Meisterwerke der Literatur und was sie uns lehren

In the organizer's words:

Few novels have been as influential over the past 35 years as "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis. Authors such as Michel Houellebecq and Christian Kracht owe a great deal to the author, not to mention Ellis' epigones. The scandalous novel, which was temporarily banned in Germany, not only describes in drastic terms a world beyond good and evil that was to be found on Wall Street in 1991, but also anticipated a society that juggles with nothingness, that no longer needs the separation between reality and fiction and a financialized capitalism that decouples itself from the real economy. Bret Easton Ellis achieves this aesthetically through the unreliable first-person narrator and protagonist Patrick Bateman, who creates character descriptions through branded products. The Harvard Business School graduate works on the stock exchange, but we never learn anything about his actual activities. At night, he murders women and homeless people. Patrick Bateman has become a meme in the social media age - and even a kind of role model in the new-right manosphere. Maxim von K.I.Z. ("Hurra, die Welt geht unter", "Frieden") and Wolfgang M. Schmitt ("Die Filmanalyse", "Wohlstand für Alle") talk about this masterpiece, its political implications and its significance in the present day.

Price information:

Admission: 8,- € / reduced: 6,- €