The Flower and The Bee:
Self-reflexivity and Discursive Discourse in Bret Easton Ellis' Rules of Attraction
In Cultural Studies, Theory and Practice, Cultural theorist Chris Barker relates the theory of self-reflexivity with the concept of identity; he says, “The self [is] a reflexively understood by the person in terms of her or his biography” (Barker 217). In Bret Easton Ellis’ disparaging examination of 1980’s college culture, all of his characters express themselves self-reflexively, albeit in different ways. This characterization, moreover, gains new meaning when analyzed with the Spike Jonze film, Adaptation, aside the philosophical explications of Chris Barker. Ellis’ depiction of the interaction of the characters, Lauren and Sean, can be understood as a discursive discourse between two subjects in the tradition of Foucault. In analyzing the components of the self-reflexive Lauren and Sean, Adaptation and Barker elucidate the complexity of the romantic relationships in The Rules of Attraction—these relationships include: the subjective, self-reflexive romantic desperation of Lauren, Sean Bateman’s insatiable desire to know Lauren beyond her sexual use for him, and Sean’s purely physical attraction to Lauren.
In Ellis’ Rules of Attraction, the main female character, Lauren, expresses her subjective desperation for her long-lost boyfriend, Victor. She is self-reflexively revealing her desire to be with Victor again, while she formulates her own biography in the process. Of her time with Victor before his departure she says, “So went our days, Victor. It always seemed that there was just one minute left” (Ellis 86). In a sense, the Victor Lauren addresses is only real in her imagination, he is the preserved symbol of her previous semblance of happiness and fulfillment. What is more, Lauren’s interior monologue unveils an internal desire to hold on to the momentary bliss in which she defines her college life. She criticizes herself for not making the most of her time with Victor as she suggests her inability to outwardly express her desire for Victor to him rather than in spite of his absence. Her revelations, then, become centered on her incapacity to express her desires openly—her uncertainty, self-criticism, and inaction are all bemoaned with a nihilistic tone. Through her reflections, Ellis is able to propose a subtle explanation of the nature of the postmodern youth’s fragmented identity crisis. Ellis implies this crisis is the root cause of Lauren’s and postmodern youth’s incapacity to seize the moment in expressing their desires, albeit misplaced and shifting desires. Her subjective confusion and despair prohibit her sexual expression. By examining the equally forlorn and hopeless romantic, Charlie Kaufman, Lauren’s self-reflexive dilemma and identity are clarified. In Adaptation, Jonze’s warped protagonist, Kaufman experiences a self-reflexive and subjective turmoil. His sexual desire is at the forefront of his anxiety after taking a woman home from a date. In the film, he has a crush on her and is unclear as to whether she likes him back. Neither party communicates their desires to each other, while they, instead, hold their sexual feelings inward. Charlie Kaufman sits in his car, and watches his beloved walk away confused after an awkward departure. He leans back in his car-seat, crestfallen and disappointed in himself, while his internal thoughts are revealed through a voice over. He asks him self questions, “Why didn't I go in?” before beginning a scathing self-criticism— “I’m such a chicken. I’m such an idiot. I should have kissed her. I’ve blown it” (Kaufman). Surprisingly, Charlie tries to motivate himself to return to her. He inwardly declares, “I should just go and knock on her door and just kiss her. It would be romantic. It would be something we could someday tell our kids. I’m gonna do that right now” (Kaufman). The hopelessness of his monologue is made ironic as he immediately looks ahead after thinking and drives away.
