MODERNITY’S SIDE EFFECTS: BOREDOM AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY IN J.G. BALLARD’S COCAINE NIGHTS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47333/modernizm.2020164897Keywords:
J. G. Ballard, Boredom, Holiday Resorts, Psychopathology, LawlessnessAbstract
James Graham Ballard stands out as a speculative author, sometimes also classified as a science fiction author, who distorts the quotidian scenes from his own and the reader’s environment and uses them as raw material for his dystopic scenarios. The settings he chooses for his works are usually theme parks, luxury residences, highways, shopping malls and holiday resorts which are spaces that popped out and proliferated in number especially after the Second World War. Written in 1966, Cocaine Nights sustains the Ballardian tradition in which the spaces of the new middle class are dystopified. Converging with the detective fiction tradition, Cocaine Nights presents a distorted image of the holiday resorts to the reader.
The novel deals with a holiday resort rife with lawlessness and psychopathological behaviour in the south of Spain. Charles Prentice, who arrives in the region after learning that his brother has been arrested for arson and murder, aims to solve the mystery, only to find that there is a logic of lawlessness governing the life in the holiday resort. The kind of community in question is quite “Ballardian” in that it consists of an affluent milieu of society who casts aside the issues of survival and has nothing to do. This paper aims to examine the effects of financial affluence and boredom on the lawlessness presented in Cocaine Nights.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Articles submitted to the Journal of Modernism and Postmodernism Studies to be evaluated for publication should not be previously published in any publication. In case the articles are accepted for publication, all publication rights belong to the Journal of Modernism and Postmodernism Studies. Author (s) must send the Copyright Transfer Form if their manuscript is accepted for publication in the Journal of Modernism and Postmodernism Studies. The author (s) should sign this form with a wet signature and upload it in the file upload section.
Although the Journal of Modernism and Postmodernism Studies takes the transfer of the publishing rights from the authors, it reserves the following rights:
- Patent rights.
- All unregistered rights other than copyright
- The right to reproduce the work for their own purposes, provided that they do not sell.· The right of the author to use all or part of the work in her/his own book and other academic works, provided that the source is indicated.