the 80s: Wall Street, exotic eateries and expensive major-label suits. [Annesley, 1998; p. 5] Though Bateman seems to be a successful young man - an arrogant and egomaniac investment banker who perfectly fits into the American society of the 1980s and 1990s-he is actually a sexist and a xenophobic serial killer. While he brutally kills men and women, and even children and homosexuals, the killings of women assume significance for the prolonged and perverse treatment of female sexuality. While his killings of men are brisk and straight: "The axe hits him in midsentence, straight in the face. It takes Paul five minutes to finally die. Another thirty to stop bleeding," [ Ellis, 1991 p.217] women are subjected to perverse sexual violence and torture as he brutally mutilates them: "she stays alive long enough to watch me pull her legs away from her body -- her actual thighs, what's left of her mutilated vagina -- and hold them up in front of me, spouting blood, like trophies almost." [ Ellis, 1991 p. 329] For Bateman, whose "normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated," [Ellis, 1991 p. 282] abusing female sexuality is apparently a source of voyeuristic pleasure, a way of exerting his 'male power.' Confronting the indifferent girl at the video rental shop, he fantasises: "The things I could do to this girl's body with a hammer, the words I could carve into her with an ice pick" [Ellis, 1991 p. 112] Apart from venting his rage and asserting control, for the intensely "depersonalised" Bateman, for whom "sex is mathematics," [Ellis, 1991 p. 375] watching the pain and agony of abused and mutilated women is perhaps, as Blazer observes, the closest way in which he can experience any sort of feeling. [Blazer, 2002] Ellis uses brutal, violent sexuality "to cause feeling into the hollow image that constitutes [Bateman's] very psychic identity" [Blazer, 2002] Essentially dealing with the dehumanising effects of all-encompassing consumerism, in 'American Psycho' Ellis treats sexuality as a process of material exchange for consumption. In so doing, Ellis exemplifies the increasing commodification of sex and sexuality in pop-cultural societies. Serialised and devoid of any emotion, sexuality becomes a symbol of consumerism, blurring the difference between consuming objects and consuming human beings - "Her breasts have been chopped off Surrounded by dried black blood, they lie, rather delicately, on a china plate I bought at the Pottery Barn... Most of her chest is indistinguishable from her neck, which looks like ground-up meat, her stomach resembles the eggplant and goat cheese lasagna at Il Marlibro or some other kind of dog food" [Ellis, 1991 p. 344] He even stores the mutilated parts of the women he had assaulted, as material objects for future consumption: "In my locker in the locker room at Xclusive lie three vaginas I recently sliced out of various women I've attacked in the past week." [Ellis, 1991 p. 370] Narrated in first person from the point of view of Bateman, the novel awfully lacks the female perspective of the violent sexuality. Culminating invariably in sexual torture and murder, Ellis' graphical narration of Bateman's sexual perversions conditions the readers to solely experience male heterosexual sexuality linked with brutal sexual violence. To this level, novel assumes no more significance than a vulgar misogynistic pornography; even so Ellis' treatment of violent sexuality presents a 'politically correct' critique of a politically incorrect society in which violence is considered entertainment and brutality a fact of life. [Annesley, 1998] Even as Bateman admits "I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling," and that "the confession meant nothing" to him [Ellis, 1991 p. 377] the perverse treatment of sexuality, with its all its deplorable violence and inexcusable sadism, terribly touches on the reader, alluding him to think seriously about the abused sexuality of women -- her mutilated body and broken soul that "begs for mercy in a high thin voice." [Ellis, 1991 p. 304] In conclusion, from a comparative perspective, while Morrison treats sexuality as a positive, restoring force for a society, living through both oppression and deprivation, Ellis treats sexuality as a commodity, an object for consumption, in a increasingly consumerist, affluent society. Yet, both the novels, uses sexuality, though in distinct ways, as a symbol of influence and control to portray larger systems of oppression germane to the society and culture they represent. Works Cited 1. Annesley, James. Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture and the Contemporary American Novel. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. 2. Blazer, Alex. "Chasms of Reality, Aberrations of Identity: Defining the Postmodern through Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho." Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present) 1.2 (Fall 2002) http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2002/blazer.htm Accessed 05/04/06 3. Christian, Barbara. Black Feminist Criticism, Perspectives on Black Women Writers. New York: Pergamon, 1985. 4. Ellis, Brett Easton. American Psycho. New York: Vintage-Random, 1991. 5. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, Ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon, 1980. 6. Koolish, Lynda. "To Be Loved and Cry Shame: A Psychological Reading of Toni Morrison's Beloved." MELUS: [Special Issue] African American Literature 26.4 (2001): 169-195. Available at: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2278/is_4_26/ai_86063232 Accessed 05/04/06 7. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987. 8. Schapiro, Barbara. "The Bonds of Love and the Boundaries of Self in Toni Morrison's Beloved." Contemporary Literature 32.2 (1991): 194-209. 9. Young, Elizabeth, and Graham Caveney. Shopping in Space: Essays on American "Blank Generation" Fiction. London: Serpent's Tail, 1992. Read More