Charlie’s dilemma mirrors Lauren’s but it also provides further insight into the cause of her self-reflexive unease. Kaufman’s fragmented identity is revealed, while its desires contradict his actions. He tells himself what he wants, yet he doesn’t execute in reality. Lauren isn’t any different. Both characters succumb to their internal thoughts and self-reflexive criticisms at the cost of their romantic realizations in the objective, real world. Both are postmodern subjects struggling to make the most of important moments of romance. Both are struggling to express their sexuality in reality. Chris Barker describes the postmodern subject: “The decentered or postmodern self involves the subject in shifting, fragmented and multiple identities. Persons are composed not of one but of several, sometimes contradictory identities” (220). With Barker’s and Jonze’s definitions of the postmodern subject, Ellis’ character, Lauren, is understood in a new context than her respective narrative allows in The Rules of Attraction. Her identity is unhinged and lacks coherence and certainty. Like Kaufman’s romantic inaction, her internal account contains fluid and disparate components—desire, indecision, reticence, passion, and anxiety—which dictate her actions, and inactions, and ultimately lead to her furthered despair. Furthermore, Derrida’s concept of deference aptly applies to Ellis’ romantically troubled youth as postmodern subjects. In Difference, Derrida indicates the source behind the postmodern identity crises among Ellis’ youth. He notes that, while “Meaning is no longer fixed outside any textual location or spoken utterance and is always in relation to other textual locations in which the signifier has appeared on other occasions,” every expression “of a signifier bears a trace of its previous articulations” (Barker 85). That is to say, meaning is constantly deferred, and referred, from one discourse to another and is never fixed or static. So, as Charlie and Lauren are defined as postmodern subjects in their contradictory, fragmented, self-reflexive mind spaces, their environments and histories dictate the success of their romance. Each character fits inside a greater emotional and relational context. Charlie needs to get laid and betrays any semblance of romance after his date, while Lauren struggles to balance her desire to hold on to a previous romance with the hope of new romantic fulfillment. Both postmodern subjects’ confusion results from their lack of understanding in a greater, chaotic world, in their search for meaning in other people. However, their de-centered identities result because of this de-centered world. In neither character’s worlds is there real love, per say. There is only the shadow of it, the fabrication of it, or the betrayal of it in other people. The expression of romance stays in the subjective realm, while the objective world suppresses it in its reference and deference of unfulfilled desires.
The Rules of Attraction’s heterosexual, male protagonist, Sean Bateman outwardly communicates his romantic intentions to Lauren, the one girl who cannot. While she can honestly quarrel with her desire subjectively, Bateman quarrels with his desires in objective reality. Sean tells Lauren that he “wants to know” her, while she challenges his seemingly sophomoric and vapid honesty (Ellis 227). She replies by saying, “ ‘What does that mean? Know me?’ No one ever knows anyone. Ever. You will never know me.’” (Ellis 227). While Lauren honestly conveys the primary problem concerning the kids at Camden, she also prohibits a lasting and meaningful relationship with Sean. While Sean says he is in love with Lauren, she understands the fleeting nature and emptiness of his statements. He is merely marking the moment with perfunctory feelings. Ostensibly, Ellis isn’t only tying Derrida’s concept of deference with the theory of the postmodern subject here; as Lauren relates to Sean, their lives are dictated by a fragmented and de-centered self-reflexivity within a greater context of fluid meaning. He uses Lauren’s disparaging cynicism to convey his own viewpoint on the interaction between males and females within an increasingly alienating and meaningless society. Theorist Chris Barker delineates his theory of the modern man’s betrayal with respect to gender alienation. He explains theorist Giddens’ proposition, that “men’s predominance in the public domain and their association with ‘reason’ has been accomplished at the cost of their exclusion from the ‘transformation of intimacy’” (Barker 305). Thus, intimacy depends upon emotional communication, while “The evident difficulties men have talking about relationships requires emotional security and language skills, are rooted in a culturally constructed and historically specific form of masculinity” (Barker 305). Barker delves further into the cause of the primarily external expressions with which men reveal their emotions, saying that, “This comes at the price of a masked emotional dependence on women and weak skills of emotional communication” (Barker 305). Therefore, Sean Bateman’s overtly outward, emotional declarations to Lauren display a lack of reason because of its intimacy. His masked dependence on Lauren, to survive, to fuel his desire towards an insatiable romantic fulfillment, is unmasked in this scene because he reveals his honest desire to understand the woman he has been physically involved with. The weakness in Sean’s emotional communication lies in its lack of eloquence, in its explicitness, rather. As Ellis emasculates Sean’s emotional expression, he paints Lauren in a masculine light. She is concerned with logic on the outside, while Sean is concerned with emotions. Sean is essentially denied love or friendship at the cost of his emotional conveyance to Lauren, while she realizes the inability of an honest relationship.
