t.

BAELO AIIUE,

termedialiry in Literature: Easton Ellis and the MTV Novell

Iin*rg.rro t,"tTt' i.*rplp"rr, televisiori """d otht' popular culture TT 1XY^ arheady in thefi.rst half of the medialiry is not something ttt*

intermedialiry this essay I want to discuss the concept of rsp..tir. of literary studies, namely tht p'ogtttsive approach-and of of the language of literature' and the languages flema'

from the

iit "..r,,rry, there were ioi"t' that alerted to this has been really changed is the way this approach irob"bly *r"t h", 'inr.rp..r.d and is interpreted by literary and culturalcritics' '*'d"y' th""t can now also be understood as an

'i"""'

blurring' Most

flhat had been seen , ", at enriching all inr.r.*i"g source of new artistic possibilities aiming off' This change in attitude cultural forms rather than levelling them in relation to the debates on the part of some critics is diretly seen that postmodernism about the blurring of high and low culture brought forth in the second half of the century' to perceive the Horkheimer and Adorno were among the first their famous 1944 essay "The use of intermediality in the arts. In *o critics *f,*.Industry: Enlight "^tnt as Mass Deception"' !! forms ilfu warned of thJprogr.rrive confluence of the different culture industry was of ,t. .rrt.,rre industry. Tey claimed that the

I '

b:t? financed by the The research carried out for the writing of this P'q:tj:t Reip*irtt Ministry of iJ.""t andTechlology MCYII and the European the Aragonese Government gion"l De,r.lopent Fund, in collaboration with iNo. uutr 2004'00344 lFrL)'

146

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Balo

lntcrmedialiry in Literature: Bret Easton Ellis and the MTV Novel

r47

mass-produced and identical, thus films, radio and magazines up a uniform and meaningless system of entertainment. This
lead to the Tagnerian dream of the Gesamthunstwerk or the fusi all the arts in one work, which is a process that "integrates all elements of the production, from the novel (shaped with an

With the case of literature and its use of intermedialiry. In this sense, Philip E. Simmons considers that mass culture has become the 'tultural dominant" or force field in which the novel and all forms of represen-

the film) to the last sound effecr" (124). According to Horkhei and Adorno this would produce inferior works because they only rely on the similariry with others, leading to a distrusr of untried, which is the general rule in the culture industry O3I,l: fu we can see, for them this fusion of the ats would not lead something positive but to a loss of culture's previous role of ance, turning it into "a cathedral dedicated to elevated pleasure" (1 Horkheimer and Adorno's approach has to be understood in wider conrexr of the debate over the blurring ofhigh and low in postmodernism and the effects produced by this convergence. critics have argued that during the modernist period there was a cl difference berween high art and mass culture since high art accessible only to a few people that could fully understand its exq siteness and worth. The arts were too disconnected from every( reeliry whereas mass culture was enjoyed by the lower class that practically no access to other forms of culture. Even though this not straightforwardly so - we have just mentioned how already the 40s Horkheimer and Adorno warned of the progressive blurri of the arrs - it is undeniable that postmodernism has serious challenged this wide gap producing a two-side simultaneous ment. On the onehand, amisrs, includingliteraryauthors, have from mass cultural forms; on the other hand, some sections of culture have increasingly adopted strategies from high art. This " ing the gap" is for Andreas Huyssen the postmodern condition literature and the arts (1986: ix). Intermedialiryis closelyrelated to these debates aboutpostmodernism and the coalescence of high and low culrure, especially ifwe deal

tttion must operate. "Cultural dominant" is here used in Raymond Y/illiams's sense, as a dominant cultural form that coerists with residual tnd newer forms. The earlier, less influential forms are progressively lncorporated into the new cultural dominanr: mass culrure. This depiction ofliterature as "residual" does not imply that it is going to disappear - the number of readers is now larger than ever - but that, in a context where there has been a change from print culture to electronic culture, the role and form of literature is due ro evolve. Thus, when a new cultural form rises to dominance, earlier forms are not abandoned but transformed and incoporated into the new o:der (1997: 2). Therefore,
due to our global, image-driven, electronic culture, we are witnessing
a progressive

approach of literature to the languages of mass culrure cinema, television, radio, popular music and consumer culture.

