Komplitt seminar with Irina Hron, Copenhagen University, co-organized with CEMES.

Taking its point of departure from a poem by the Danish punk poet Michael Strunge, this paper explores the literary fascination with shiny, polished, and beautifully packaged surfaces that came to define the aesthetics of consumption in the 1980s. From gold-lacquered manure (“Gyldent lort”) and chocolate-coated waste products to layers of luxury wrapping around organic refuse, the imagery of the decade is gradually unwrapped – layer by layer, text by text. Threaded through these many folds of gold, silk, and decorative ribbons is the narrative of women who are drawn into male visual worlds and desires shaped by luxury, fashion, and aggression. The result is a world in which violence is first staged as a fashion accessory and then turned into a weapon against women, exposing a gender aesthetic coated in gold lacquer. These women are caught in a perpetual cycle of wrapping and unwrapping, creating an eerie power structure of giving and receiving (uncanny gifts) between the sexes. Through close readings of literary works by Margaret Atwood, Michael Strunge, and Bret Easton Ellis, this paper points out how 1980s ideologies resurface today in new and uncanny wrappings.