Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

consumption, no matter how perverted the practice might appear to be. Charles
Baudelaire addressed the preface of Les Fleurs du Mal to an hypocrite lecteur, a
hypocritical reader, someone who would not want to accept the self-image the poems
depict. For Ellis, we are all hypocrites, we all indulge in a voyeuristic lifestyle of
consumption, a lifestyle that sees no boundaries in objectifying humanity and turning it
into a product of consumption.
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Through the blatant yet methodical display of sexual violence, Ellis’ novel was
considered to exceed the boundary of what is acceptable within the norms of society.
Within this simple distinction, American Psycho can be categorized as transgressive; in
this case, the characterization conforms to a standard definition of transgression—one
which implies that of “trespassing”—not the more elaborate conceptualizations from
Chapter Two. In reviewing the novel, James Gardner traces the history of transgressive
literature all the way from Euripides, through Webster, Sade and Celine and defines it in
opposition to what he calls “humanistic” and “nice” literature:
Despite the primacy of this kind of “nice” literature, there is
another kind of literature that increasingly exhibits, and sometimes
even advocates, very different values. Such fiction is often termed
“transgressive” and there are correlative developments in film and
the visual arts. Like the humanistic literature of Amy Tan, it is
seen as being somehow liberal or leftist because it seeks the
distinction of radical “otherness” and because it aspires to threaten
the status quo that writers like Amy Tan and Bharati Mukherjee
seek only to correct. The two strains converge from different
angles of assault on a center allegedly dominated by a white,
Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual, right-handed patriarchy.
By addressing the notion of a “center” being attacked by this transgressive fiction, James
Gardner still relies on the standard definition of transgression—one which is closer to
subversion than to transgression—but fails to provide a theoretical framework necessary