A good example of a group of contemporary writers rhat use intermediality in their works is the "blank generarion," which includes writers like Jay Mclnerney, Joel Rose, Tma Janowitz, Dennis Coope Susanna Moore or Bret Easton Ellis. These writers have freely

embraced a mixture of styles, probably because all of these forms of mass culture have been important in their lives: they certainly grew up with the technology of television, cinema or music and are an active part of our consumer culture. fu CeciliaTichi (1987) believes, this is not something negative and it is not the first time that technology brings about change to literature. In an environment of machines, structures, railroad locomotives and s\yscrapers, literature was deeply enriched by Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos and -7illiam Carlos 7'illiams, who believed novels and poems were construction projects and writers were designers. The blank generation became especially prominent in the USA during the 80s and 90s and their novels are urban in focus and point

t48

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Itcrrnedialiry in Literature: Bret Easton Ellis and the MTV Novel

r49

out the specifics of time and place, since they are in direct to the social, cultural and political dynamics of late 20 US life (Annesley 1998: 1-10). They combine consumer culturc postmodernism while writing about the realiry they live in, incorporating plain language, products, personalities, places and cultural references of their time since, as Elisabeth Young bel "their entire lives have been lived out within a milieu wherein arr, pop music, advertising, films and fiction have always been inextri intertwined, inseparable one from the other" (L992:14). As a in blank fiction we see a mixture and use of styles characteristi popular and mass culture, such as that of advertisements, cinema, or music. They do so avoiding dense plots and elaborated and using bland and indifferent narrators that remain unj to the immoraliry described. The use of mass culture permits an interesting dialectic wi postmodern and blank fiction, whose result is not always an uncriti defence of mass culture but rather an ambivalenr attitude that has be judged in each individual work. To illustrate the phenomenon intermedialiry in literature and in blank fiction writers I have the US controversial author Bret Easton Ellis. Ellis has used diffe types of intermedialiry in all his novels, especially in the three important ones: Zess Than Zero (1985),American Psycho (1991), Gkmorama (1998). In this essayl will focus on Ellist firsr novel, Than Zno, since the novel itselfwas considered by different critics MTV novel, a perfect example of one of the possible uses of inter, medialiry in literature. Less Than Zero is the story of Cla a st that has just returned for the Christmas break to Los Angeles, spending his first semester at an East Coast university. The narra events are very superficial: they include parrying, watching Mry eating out, shopping, taking drugs or having sex, and their time and space constantly change, mirroring the rapid sequence of video clips which are shown on MTV In the novel Ellis displays the 1980s mass

ral excesses that engulfed people's life, especially that of the young the rich: Clay and his friends have achieved all the dreams of mass

Eulture, thus they are jaded and nihilistic.

The novel is clearly an example of intermedialiry' in the sense that in Ellist attempt to portray the youth he has also used the language and sryle of genres that are particularly close to that segment of the population, such as MTV, television, video games, film and [lusic, and other mass culture manifestations. Critics have underlined this intermedial quality: Larry McCarthy stated for Saturday Reuieru that "[t]his is a weirdly fascinating book. You dont so rnuch rcad it as you do watch and listen to it unfold" (1985: 80). For Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times: "Less Tltan Zero ends up feeling more like a'60 Minute' documentary on desperate youth than a fullfledged novel" (1985: 32).John Powers, for Film Comment, claims that novels llke Less Than Zero "read less like novels and more like brilliant novelizations of movies you wouldnt mind missing" (1985: 45). One of the most recurrent ideas shared by several reviewers was to classify the novel as an "MTV novel" (Powers 1985, Pan 1988, Freese 1990), MTV being in a way the result of another rype of intermedialiry: stereophonic sound and the visual impact ofTV' Less Than Zero is a 208-page novel, divided into 108 very short sequences (from one single paragraph to three or four pages), thus limiting the attention span demanded for each chapter and mirroring the speed and flow of videos on MTV MTV has a never-ending qualiry: h is a,24-hour television, and it is divided in very short unconnected videos or series only interrupted by the deejays cornents, interviews or advertisements (Kaplan 1987: 4l , 144) .The importance that MTV, videos and songs in general exert in Less Than Zero can aketdy be seen in the very dtle of the novel, extracted from Elvis Costello's first single released in March 1977.The presence of MTV in the novel is very important both in the very structure of the novel and as an entity that is always present in the background of what

