{"id":11154,"date":"2020-12-19T15:52:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-19T22:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=11154"},"modified":"2020-12-25T15:57:14","modified_gmt":"2020-12-25T22:57:14","slug":"b-e-e-cancelled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2020\/12\/19\/b-e-e-cancelled\/","title":{"rendered":"B.E-E. Cancelled"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from The Independent UK<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bret Easton Ellis: \u2018Being cancelled has endeared me to part of the population\u2019<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

After his recent collection of essays stirred controversy, the author has written the script for a slasher horror movie. He tells\u00a0Ed Cumming<\/a>\u00a0why today\u2019s social media storms are nothing compared with what he faced for writing American Psycho<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(AFP via Getty Images)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Until last year,\u00a0Bret Easton Ellis<\/a>\u00a0had been drifting from the public eye. Thirty-four years had passed since the instant celebrity that followed\u00a0Less Than Zero<\/em>, a stylish, nihilistic vision of Los Angeles published in 1985 when its author was just 21. The furore over\u00a0American Psycho<\/em><\/a>, his third and most famous novel, had long since faded into literary history, even after a resurgence around the 2000 film that starred\u00a0Christian Bale<\/a>\u00a0as its corporate psychopath antihero, Patrick Bateman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellis was prone to the odd misjudged tweet, in particular during 2012, a bumper year in which he variously claimed the American actor Matt Bomer was \u201ctoo gay\u201d to play the lead in 50 Shades of Grey<\/em>, said the director Kathryn Bigelow was overrated because \u201cshe\u2019s a very hot woman\u201d and, most memorably, invited his followers to \u201cbring coke now\u201d to a party he was at. But by last year he had gone quieter on social media, too. Sober after a lifetime of well-documented excess, Ellis seemed to be charting a quieter course, writing screenplays and making podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he published\u00a0White<\/em>, a collection of musings about, among other things, safe spaces, Twitter, liberal hysteria over Trump, #MeToo, the radical beauty of\u00a0Richard Gere<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0American Gigolo<\/em>, Black Lives Matter, the Oscar-winning film\u00a0Moonlight<\/em><\/a>, and snowflake millennials \u2013 \u201cGeneration Wuss\u201d, whom he declared unable to handle criticism. The essays \u2013 and interviews promoting them \u2013 provoked a barrage of criticism.\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0called it a \u201cnonsensical, vapid book, written by a man so furiously obsessed with his right to speak that he forgets to say anything\u201d. In the\u00a0London Review of Books<\/em>, James Wolcott noted Ellis\u2019s gift for \u201cupsetting the maximum number of people with the minimum amount of effort\u201d. Ellis was back in the news, portrayed more as a middle-aged crank than a bad boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, nearly two years since\u00a0White<\/em>\u2019s release, Ellis claims to have been baffled by the reaction. \u201cI was shocked,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was an argument about aesthetics, and unfortunately the meaning got twisted. I never saw it as a proclamation or politics. I saw it more about cultural history. The reaction was politicised. It was terrible, because I really don\u2019t feel that way at all. My boyfriend\u2019s a millennial.\u201d He often refers to his millennial boyfriend, Todd, a musician, in a way that reminds me of how Captain America uses his shield to block attacks but also as something to throw at his enemies. \u201cStill, we were prepared,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe knew it was going to freak the media out, and it did. It was nothing compared to\u00a0American Psycho<\/em>, when there were protests and people throwing blood on bookstores and telling me my career was over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at The Independent<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The Independent UK Bret Easton Ellis: \u2018Being cancelled has endeared me to part of the population\u2019 After his recent collection of essays stirred controversy, the author has written the script for a slasher horror movie. He tells\u00a0Ed Cumming\u00a0why today\u2019s social media storms are nothing compared with what he faced for writing American Psycho Until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}