Bret Easton Ellis Thinks You’re Overreacting to Donald Trump
Bret Easton Ellis, whose first book of nonfiction, “White,” is an interlocking set of essays about America, says he isn’t interested in politics and wants to just give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
When did people start identifying so relentlessly with victims, and when did the victim’s world view become the lens through which we began to look at everything?” So begins Bret Easton Ellis’s take on, of all things, Barry Jenkins’s film “Moonlight,” which he describes as “an elegy to pain.” Ellis’s first work of nonfiction, “White,” is an interlocking set of essays, combining memoir, social commentary, and criticism, on America, in 2019; more specifically, it’s a sustained howl of displeasure aimed at liberal hand-wringers, people obsessively concerned with racism, and everyone who has not gotten over Donald Trump’s election. His targets range from the media to Michelle Obama to millennials (including his boyfriend). Ellis also defends less popular people, from Roseanne Barr to Kanye West, whom he perceives as having been given a raw deal by the mob.
For those who follow Ellis on Twitter, none of this will be particularly surprising. He has gotten involved in several online controversies, including one that stemmed from him calling the filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow “really overrated” because she is “a very hot woman.” The more interesting question is how much of a departure this material represents from his fiction. When Ellis was in his twenties, he published three novels—“Less Than Zero,” “The Rules of Attraction,” and “American Psycho”—that are considered some of the most biting and lasting satires of Ronald Reagan’s America. But their protagonists’ materialism, misogyny, and amorality, along with Ellis’s early Brat Pack persona, have persistently raised questions regarding the depth of his social critique. “American Psycho,” about an investment banker and serial killer (who happens to worship Donald Trump), has been described as a masterpiece of postmodern literature, but it’s also been condemned by prominent feminists.
In recent years, Ellis has continued to publish fiction while also writing screenplays, including for Paul Schrader’s “The Canyons,” which became notorious for its troubled production. Since 2013, he has hosted the “Bret Easton Ellis Podcast,” on Patreon. Ellis and I recently spoke by phone. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how people respond to allegations of sexual assault, whether the President is a racist, and why he finds liberal outrage so annoying.
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[–] 17963597? ago
There have been many women who have come forward. So maybe people don’t always care about that?
Oh, I don’t know. It didn’t really matter in terms of getting him elected, in terms of the women who did vote for him.
Do you understand what I am asking here? You were saying that everyone was saying sexual assault is reprehensible, and also that people don’t care about bragging over sexual assault.
I think he was bragging. No one said he actually did it. I don’t know if any women have come forward and said, “Yes, Trump grabbed my pussy.”
Many, many women have said—
They said he brushed against them at a ballet, or—
No, pushed them against walls—
Of course. I don’t know. What does that say? What do you think?
You came to the defense of Roseanne Barr, saying that she denied, after tweeting racist stuff about Valerie Jarrett, knowing Valerie Jarrett was black.
Did she say that? That she didn’t know she was black?
You say it in the book.
Yeah, right, I quoted her.
It seems like you want to give some people the benefit of the doubt, but not others. Would that be fair?
I would like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
So when she tweets about Valerie Jarrett being the child of the Muslim Brotherhood and the “Planet of the Apes”?
Yeah, that’s a tweet. I don’t know. It’s whatever. It’s whatever you think it is and whatever she says she meant by it. It is her word against ours.
It seems like you want to give Roseanne Barr the benefit of the doubt, but not people who think Trump is a racist.
I don’t really feel that. I don’t feel that way, O.K.? It is not what I want to do at all.
This idea keeps coming up that a lot of people support Trump. Let’s grant that that is the case. How should that change how we respond to him?
I don’t think at all. What should we do about that? Change people’s minds? What can you do about a Trump supporter? But they do exist, and I don’t think all of them are crazy, insane racists. Do you?