150

SoNIA BANLO

Ellis and the MTV lntermedialiry in Literature: Bret Easton

Novel

111

the no happens to C[ay and friends. It is repetitively mentioned in characti the all * r-. ,yp. of g.rr.ral environm.ni that 'ui'o''"'d' *ho ,.. to b. p..-"nendy connected to the video channel. C of the first things Clay does at the beginning of the nov-el when
arrives home is to turn on MTV (12), but not because he watch it but because he wants to sleep. He usually takes somevali rurns on MTV, turns the sound off and lies back staring at the vision (71,75,115) "because I once heard that if you stare at ( television screen for a long enough time, you can fall asleep" This combination of watching TV and having some valium to sleep (143)'To wake up' Thorazine is also Blair's loud atl opposite process is established: Clay turns on MTV really h"s li.r. of coke (40). MTV is also used as background in otht " is alw contexts, for example when they talk on the phone MTV

his eyes going back to the tcle' onversation: "'Right,'Julian says' to MTV watching as atmo' vision" (104). This overuse of references ;p;;;. h* effect that goes beyond the simple awareness.that as we youth in the novel' since' exerts an important poi.t over the affects the way they relate. and the have seen in this last example, it in a life' the influence of MTV takes place

Mw

*t/,tt.y

understand

furtherlevelthatgoesbeyondthestorythatisnarrated,italsoaffects ,r. .rrrr in the novel' its very style' which resembles
the way events

and mirrors that of

*"y,oi.,

cause/effect and In the MTV nartative, devices are replaced by The MTV system as a time/space disruptions (Kaplan 1987:33)' not continuities since the videos shown are

MTV.

*hot.

these jtxtaor temporal bond; videos are simply casual connected by any typical of the MTV Thit i'
"1ro

,iolrt.,

ffi

on (64,71) and on -rry MTV is not watched in a concentrated way but casually watched, c many occasions with the sound off, thus, they are just left with tl pro.ls of mixing images, mosdy unconnected, and watching tl
promos inserted between videos. Kaplan has underlined the way MTV especially hypnotises wh audience because it is formed by a series of very short texts, unfinished nature makes us keep watching in our search for sati tion (1gg7: 4). The way they watch MTV even affcts the way th hi relate to each other. [hen Clay goes to Julians house to lend wa some moneyJulian is "lying on his bed in a wet bathing suit ing MTV itt d"tt in the room, the only light coming -from bck and white images on the television" (103)' Clay asks him w ri is the money he has lent him for, but Julian does not answer ,,watches the video until it is over and then turns away awa he It says, '*hy?'" (104). Julian's affention span seems to be that of MTVvideos. and his concenrrarion lasts the seconds in-between interchanging a couple of questions and answers Julian finishes

other situations (58,

ll0,

52' 86'

15

" "h"r'"teristic relevant when we l"fr.rofogi.al platform, which becomes especially *prr.i to th.r "platforms'' Kaplan-ses the novel as a form that
constitutes

i", z i'oirformat.

