39. Массовая литература рубежа 20-21в. Творчество б.И.Эллиса, ч.Паланика

Popular culture is concept that came into existence as a result of turbulent changes brought into society by the industrial revolution. A cheap form of entertainment aimed at mass audience, which, instead of reviving the bygone cultural traditions, quietly started forming standardized opinions of its consumers.

Blank generation (=a new beat generation = lost generation ???)

Consumerism

Bret Easton Ellis (1964-)

Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991) features a very characteristic figure in US popular culture-- the serial killer--and, formally, it mixes popular genres and the language of different media. Mass culture is inextricably linked to the concept of seriality since talk shows, daily news, advertisements, pop music and magazines, among other mass culture products, are consumed in a serial and repetitive way. They rely on a structure known to the audience, which results in feelings both of reassurance and anticipation. In American Psycho mass culture references constantly appear and serve as a linking structure to the sixty short chapters into which the book is divided. As part of this seriality we find the consumerist patterns followed by the main character, a serial killer called Patrick Bateman, who consumes in all possible ways: buying, eating and destroying. The three forms of consumption are produced in series, the text thus building a close link between the seriality of the serial killer and the seriality of mass culture, a link that may account for the interest aroused by the figure of the serial killer in Western societies, and especially in US society.

Bret Easton Ellis's most controversial and representative work is American Psycho (1991), a novel which clearly illustrates this influence of mass culture in blank fiction literature. American Psycho's subject- matter is taken from popular literature. Its main character is a rich white heterosexual yuppie called Patrick Bateman. Although Bateman seems to be a successful man perfectly integrated in society, he is actually a sexist, racist, and xenophobic serial killer. Bateman himself narrates all the events portrayed in the novel, deploying the same flat tone to describe both his daily routine and his horrific killings. In a narration overcharged with details we learn of his favourite television talk shows, magazines, films, cosmetic products and preferred ways of torturing people.

Charles «Chuck» Palahniuk (1962-)

Flight Club (1995)

Survivor (1999)

Invisible Monsters (2000)

Choke (2001)

Palahniuk‘s books are commonly read also by people who do not usually read books. Attracting such a wide body of readers, he has become a controversial figure as various kinds of readers constantly argue about true nature of his writing – ―for some, his work represents mere shock literature, deviant and aggressive with adolescent sensibility. For others, Palahniuk‘s fiction speaks great truths about the nature of their lives.

Transgressive Fiction

Genre of fiction in which characters feel limited by the expectations and norms of society. The protagonists seek ways to break from those boundaries past the limit of social acceptability, which often leads to them appearing mentally ill, anti-social, or nihilistic. Most books of the genre explore taboo subjects such as drugs, violence, sex, incest, crime, pedophilia, or highly dysfunctional family relationships.

Inspired by authors like Kurt Vonnegut and his openly satirical approach, they provide social criticism in a manner that is accessible and attractive to the audience, using the writing techniques similar to the ones used famously by the authors like Ernest Hemingway or Jack Kerouac.

40. Драматургия США 20 века: Ю. О’Нил, Т. Уильямс, Э. Олби.

20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN DRAMA

A merican drama imitated English and European theater until well into the 20th century. Often, plays from England or translated from European languages dominated theater seasons. An inadequate copyright law that failed to protect and promote American dramatists worked against genuinely original drama. So did the "star system," in which actors and actresses, rather than the actual plays, were given most acclaim. Americans flocked to see European actors who toured theaters in the United States. In addition, imported drama, like imported wine, enjoyed higher status than indigenous productions. 
During the 19th century, melodramas with exemplary democratic figures and clear contrasts between good and evil had been popular. Plays about social problems such as slavery also drew large audiences; sometimes these plays were adaptations of novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin . Not until the 20th century would serious plays attempt aesthetic innovation. Popular culture showed vital developments, however, especially in vaudeville (popular variety theater involving skits, clowning, music, and the like). Minstrel shows, based on African-American music and folkways -- performed by white characters using "blackface" makeup -- also developed original forms and expressions.


Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) 


Eugene O'Neill is the great figure of American theater. His numerous plays combine enormous technical originality with freshness of vision and emotional depth. O'Neill's earliest dramas concern the working class and poor; later works explore subjective realms, such as obsessions and sex, and underscore his reading in Freud and his anguished attempt to come to terms with his dead mother, father, and brother. His play Desire Under the Elms (1924) recreates the passions hidden within one family; The Great God Brown (1926) uncovers the unconsciousness of a wealthy businessman; and Strange Interlude (1928), a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, traces the tangled loves of one woman. These powerful plays reveal different personalities reverting to primitive emotions or confusion under intense stress. 
O'Neill continued to explore the Freudian pressures of love and dominance within families in a trilogy of plays collectively entitled Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), based on the classical Oedipus trilogy by Sophocles. His later plays include the acknowledged masterpieces The Iceman Cometh (1946), a stark work on the theme of death, and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956) - - a powerful, extended autobiography in dramatic form focusing on his own family and their physical and psychological deterioration, as witnessed in the course of one night. This work was part of a cycle of plays O'Neill was working on at the time of his death. 
O'Neill redefined the theater by abandoning traditional divisions into acts and scenes (Strange Interlude has nine acts, and Mourning Becomes Electra takes nine hours to perform); using masks such as those found in Asian and ancient Greek theater; introducing Shakespearean monologues and Greek choruses; and producing special effects through lighting and sound. He is generally acknowledged to have been America's foremost dramatist. In 1936 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature -- the first American playwright to be so honored.

Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams III) (1911 – 1983)

Williams established himself as a recognized playwright in the wake of World War II, during which Modernist deconstructions of literature were flourishing. In late 1947, Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire premiered, securing his position as a major American playwright. Streetcar served as a somewhat monumental contribution to American theater: following a Modernistic trend, in which the laws and conventions of literature are bent and questioned, Streetcar eschewed a generic restriction, and served simply to reflect American habits and motivations.

An eloquently symbolic poet of the theater, Williams is noted for his scenes of high dramatic tension and for his brilliant, often lyrical dialogue. Williams is perhaps most successful in his portraits of the hypersensitive and lonely Southern woman, such as Blanche in Streetcar, clutching at life, particularly at her memories of a grand past that no longer exists.

Though Streetcar is Williams’ most famous and groundbreaking project, his other works, including The Rose Tattoo, The Glass Menagerie, and the Pulitzer-prize winning Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, demonstrate a similar devotion to American ideals and realistic human nature. Essentially, Williams’ canon of work emerged not as an attempt to follow literary patterns, but rather, as an honest and thorough depiction of human nature in America — not surprisingly, his efforts became an icon of American theater as a whole.

The Glass Menagerie (1945)

A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)

Edward Albee (1928-)

Theatre of the absurd

Theatrical movement, originating in France with the lays of Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Eugene Ionesco, that portrayed characters grasping futilely for meaning and order in a seemingly senseless world. Much of the work of the American playwright Edward Albee can be classified as part of this movement.

Albee is supposed to be one of the greatest absurdist playwrights after the Second World War in American literature. By the early 1960s, Albee was widely considered to the successor of Williams and Miller.

lbee came up with the series of successful works like The Zoo Story; a play written in Absurdist style; The American Dream; a play that attacks on the false values which have destroyed the real values in American society ; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The most famous book having the theme of emptiness, and so on. 
Most of Albee’s dramas lack specific setting. Audiences never know the situation and the place where things are happening in play. This is the important feature of absurdist drama. Most of the characters presented by Albee in his works are restless and uncomfortable in their own self. The characters in Albee’s plays seem to suffer from loneliness because they cannot or will not make any connection with each other. Through such an image of the characters, it can be assumed that Albee’s view about human condition is that it is always overpowered by separateness and loneliness, which according to him may be the result of a collapse of values on the western world in general and in the United States in particular. Love is also presented in his plays but not in the way of romantic situation but in the way of lost, decay, fall and failure. Albee’s plays are full of violence both physical violence like in The Zoo Story or verbal like in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is taken as a metaphor to the 1960s American society. The character in the drama like George and Martha are husband and wife; whose life is very much frustrated. They only argue all the time. The violence could not let them to continue their partnership. They seem to be tired of arguing. This shows the common whole American life style.

The Zoo Story (1958)

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)

A Delicate Balance (1966)

Three Tall Women (1994)