Pantomimes of Death within Suburbia: Abject Boredom in Yates’ Revolutionary Road, Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and Bowen’s “Attractive Modern Homes”

This article will apply a psychoanalytical reading to suburbia, claiming that boredom is the trigger of abjection. The focus will be on the theories of Julia Kristeva, and the short story “Attractive Modern Homes,” by Elizabeth Bowen, the novel Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, and Blue Velvet, directed by David Lynch. The first section will examine boredom as a modern phenomenon, developed from the ennui of the cities as a coping mechanism for suburbia. This article will suggest that boredom itself cannot be perceived as a state. Instead, it is only when an event penetrates boredom that this state can be recognized and radicalized. These events will be explored as examples of Kristeva’s “primal repressions.” The second section will explore the abject and the emergence of the Real, focusing on moments of abjection in the sources. Within these, the abject is portrayed as a pantomime of death, bound to the confrontation with mortality. However, there can be no escape from the symbolic order, and the conventions of suburbia are maintained. The final section will study the fetishism of language, resulting in isolation from self.