hr. dr.d, defined boundaries, whereas a Hollywood ryY: limit' By contrast'j TV is divided in a unit consumed within a 2-hour
serials,

contirrrorr."g-.nts to be viewed daily or weekly -w]rich are not necessarily conforecast, ,o"p op.r" or quiz show$ day has nothing.to do' for nected, in the sense that tht "t*t of the day (3-4)' .*"-pi., with the chapter of the soaP.oPera of the same i' also made of segments that and, as MTV is a TV 'uch' "h",""i there are also ads' interviews or are not limited to the video units:

(news' weather

viewing experience' commentaries that construct its fragmented Les Than Zero This fragmented aspect of MTV is reproduced,in berween chapters' through, UI"t of temporal and spatial connection begin which is marked pr.r.ry by the way chapters Y11|:t-pot't establishing shots the like work pointers These and spatial pointers. in an initial context' In of videos and films, which pl*tt th" viewer in all chapters since the novel these establishini shots are necessary also show a .""h U"girm in a differet't"loc"tio' and some of them

l'"
r52
SoNIA BAELO

temporal discontinuiry when they iefer to the past. These are beginnings of some chapters: "My mother and I are sitting in taurant on Melrose [. . .] " (1 8), "I'm with Ti'ent in a yellow train sits on Sunset" (19), "It's two in the morning and hot and we': the Edge in the back room [...]" (20).These references reach peak when the information is directly rendered, without any un sary flourish: "The Saint Marquis. Four o'clock. Sunset (172). This very direct written reference to the exact time and tion of the scene seems more usual of theatre and film scripts. It a way another form of intermedialiry a device used in written for artistic manifestations that are not meant to be read but to seen and listened to, like film and theatre. Another example is use of the word "Pause" (14, 160, 761, 166), which indicates there is an extended silence and which is not used for written tives either but for visual artistic forms. Less Than Zero is a novel seems to be written to be "watched," to be "listened to," each ter resembling a new MTV video that needs to be temporally locally introduced, reinforcing the likes of its MTV audience. These casual and temporal discontinuities are not limited to links bemeen chapters in the novel: they extend to the construct of the chapters themselves. Some of the short chapters are si constructed through assorted images that do not seem to follow cause/effect connections, just like MTVvideos. This system also fi an equivalent in the novel as a whole: in one of the chapters buys a porn magazine, there is a man putting bricls over the papers, there are coyotes howling, dogs barking and Claydrives From bed he hears the wind: 'And I think about the billboard Sunset and the wayJulian looked past me atCaf Casino, and I finally fall asleep, itt Christmas Eve" (63). The images are discon''{ nected and are mentioned as they cross Cla mind,-since the bill-ii board in Sunset apparently has nothing to do with the wind, or withl his porn magazine.

[,"r, ::* :".:*; ;.,... ..ffi. *.,,.::

I ! f
f f f I f I I
bu, when past events are introduced they are also narrated through disconnected images. For example, when Clay tries to remember the Dreuous summer:

'

Last summer. Things

I remember about last summer. Hanging out at clubs:

The\7ire, Nowhere Club, Land's End, the Edge. AAlbino in Cantert around three in the morning. Huge green skull leering at drivers from a billboard on Sunset, hooded, holding a pyx, bony fingers beckoning. Saw a rranwestite wearing a halter top in line at some movie [...] I saw a midget get into a Corvette. 7ent to a Go-Got concert with Julian. Parry at Kim's on a hot Sunday afternoon t...1 (106).

I I I I I
! ! t I I I J
I

The list of images continues without any connecting mechanism. Probably because of this apparent lack of connecdon, the conjunction most used in the narration is "and," which simply adds ideas without establishing any subordinate connection among them. On some occasions this overuse becomes obvious:
After leaving Blair I drive down'Tilshire and rhen onto Santa Monica and then I drive onto Sunset and take Beverly Glen to Mulholland, and then Mulholland to Sepulveda and then Sepulveda to Ventura and then I drive
through Sherman Oaks to Encino and then into Tarzana ad then \loodland Uitt.. I stop at a Sambo's thatt open all night and sir alone in a large empry booth and the winds have started and they're blowing so hard that the windows are shaking and the sounds of them trembling, about to break, fill the coffee shop (61).

