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Adapting Transgressive Fiction to Film

Sharpening the Critical Edge with a Golden Age

Adapting Transgressive Fiction to Film cover

Adapting Transgressive Fiction to Film

Sharpening the Critical Edge with a Golden Age

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Pre-order. Available 13 Nov 2025
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Description

This book examines the role that the film and publishing industries play in promoting narratives that preserve and consolidate power among society's elite, drawing explicit focus on a betrayal of intention where the forces of postmodernism and late capitalism subsume the legitimacy of transgression in adaptations of transgressive fiction.

Analyzing the work of authors Bret Easton Ellis, Hubert Selby, Jr., Chuck Palahniuk and Irvine Welsh along with their film adaptations, Christopher Burlingame reveals the sociopolitical and cultural trends between 1996 and 2001 that enabled a Golden Age and saw the rise of a variety of film techniques employed to promote empathy for the characters, thereby re-affirming anti-patriarchal capitalist messaging. However, the failure to preserve this messaging in lieu of reflecting the status quo is evident in seemingly subtle changes to the plot and subplots as well as cinematic techniques that divert attention away from the source material's original message.

Table of Contents

About the Author
Section 1: A Fundamental Introduction to Transgression and Transgressive Fiction's Dirty Little Secret
1. Legitimizing Transgressive Fiction in the Academy
2. The Patriarchal Capitalism Problem Meets the History of Transgression
3. Patriarchal Capitalism and Adapting for the Mainstream
Section 2: How the Nitty Gritty Hits the Cutting Room Floor
4. The Reagan Era: Killing Empathy in the Adapting Transgressive Novels
5. Losing the Plot with Less Than Zero
6. Smoke and Mirrors: The Illusion of Transgression in Last Exit to Brooklyn
Section 3: The First Rule of Getting it Right Is…: The Golden Age
7. Selling Out?: Profiting from the Pissed Off
8. A Scottish Play: Trainspotting and the Tracks for Transgressive Adaptation
9. You Wake Up At…: The Delayed Success of Fight Club
10. American Psycho and Patrick Bateman's Pop Culture Prowess
11. A Requiem for the End of the Golden Age: Requiem for a Dream
Section 4: Post 9/11 Collateral Damage and Looking to the Future of Transgressive Fiction
12. Back to the Start: The Regression Beyond the Golden Age
Works Cited

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 13 Nov 2025
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Extent 304
ISBN 9798765142370
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

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Environment: Staging