In her defense of Madonna's "Justify My Love" video, which MTV refused to air, Camille Paglia observed, "as Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde knew (that) neither art nor the artist has a moral responsibility to liberal social causes." Baudelaire, also a distinguished critic, once noted that "the police are the absolute enemy." I'm afraid that he may have recognized something of that "enemy" in today's critical establishment.
Much of the media's criticism has been concerned with subverting aesthetic evaluations, by projecting what formerly had at least passed as such, onto the political plane. An instrumentalist view of art-- which approaches a Stalinism-- has become prevalent. Which means, essentially, self-serving, career minded individuals, who milk political hysteria in order to advance their own agenda (no matter how ill-informed, reckless, or narrow). We've seen this recurrent pattern through, for example, the protests over the film "Basic Instinct." But the means are not intellectual. They are reactionary. The perpetrators whine much like pampered infants when they don't get their way, and, in the process, infantilize those they purport to protect.
In 1989, Bret Easton Ellis was slammed hard with the brunt of this new sensitivity oriented, PC-informed, narrow mindedness. One month before Ellis' third novel American Psycho was set to be shipped, the publisher, Simon & Schuster, dropped the book. The reaction mechanism came to life. Within two days of S&S' move Knopf (Random House) picked up the book and the reactionaries were swift to follow. The National Organization for Women (NOW), having been whipped into a rabid fervor (Tammy Bruce, who led the charge, had never read the book), called for a full boycott of Random House, the new publisher. Of course what NOW wanted was for Random House to drop the book. The attempt to ban a work of art, restricting anyone's access to it, is always a move that renders its perpetrators transparent. Fortunately Random House did not bow to these tactics.
The manufactured controversy over the book stemmed from the narrative of the central character, Patrick Bateman, who, by day, was a wall street broker, and night... a serial killer. As has often been the case with actual serial killers, the murders have an inextricable link with sexuality (Quick, someone dance on Freud's grave). With Bateman we have a heterosexual male who, after luring women to his apartment, brutally mutilates and murders them. So obviously this is an issue of sexism (non-PC), as opposed to the intense detail oriented study of the mind of a psychopathic murderer. Or so NOW, along with dupes and other like-minded critics, would have us believe. (Of course they never bothered to mention, in their so-called analysis, that a homeless man, a homosexual man and a dog also fell prey to the fictitious Bateman character. Where are those protesters?) As Bret Easton Ellis pointed out in a Rolling Stone Interview (April 4, 1991); "would you be as outraged by this book, if Patrick Bateman was a gay serial killer?" He went on to add; "The fact that I even have to ask that question at all is offensive to me in the first place." I agree. This only points to a lack of responsibility (not to mention integrity) on behalf of the critical establishment. This also showcases the compromise and debasement they are willing to submit to.
The much anticipated follow up work by Ellis-- though this anticipation covered a vast spectrum of individuals and intent-- was slow coming. Ellis reportedly had been working on a manuscript that would delve within the circus that is the world of fashion. I was immediately struck with the potential that this novel had to be an adjunct, of sorts, to Robert Altman's film (then upcoming) "Ready To Wear," which itself cast a gaze at the realm of fashion.
When pressed repeatedly by Knopf for the manuscript, Ellis claimed to have struck an impasse, and produced, instead, a series of notebook sketches set in a Los Angeles of the early eighties; The Informers. And although Ellis and Altman diverged, as to content, a strong point of commonality remains; both Altman's film and Ellis' book are works which could probably find appreciation by few more than those who had previous appetites for the expressions of these artists.
In conversation, somewhere around that time, a close friend intimated disappointment with Ellis' choice, commenting, "if ever there was a time for this artist to produce a strong work, it's now." He cited his feelings that a loosely connected group of sketches, such as is the case with The Informers, is more of what one is to typically expect when an artist is at the end of their career, and therefore weakness. I disagree (almost).
In the New Statesman & Society, of April 12, 1991, Naomi Wolf, commenting on American Psycho, noted that "...suddenly a book might be, after all, an act." Indeed. And it is within this perspective that I view Ellis' new work. After bearing-- with wit, wisdom, & nobility-- the PC bullwhips (over a serious work denigrated by charlatans and buffoons), Ellis has actually taken this notion to heart, and acted. He has issued a gesture and, in playing the field, given it precisely what it deserves (game is a key concept here); a retaliatory finger, namely, The Informers.
I realize that such an act would seem to contradict, in a sense, any outrage Ellis previously felt over the critical reception that his work has received. As well I realize that this (non-review) review assumes the form of a type of criticism that I, myself, profess to loathe. Unapologetically, I claim my sins, & embrace (to borrow from William S. Burroughs) "the Ugly Spirit," if for no other reason than to raise the signifying flag over the dim legion of my company.