I I

Here the use of "and," the simple adding up of ideas and information, suggests a lack of complex cause/effect connections. Clays aimless physical and psychological wandering around L.A. is thus represented

in very visual terms. Less Than Zero is in a way constructed through images: they constitute the real narrative units in the novel, resembling the structure of MTV AsJeremy Rifkin puts it, MTV "levels all the rich gradations

r54

SoNn Basro

of human experience to a single, flat playing surface in whichlf phenomena exist in the form of pure images, one following th. otfi at lightning speed, with no seeming conrext or coherence,, (20f, 196-7).The narrated events in Less Than Zero resemble a long sfl videos aimlessly selected that simply flash b with no .o.r.l,rg[ ending. The novel becomes, rhus, an MTV platform in which chfl ters become a flow of videos and images that the reader'warchof This is at times openly stated: "I rurn on MTV and tell -*t I could ger over it and go to sleep if I had some Valiu* ihn I think about Muriel and feel a little sick and the videos "rr beein il flash by'' (12). As the story progresses, the videos th"t R"Ih f, become images in Clays life. These assorted images ,o-.tirnfl "..as inside chaprers, like passing senrences that depict life flo* f " (104 images: ".Anothervideo flashes on./Julian falls asleep./ I leave,, or "I light a cigarette.lThe man rolls Julian over./ Wonder ;f be,sffi sale.l I dont close my eyes.lYou can disappear here without k',o\N ing it" (176). AsI mentioned above, these images lack cohere.rr."urfl
effect links and are, farher, connected through psychological associat

h=,=:=ffi I
! ! ! ! ! I ! ! I I I I I ! I I I t I I I I I I I I

Cl" ,t These "flying" sentences are nor limited to the scope of .h"ptedl instead they extend their evocative power beyond the chapter bo"nd{
tions in

mind.

ary since they are repeated in different chapters and conrexts. Thd insertion of these senrences creares a songJike refrain that seems td
summarise some of the "messages" of the novel and that stays in thdN mind of the reader after reading the novel, very much ., ,orrg{ " i]l and its repetitive refrain keeps echoing in our ears once rhe rone finished. In the case of Less Than Zero rhe senrences that build uo;l this refrain are "People are afraid to merge," "r wonder irn.t rot'i sale," and "Disappear Here," which resurface in climactic situations. All the above sentences combine on some acute occasions where feel- i ings are expressed through images. At a familymeetingwhere people are too concerned about themselves to care for anyone else, clay

billboard that says, 'Disrpp."r Here' and Juliant eyes and wonder if het for sale and people rre afraid to merge and the way the pool at night looks, the lighted wat. glowing in the backyard" (66); or when Julian wants to srop prostituting himself and his pimp injects him with heroine to make him change his mind: "Disappear Here. i The synnge fills with blood. / YouTe a beautiful boy and that's all that matters./'Tonder if he's for oale./ People are afraid to merge. To merge." (183). Here we see how intermedialityworks: the language of thevisual image is transformed into short sentences which are juxtaposed to express more feelings that the obvious, straightforward ones. This is coherent with the 'Thannel language of the youth that, as Stuart Hall and Paddy already pointed out in the 60s, has a highly emotional content, which makes teenage culture essentially non-verbal. This culture "is more naturally expressed in music, in dancing, in dress, in certain habits of walking and standing, in certain facial expressions and'looks' or in idiomatic slang" (1997:65). Cl" feelings when watching the sexual degradation of his friend Julian find an expression not through the verbal but through the "visual" jutaposition of images, through the language of MTV. ,*t most characteristic feature, the continuous present probed stroking that stupid black cat and the