Lauren’s revelation and masculine behavior in the scene with Sean mark a sea change in her worldview. She was once projected into a nihilistic abyss because of her self reflexive, fragmented, fluid identity, but she becomes more and more of a masculine character in her cynical epiphanies of romance. She wavers into and out of romance with Sean and is torn asunder emotionally as a result. In this sense, its as if Lauren is a masochist; she puts herself into harm’s way with Sean by having sex with him and leading him on, but ultimately delays and defers any feelings she has had for Victor. In this way her realizations on the ineptitude of a realized modern romance never seem to stick; she changes into the masculine when she sees youthful romance for what it is—an avenue to express sexuality—but retrogresses to emotional instability in her subjective monologues. Many say that people never change, but that is bunk. People rarely change, and in Lauren’s case, she is constant only in the fact that she emotionally oscillates between cynical clarity and disparaging uncertainty.
A definitive scene of the character, Susan Orlean, in Adaptation, helps us unpack Laurens dilemma of impermanent realization. Susan is a journalist who learns about what it means to be human, in love, while reinventing herself. Amid her romance with her topic of research, a botanist and eccentric, John Laroche, she comes to understand the human nature and change. She reveals, “What I came to understand is that change is not a choice. Not for a species of plant, and not for me” (Kaufman). Her confession explicates Lauren’s transient emotional state, suggesting that Lauren is part of a larger world where change is not dictated only by her, but by the social influences around her. Barker says that social change “becomes possible through rethinking and re-describing the social order and the possibilities for the future” (449). Extinguishing the possibility of a private language, Barker specifies that, “re-description is a social and political activity. This rethinking of ourselves emerges through social practice and, more often than not, through social contradiction and conflict. In doing so, it brings new political subjects and practices into being” (449). Thus, Barker concludes agency and choice are socially determined. Orlean’s epiphany concerns modern romance, albeit in a contemplative and brief style, and exhibits the nature of Lauren’s wavering identification in The Rules of Attraction. Paired with the philosophical clarity of Barker, Susan’s quote suggests Lauren’s hope for a realized romance in her future, in her self-reflexive, subjective criticism and uncertainty, is re-evaluated through her cynical realizations on her incapacity of true love. While she pines for Victor and deprives Sean the semblance of temporary romance earlier, Lauren’s romantic redefinition is uncovered as a social change. Her social conflict results because of Victor’s memory and Sean’s presence. She is affixed and conflicted emotionally between both romantic possibilities; she defines herself by her re-interpretation of the love she denies Sean, and is denied by Victor, while her re-interpretation is dictated by the vapid and vacuous social life within Camden. Her choice, rather, is a response to social events—being loved, denying love—and is burdened by her uncertainty in an emotionally apathetic landscape.
While Lauren and Sean discover the inability of finding lasting, honest love in social alienation in The Rules of Attraction, so do Charlie Kaufman and Susan Orlean in the inane world of Adaptation. Both texts present characters in a violently discursive social determinism that prevents meaning and authentic social relationships. Their relationships with one another are prohibited by the estrangement of their societies—their self-reflexive, subjectivity can never be expressed in the objective world that commands it. At the heart of The Rules of Attraction, social discourses take the stage in determining identities and the expressions of their desire, subjective or objective. Each character defines the other. But this definition incorporates a complex set of inter-relations. This is exemplified in Sean Bateman’s idealization of Lauren. While he denied any real personal connection to Lauren, by Lauren, earlier, he keeps coming back for more. His hope for romance is as misplaced as his hedonism. In convincing himself of Lauren’s allure, he admits, “All I wanted to do was look at her face, which seemed miraculously, perfectly put together, and at her body, which was constructed just as beautifully if not better” (Ellis, 181). For Sean, Lauren’s sexual appeal lies in her aesthetics, her body and facial features. She is the symbol of the perfect woman for him, but only because he has nobody else. He defines her perfection in materialistic, physical terms because his subjective desire operates only in the moment in which objects and people are introduced to it. Her body defines his desire, while it is sexual in nature, all the while searching for something of substance. In this way, Sean’s idealization of Lauren results from her earlier confession: people can never know each other, let alone love another. His attraction to her is, at once, a product of her denial of him and he continues his pursuit of her with this unfortunate knowledge.
