Less Than
Zero is a
novel in the ‘bildungsroman’ genre, a novel about the so-called ‘blank
generation’. The term blank generation was coined by Richard Hell who released
an album in 1977 called blank generation. Richard Hell described its meaning
thusly, ‘it’s the idea that you have the option of making yourself anything you
want, filling in the blank... It’s saying, ‘I entirely reject your standards
for judging my behaviour’’. In literary terms, blank fiction refers to a
‘bratpack’ style group of writers whose subject matter - drugs, violence,
commodities and youth culture - is presented using detached or disengaged
rhetoric. Of these writers, Bret Easton Ellis is one of the most well-known and
his debut novel, Less Than Zero, is considered a cornerstone in
this genre of literature.
The novel
is told using the narrative voice of Clay, a young man in his late teenage
years or early twenties, who returns home from college and finds himself
quickly re-immersed in the angry, disaffected, disengaged lifestyle of his high
school friends whose prolific drug use and the associated lifestyle begins to
pull Clay into a downward spiralling vortex of confused desperation.
In 2008,
Ashley Minix Donnelly wrote her graduate thesis, Blank Power: The
Social and Political Criticism of Blank Fiction and Cinema, focussing
on ‘blank generation’ literature. Within that thesis which is published online,
Minix Donnelly explores Bret Easton Ellis’ novel Less Than Zero.
This blog
post will examine Minix Donnelly’s assessment of Less Than Zero, focusing
in particular on her understanding of the novel’s representation of
commodification, drug use and youth culture in relation to ‘the blank
generation’, i.e., the wealthy generation of 1980's youths (those in their late
teens and early twenties,) growing up in LA.
Minix
Donnelly makes the point that often ‘blank literature’ is ‘intended to motivate
a complacent audience and ignite passion in American readers against the
injustice faced by their fellow citizens’. This idea can certainly
be applied to Less Than Zero. If a society has a dominant set of ideas and values
that are seen to be shared by the majority of members within that society (organic
culture), then examination of Less Than Zero provides an
excellent opportunity to counter such a perspective. Less Than Zero offers
what one might describe as an anti-culture perspective, that of a group within
society whose ideas and values are in direct conflict with the dominant values
of the culture within which they exist.
In
addition, Minix Donnelly suggests that the debauchery that is often found in
‘blank fiction acts as a cautionary tale that serves to promote the current
values of society by showing the malfunction of society if people deviate from
those values. She agrees with James Annersley’s view in Blank Fictions:
Consumerism, Culture, and the Contemporary American Novel, referring
to his suggestion that ‘the violent, destructive and decadent’ nature of this
genre is intended to represent ‘the apocalypse culture’ of the late 20th century’. Minix
Donnelly suggests that the ‘overwhelming sense of hopelessness’ that is
prevalent in the genre is to be explained in this way, and it is certainly my
belief that her theory can be applied to Less Than Zero, when one considers the
political and ideological backdrop against which the novel is set.
In the
U.S. during the 1980s the dominant culture was bred by the embracing of
right-wing politics (those of the Reagan administration), which included the
celebrated era of consumerism, of which the Yuppie is perhaps the most easily
recognised symbol. This new and exciting era was especially well
received given that the US was only just beginning to rise from the ashes of
‘Cold War Culture’, a period prior to the era of commodification when a sense
of responsibility and seriousness was the dominant ideology. However,
the era of consumerism was not regarded as the answer to a progressive society
by all Americans. Whilst ‘Cold War
Culture’ had been countered by the rise of the 1960's and 1970’s angry youth in
what has come to be known as the punk era, the 1980s dominant culture was
countered by the ‘blank generation’, the 1980s angry youth who set out to buck
against what they perceived as ‘mainstream’ ideologies that they felt did not
represent who they truly were. (It is fairly ironic that it would in
fact be this generation who would, in just a decade or so, feed into the idea
of commodification more than any generation before them, through their total
immersion in – and subservience to – the information age.)
This
doesn’t mean that Less Than Zero is not a valuable work of
literature or that it does not give an accurate reflection of life for some of
America’s youth at that time. I would indeed argue to the
contrary: Danny Bonaduce, a college student at the time of Less
Than Zero’s publication, was very clear in his autobiography that he
and some of his fellow students felt that they were the characters about whom
Ellis was writing. Less Than Zero offers one perspective,
which is particularly easy to recognise due to the first-person narrative that
acts as a sort of ‘stream of consciousness’ of the protagonist, Clay, one of
LA’s angry youth. What we must recognise however, is that it is only
representing this section of society, and however small or large that group is,
the book cannot be considered to represent the very many of sections of society
whose views, or ideologies differ from – and in many cases directly oppose –
those represented in Ellis’ novel. This does not mean that the novel
is unworthy of critical reflection, which
is a view that Minix argues is often taken by critics who struggle to
separate the content of blank fiction literature from its context and thus
consider work in this genre as ‘superficial works of popular culture’. Indeed Less Than Zero continues to be regarded
as an edgy, stark piece of literature and one worthy of respect in its field.
However, in
some ways Less Than Zero is in fact offering the same kind of mainstream
approach as, for example, the movies of John Hughes. Hughes’ films
are very often seen as ‘the voice of a generation’, and it is certainly true
that for some of that generation that is exactly what they were. However,
it is utterly false to suggest that any of Hughes films completely represent
every member of that generation, or that they represent any one person’s entire
ideology, viewpoint, or values. Rather, his movies reflect one or
some aspects of life in some parts of America for some people who predominantly
belong to a particular generation. In the same way, Less Than Zero can be seen
in this light regardless of its dark and at times uncomfortable content, and
therefore, whilst I appreciate the novel for its representation of one aspect
of 1980s culture, and whilst I hold it in high regard for its literary value, I
do not see Less Than Zero as the voice of a generation, instead I
consider it to be an enjoyably dark, yet still rather mainstream, ‘coming of
age’ novel.
Bonaduce, D., Random Acts of Badness: My Story (U.S.,
2001), p.62
Annersley, J., Blank Fictions:
Consumerism, Culture, and the Contemporary American Novel (London, 1998) p.108
Released in 1989, Born on the Fourth of July follows a teenager (Tom Cruise) who fights as a marine in the Vietnam War after always dreaming about serving his country and partaking in the Vietnam conflict.