:,, ;..t: ;1,.-,,';:

duced by the video flow, also finds its equivalent in the novel. In all videos are flattened

MTV

in a24-hour flow, (Kaplan 1987:53). Similarl n Less without any historical addresses Than Zero a loose narration unfolds but nearly all events are always narrated in the present or present continuous tense. In fact, only 12 out of 108 short sequences are narrated in the past: they are not linked to the other passages and in order to clearly distinguish them as outside the narrative line they are written in italics. The MTVsearch for immediacy is thus reflected in the novel, which for some critics results in lack of psychological depth, historical perspective or moral
into
a continuous present

r56

SoNr BAELo

complexiry: just flat images like those on television. I would that the fact that the very structure of songs and MTV televi reflected in the structure of the novel reinforces and underlines readers' awareness that life depicted in it is aimless and com Unable to act, some of Los Angeles youth just float on a world where videos have more to say than their friends or family where the perpetual present rules over any historical form. evolve but they are aiways narrated in the present, leaving a su ing atmosphere of disconnected experiences only linked, as we seen, by repeated sentences that produce their own sad des song: an MTV video that the youth can identify and u Despite this apparent denial, the past actually plays an im role in the novel. It represents a time of innocence and which Clay and his jaded friends are trying to forget. In MTV history is replaced by nostalgia, which is comprised in the early of music video, the 50s. fu Aufclerheide points our, rhe presenr sions of the 50s represent "the innocent youth of postwar com culture seen from the jaded present" (1986: 128). To represenr past black and white may be used, past footage may be introduced sryles imitated; thus, even though the main "tense" of MTV is present, the nostalgic past reappears, sometimes in the form pastiche and mainly in the form of nostalgia. There was a time Clay and his friends were still naiVe and believed in friends F"*ily, when they still had hope and feelings, something too to remember. The past represents the time of jo although they to forget it because if they remembered it they would become a of theirhorrifyingpresenr, a rime ofempryand numb feelings. There I are only 12 short chapters narrared in the past and written in italics which mark them as different from the other chapters and tell a story' of their own. These memory chapters deal mainly with rwo aspects i of Clays life: some deal with his family before it falls aparr, some others focus on his relationship with Blair. The former set is located
fl

[,t* *ffi;

! rnd before his parents got divorced and his grandmother died. The ! lrmer slides over Clay and Blairt holidays in Pajaro Dunes in Monterey I rn the things they did together. He also remembers talking to Blair I un the phone just before he left for New Hampshire, before they ! lrcpp.d talking for four months. Apart from these two thematic sets ! of memories there are other chapters that deal with some other un! eonn..t.d, assorted memories like the previous Christmas in Palm ! prings, the previous summer or when he first learnt to drive. As with the rest of the chapters, these sections are inroduced t f U, temporal and spatial ,.f.r.r.., since the narrated events are not I temporally connected with the events narrated in the present. These ! connections are not established just by means of temporal references. I People and situations are mentioned that reappear in subsequent I chapters, establishing the continuity. Except for the section dealing I with CI" grandmother and family that starts on page 137, the I previous memory chapters are introduced in a very dreamJike atmost phere. This is something very characteristic of MTV language as well. I Rifkin explains the similariry of MTV with the language and strucI ture of dreams because MTV "has the feel of the unconscious - a I timeless realm in which fantasies of all kinds bubble up onto the l s.t..t , only to fade away in the wake of the next and the next [...] J UW ir a rea-like entertainment, unencumbered by the weightiI n.tt of either history or geography'' (2000: 197). Marsha Kinder
L,r--"rises

;:ffi-,-:;:^,.,'jJ*

I I I

the similarities between videos and dreams in their untirrrit.a access, structural discontinuiry decentring, their structural reliance on memory retrieval and the omnipresence of the spectator (in Aufderheide 1986:120). It is not only the visual and suctural aspects of MTV that are represented in the novel: the structure ofsongs and their lyrics, which constitute the basis for the videos, also have an important role in a novel floodedwith references to songs, which always playin the back-