Once again, Spike Jonze’s Adaptation serves to elucidate the complexity of discursive social discourses in The Rules of Attraction. Susan’s object of affection, John Laroche, is a botanist. His work defines his worldview and identity. In explaining the inter-relationship between orchids and their sexual counterparts, Laroche reveals a deeper understanding of the difficulties of modern romance. He explains that every flower has a unique relationship with the insects that pollinate it—that the orchid’s mate is biologically determined by its shape and color to attract specific species of insects. But, after the insect pollinates an orchid, it flies off to pollinate another, leaving its temporary mate behind. Furthermore, he says, “neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking,” nor will either participant realize that, “because of their little dance the world lives” (Kaufman). His point is eloquently presented and surprising poignant. In merely performing their biological and natural functions, both the flower and the insect become part of something larger—the creation of life; his final words signal his example’s connection with the human desire to love: “In this sense they show us how to live - how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can't let anything get in your way” (Kaufman).
Laroche’s anecdote speaks volumes about Ellis’s characters. He displays the importance of following the internal desire of the human heart, even in spite of their larger social functions and conventional roles. In a way, Laroche seems to justify Sean Bateman’s attraction to Lauren, no matter how momentary and empty it seems. His assertion marks the hope in the otherwise aimless Sean and Lauren. While Sean’s desire is expressed more openly and objectively fleeting than Lauren’s, she expresses her desire inwardly, ignoring the very significance of outward expression. While her objective realizations on romance come off as fatalistic, their only redeeming virtue is in their honesty. Their only downside is the abolition of hope for love. Barker highlights this when he explicates Foucault’s theory of sexual subjectivity. He notes, that, “For Foucault, subjectivity is a discursive production,” while it “offers speaking persons subject positions from which to make sense of the world” (Barker 291). Barker continues, revealing that, in the process of subject positioning, discourse “‘subjects’ speakers to the rules and discipline of those discourses,” as a subject’s position is defined as the “perspective” or “set of regulated discursive meanings” in which discourse assigns order and meaning (Barker 291). Foucault’s assertions are revealing. They imply that when a subject speaks, he assumes a certain subject position that is defined by discursive regulations. Thus, conventional gender roles are challenged in the process. Gender is not defined in terms of a biological or cultural determination, but is specific in its culture and its definition shifts based on drastic gaps across space and time. Consequently, gender is neither a choice nor a happenstance. It is defined through regulatory discourses (Barker 291).
As Laroche and Barker outline, Lauren and Sean, then, operate in the dictates of a subjective world defined by the regulatory discursive hedonism that marks their vapid endeavors. Sean is defined by Lauren as much as Lauren is defined by Sean. Their discourse, while a struggle, reveals that each individual is defined by their relationship to the other. Their inter-relationship flounders when they try to escape it, whether they express their desires subjectively, or objectively. The tragedy lies at the heart of the incompatibility with one another, while their discourse becomes something entirely on its own—a testament to the relational detachment which extirpates the possibility of a meaningful romance, let alone self-realization and fulfillment.
Works Cited
Adaptation. Dir. Spike Jonze. Perf. Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Nicolas Cage. ColumbiaPictures, 2003. Film.
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 3rd ed. Sage Publications Ltd, 2008.
Print.
Ellis, Bret Easton. The Rules of Attraction. New York: Random House, Inc. 1987. Print.
