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"Nick" (no login)
Posted Apr 22, 2008 9:13 PM
The goal of my essay is to identify and analyze the violence in Bret Easton Ellis's and Mary Harron's (novel and film, respectively) American Psycho, and Park Chan-wook's film, Oldboy as it is present, perceived, and perpetuated with regard to both the individual and the society in which s/he resides.
In her book, On Violence, Hannah Arendt contextualizes violence as something which requires a group to be enacted, and is so enacted in opposition to, the individual. By this definition of power structure, it appears as though Patrick Bateman and Oh Dae-su, are acting as (justified) individuals, against a (truly and unjustly) violent society. Though they act in ostensibly "violent" ways, such as physical combat, really, they are just seeking vengeance against a society which has made that sort of vengeance a necessary (and singular) outlet.
These two works have received different, and often hotly debated, criticisms. Conservatives judge the works to be violent, that is to say, "violence" is a property inherent to the book and any reader will be, in addition to pained by the reception, encouraged by it act violently. This is the shallow, singular interpretation which says things are just as seem. Other critics favor a deeper interpretation which favors artistry, symbolism, and multiplicity.
Jean-Paul Sartre's theories on performative subjectivity in perception can explain the adamantly negative responses to American Psycho and Oldboy. Many people have condemned what they see to be violence in these works, and I want to explore the possibility that these critics are themselves violent, and simply found what they were looking for.
Continuing with the philosophies of Marco Abel, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida I find that "judgment is not an exit." Violence is more complicated than the common sense notion, and cannot be categorized, that is, separated from the condemner; if violence is present in a work, it is equally present in those who condemn it as such, thus invalidating the moral substance of their judgment. I think that Ellis, Harron, and Chan-wook were aware of judgment's inherent hypocrisy, and made their works intentionally controversial, so as to induce such hypocrisy.
I will conclude with the thought that extreme literature, as rising out of the post-modernist movement, uses irony to first confuse (or simply evoke), but primarily to convey meanings which transcend the power of literalism. I think that American Psycho and Oldboy are commentaries on the violence inherent to the nature of society, and the threat this structure poses to those attempting to live autonomously. In the case of Patrick Bateman and Oh Dae-su, it is once they confront society, and try to act independently of its mold that they face its hopelessness.
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