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lntcrmedialiry in Literature: Bret Easton Ellis and the

MTV Novel

r59

ground and serve to channel the nearly inexistent communi' Lorrg characters. As mentioned above, the title of the novel a hints It the songJike srrucrure of many of the chapters. In fact, structure of ,o.tgt plays an important role in the construction of chapters, which do not usually find a narrative closure but a rhythnl .loslure, similar to that found in songs. Since events in the follow the unfinished24-how MTV flow, consffucting a very "close-ofFs" th rype of narrative, rhythm and repetition are the only *i "r. to find in the novel. Some critics have claimed that the take for-granted idea rhat music videos are open-ended, in the sense thl theyare not usually resolved or closed in narrative terms, is inaccural b.r. videos resolve issues in a different way to that of realist Goodwin believes that closure and coherence are presented in vi through the soundtrack bymeans of repetition, structural closure an( harmJnic closure (1993:79). For Goodwin the song ends with th reperirion of the refrain that ties it up. The kind of closure that w n" i" Less Than Zera is much more "musical" than "nafrative," espe' ciallyinside the short chapters that constitute the novel. Thevery firsd short chapter is consrructed in a circular manner by mirroring th structure of songs. It starts with "People are afraid to merge on free'l "Al1 it comes ways in Los Angeles" (9) and ends in very similar terms down to is thai I'm a boy coming home for a month and meedng someone whom I havent seen for four months and people are afraid ro merge" (10). The chapter has a very repetitive rhythmic structure, which "ho., the structure of a song, where sentences become a mere ,.Nothing else seems ro marrer. Not the fact that I'm eighteen [...] list: Not the muJ that had splattered t.. .l Not the stain on the arm [. ..] Not the tear on the neck [...] Not the warm winds ["']" (9)' There are also groups of paragraphs that start and finish in the it same way, again creating a rhythm and rounding things up' \7hile in a pararains, a seris of disconnected images cross Cla mind graph thar srarrs: "Nothing much happens during the days it ratn'

',

lnd ends "This is how the nights are when it rains" (ll4-5).There is Fpetition not iust inside chapters but even among chapters, which is eapecially significant at the end. The last chapters work as a kind of eountdown before Clr long-awaited departure and return to the East Coast University. fu Cla departure approaches all chapters begin with a reference to his departure like: "The week before I leave, one of my sistert cats disappexs" (192) or "The week before I leave, I listen to a song by an L.A. composer about the city" (193). The final chapter starts differently: "There was a song I heard when I was in Los Angeles by a local group" (207), but ends in the same way 'After I left." (208). In this case repetition intensifies Clays deep desire to leave everything behind, in a way reproducing how long the last days of his stay in L.A. seem to him. Songs are important in Less Than Zero, not iust in the sense that their structure is translated into the narrative of the novel. They are also important because they are constantly quoted and mentioned, conveying meanings and feelings that the young reader MTV fan may grasp. After all, music represents "popular culture stripped to its emotional core" (Fowles 1996: 119), the perfect way to elease feelings and convey meanings. This is a technique that was also used years later by Nick Hornby in his very popular novel High Fidrlity (1995), where the language of pop music is used to poftray characters, moods and feelings. Less Than Zero also makes use of music in this way. For example, The Killer Pussyt "Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage" is on the radio when Clay is discussing his drug consumption with his sisters in front of their unbothered mother (25). On other occasions, songs are used to express feelings and say things that are difficult to articulate. Blair, who is in love with Clay but whose feelings are not clearly corresponded, sings to Culture Clubt "Do you reallywant to hurt me?" (30). This image perfectly illustrates the importance that music has among the youth to express their feelings. As Jib Fowles puts it, "[t]hose who hum along with the music or

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lntcrmedialiry in Literature: Bret Easton Ellis and the MTV Novel

