Abject Humanism in Tom Perrotta Adaptations: Election and Little Children

One of the key figures in the development of a suburban ensemble cinema over the past two decades has been author Tom Perrotta, whose novels typically feature multi-focalised structures, blended affect, and suburban scrutiny. Two of his books were translated to cinema, Election (1999) and Little Children (2006), directed by Alexander Payne and Todd Field respectively, and more recently The Leftovers has been adapted as an HBO serial. Election and Little Children are both high-profile examples of the suburban ensemble dramedy, a millennial American filmmaking mode similarly featuring multiple protagonists, usually half sentimental and half satirical, set in different iterations of the American suburbs; other popular titles include American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999), Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006) and The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010). These films have often been called human dramas and are an example of what I call narrative humanism. In this paper I wish to extend the scope of literary and narrative humanisms, using the Perrotta adaptations to articulate the role abjection might play in suburban ensemble cinema. The paper also demonstrates how a humanist hermeneutic method that accounts for the abject can produce a new, complex ethical inquiry that is focussed on honouring the challenges we face in living up to the prosociality humanism espouses.