BUILDING UP TRUTHS: THE PERCEPTION OF THE REAL THROUGH THE MASS MEDIA IN GILLIAN FLYNN’S GONE GIRL

Resumo

The goal of this paper is to discuss the influence of the mass media on the construction or perception of the real in Gillian Flynn’s best-seller Gone Girl, problematizing to what extent our notion of truth and reality is determined by the paradigms built by the means of communication. This work takes into account the point of view of an autodiegetic narrator to establish a contrast between being and appearing, and how one can distort and have his/her image distorted by the mass media in order to achieve his/her purposes. The novel is analyzed under the light of authors such as Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco in an attempt to understand how reality and subjectivity fade in a globalized world that seems to grow more and more virtual.