16r

mouth the lyrics are incorporating the music into themselves: themselves into the musically defined terrain where emoti doctored" (1996:120). The young is the group of people in n greater emotional adjustment, thus they are especially music, which they use to manage their emotiots. In this essay we have considered how MTV sryle has found a into the sffucture of Less Than Zero.In a novel where watches MTV we find extremely short chapters filled with effect and time/space disruptions, assorted images that reappear different occasions through the narrative, life portrayed as a flow images and the use of a continuous present only interrupted by occasional reference to the nostalgic past. It seems that the sryle MusicGlevision "with its incessant flow ofvideo clips, its devotio glittering surfaces, its limitation to the immediate present, and reduction of its'stories'to the short attention span of co youth" (Freese 1990:69) has found averbal equivalent in the nar sryle of the novel. The use of intermedialiry is nothing new but El goes a step further in using it to construff the sffucture ofhis novel translating a visual and musical style into a written one. In his exp tion of the artistic possibilities ofMTV, Ellis constructs a story the young for the young in which the experience of living in contemporary world finds a translation in MTV language. Blank ficdon writers usually show a distance with the materi they represent and this lack of clear judgement and condemnati leads to very open interpretations of their texts. I agree with Eli bethYoung (1992) andJamesAnnesleyt (1998) contention that bl fiction writers use mass culture and consumerism to provide a tique of contemporary social practices and lifesryle and to di a ruined sociery. These writers have an exceptionally sophisti apprehension of the excesses of our culture and show them within. They do not just duplicate pop culture materials so as leave them untransformed: instead, they explore such mater
r

rough interesting narrative techniques. As they live in a postmodern

Eulture dominated by consumerism, the mass media and the reproduc-

tlon of images: a world of empty spectacle, dumbed-down consumptlon and instant gratification (Alan Bilton 2002: 4), they present a tritique from within, in subject and smucture. Ellist use of MTV lnd its songs allows him to insert ironic comments that highlight what the numb, frozen characters in Less Than Zero cannot bring themselves to admit. Clr unconscious rejection of his present is not openly stated but is seen through the fragmented memory ehapters that interrupt his present and that he nostalgically recalls. His present is portrayed in fast short chapters where disconnected events follow one another and that Clay in his passive attitude can only watch, mirroring, in turn, how virtually everyone watches MTV. The set of sentences that reverberate in Clays mind and that are constantly repeated in the novel "Disappear Here," "\Tonder if het for sale," and "People are afraid to merge" - constitute the real criticism in the novel, especially when they are contrasted with the events and with Cl" passivity towards them. Thus, in Less Than Zero rhe narrative message is reinforced by the structure of the novel, shaping one of the possible uses of intermedialiry in literature.

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Like any new consumer product, nowadays novels are 'pushed' throughout the cultural marketplace. Produced and published to be distributed and sold rapidl literary works generate media constellations as soon as they meet e taste of the public. In order to be converted into a screenplay for cinema or television, the novel undergoes an analogical and digital transformation, and iffilm-adapted and advertised vigorously, the written text acquires strong visibility and reaches a wider range of audiences. Spectators may ignore who the author of About a Boy 0999) is, but anyone would remember Hugh Grant planng Peter Panish in the homonymous film, while David Fincher's Fight Club attracted the attention of thousands of youngsters, who turned the screenplay into a cult and learned its sentences by heart, probably una\Mare they were quoting from a novel. Thking into account the mutual exchange that takes place among genres, this paper intends to discuss the way the written text is kaleidoscopically projected into other domains, and highlight the way intermediality accelerates the transmission of cultural phenomena to other forms and levels. Rather than oudine a hierarchical relationship among different levels of culture, this paper focuses on the interaction between film and literature.l

Mart)n, "The.l'ood and the Tiees. Popular Fiction between Literary and Cultural Studies," The European Englisb Messenger l5.l (2006).
See Sara