Easy Street

One common theme in most cultures is a certain self importance of the rich. The old notion of Social Darwinism tends to rear its ugly head whenever people shake their heads at the cliques that form in high school, the need to have the trendiest new toy or hottest accessory. However, this isn’t a problem isolated to 21st century girls obsessed with watching The Hills. The nobility of Dickens’ Great Expectations and the raucous college students of Bret Ellis’ Rules of Attraction both share a similar obsession, using possessions as ways of measuring others until others become those possessions. The spoiled rich of 19th and 20th centuries share a common trait of consumption, obsessed with material wealth and success to the point that even fellow human beings become tools, something to have, own, and control, dehumanizing those around them to feed their own wants and goals.

Even the masters are slaves. The masters, in this case the economically well endowed, are slaves to keeping up personal appearances, making sure their honor is impeccable and their wealth obvious. When Pip, the main character of Dickens’ tale, comes into a great fortune, the first thing he does is buy new clothes, the most expensive the tailor in his small town can make, but then arrives in London and feels that his clothes aren’t right because they’re out of style. This trait carries over to the students of Ellis’ Camden University, where the pupils treat class like a joke and focus more on brand names than each other’s name. Lauren, after agreeing to sleep with a total stranger, walks passively behind him, looking at the whole thing as if someone else is making it happen, “In the Freshman’s room now. What’s his name? Sam? Steve? It’s so…neat! Tennis racket on the wall. Shelf full of Robert Ludlum books. Who is this guy? Probably drives a Jeep” (Ellis, 15). She looks down on him because he’s new, he hasn’t acclimated to the trends, hasn’t become part of the general norm in the microcosmic society that she chooses to inhabit. Not that this stops her from having sex with him, of course. As the social elite, the rich take it upon themselves to steer the world, through economic means, into one that’s preferable to their taste and suits their vapid ideas of beauty and art. Corporations are often the most to blame for this, since they are the prime movers and shakers on a global scale. In “The Politics of Culture”, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan discuss this concept of culture from above, wherein those high in social class and material status “[allow] only certain kinds of imagery and ideas to gain access to mass audiences…inevitably further[ing] attitudes as perceptions that assure its continuation” (Rivkin, 1026). This isn’t just the ranting of conspiracy theorists; many companies have tried to make an international model of their product the norm.

Those who try to stay true to the latest trends and keep up with them label others after the same goal as posers, trying to muscle into territory they believe is right fully theirs. Lauren rails against this to a group of her friends during lunch time, lamenting the college they go to. “’I’m sick of this place. Everyone reeks of cigarettes, is pretentious, and has terrible posture. I’m getting out before the Freshman take over.’ I forgot ketchup. I push the plate of fries away. Light a cigarette” (Ellis, 36). Her willful cognitive dissonance is only made further ironic by the fact that she’s not the only one complaining of inauthenticity. Everyone imagines that they’re the only ‘real’ thing, the only human in a room of robots. “Research suggests,” says Chris Barker, “that claims to authenticity are at the heart of contemporary youth subcultures” (Barker, 429). While finding this authenticity is almost impossible for someone outside of it, those who are on the inside seem to have no such difficulties. Pip, who acts like this elegant gentleman when leaving his farming town to go to London, gets brought painfully down to Earth when Herbert, his friend and roommate of a more distinct nobility, has to gently guide him into a politer set of table manners. During their first dinner, he often pauses midway through his tale to correct some action of Pip’s. “Now, I come to the cruel part of the story—merely breaking off, my dear [Pip], to remark that a dinner-napkin will not go into a tumbler” (Dickens, 172). The ruling party often has this irritating notion that they’re the only ones to be correct, and if you’re of a different opinion then it’s because you’re not one of them. Simone de Beauvoir points out that “In the midst of an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man say: ‘You think thus and so because you are a woman’; but I know that my only defense is to reply: ‘I think thus and so because it is true,’ thereby removing my subjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to reply: ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man’” (de Beauvoir). These walls exist because it’s hard to create a self without an other. Pip may have lived in both worlds, as a gentleman and as a poor man, but he can’t say anything about either because his claims to both are tarnished.

Indeed, by categorizing people as being in this binary of Rich or Poor, In or Out, it’s nigh impossible for people to treat each other as people, and they only become a series of labels, a group of items, until they eventually become an item themselves. Pip’s fortune is eventually revealed to be nothing more than a step in a grand revenge fantasy hatched by an ex-convict who wanted to simply brag of having a gentleman in London. “If I ain’t a gentleman,” he says to Pip, “nor yet got no learning, I’m the owner of such” (Dickens, 311). He only wanted Pip so he could elevate himself, know that he was the owner of someone who had achieved all he couldn’t, his own way of spitting at the system that had tossed him overboard. The convict himself wasn’t really rich, but worked his hardest so that Pip could be in his stead. Sean, one of Lauren’s classmates, describes her only as “the girl who fucked Mitchell last night and who I want to fuck” (Ellis, 40). Sean makes no effort to learn her name, learn anything about her, just decides that he wants to have sex with her, make her a notch on his bedpost. The saddest part is, in this environment, no one seems to know anyone, as if everyone’s perfectly happy isolating themselves and only interacting when they want. They’ve reached the top and can only become more wealthy by collecting the people around them, or they’ve got no money and collect people as a form of currency, elevating themselves by proxy. Jean Baudrillard emphasizes this, stating that “in a more integrated society, individuals no longer compete for the possession of goods, they actualize themselves in consumption” (Baudrillard, 409). These aren’t people any more. They’re a group of oppurtunities, of ideas, of possible pleasures and prides wrapped around one another until the human is obscured by the watcher’s desirous perception.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with want. It’s a perfectly natural, perfectly harmless thing when neutral. However, when it turns malicious, when it becomes more about ephemeral wants over long lasting desires, that’s when the dark side of desire jumps on stage. Both Dickens and Ellis sought to expose this in their works, taking none-too-subtle jabs at those they found most deserving; those who eat until their stomachs bulge, drink until they drown, and hoard without any notion of the wants of others.

Works Cited
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies. 3rd ed. Sage Publications Ltd, 2008. Print.
Baudrillard, Jean. “The System of Objects”.   Literary Theory: An Anthology.  Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan.  Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 408-418
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005. Print.
Ellis, Bret. The Rules of Attraction. MacMillan, 1988. Print.
Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. “The Politics of Culture”. ”. Literary Theory: An Anthology.  Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan.  Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 1025-1027.