I think my mask of sanity is about to slip. We also see this disguise as he goes from picking out suits for camouflages, skin creams in his bathroom, to picking out murder weapons, knives from his pantry. However we are not fully aware whether he has been killing this whole time or that it has just now started to slip up into his real life; his repression coming out into the open. This is shown in the film as he starts bringing in quotes from past serial killers into his everyday conversations.
The many references to other works of art in American Psycho are another element of post modernism. In order to seem normal or have anything ordinary to talk about with his co-workers, as well the escort girls he tries to entertain before killing, he listens to and reads about many different music albums and musicians.
These songs and artists, as well as always mentioning famous rich people, show how hollow his mask of sanity really is. The blurring of history and fiction is a common sign of a post modern narrative and in American Psycho there are many references given to the times of the American yuppie culture. Yuppie stands for young urban professional and was a common lifestyle of the young, rich and powerful in and around the s.
It is also his freedom of having money and jealousy of his co-workers that leads him to most of his self corruption, many of his murders being prostitutes and the poor, which shows a simple critique of this time. Through this we can see the extent of his self loathing. It is this scene in particular that also makes an important reference in the film and at the same the time expresses a very important critique. Earlier in the film we see him doing stomach crunches while watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
In the scene with Christie running away from him he runs after her with a chainsaw as though inspired by this. The fact that the yuppie culture and this historical blurring takes place also shows the anxieties of this time. The anxieties behind American Psycho are of giving in to ones desires and fantasies no matter how horrific they may be. Considered the bastard child of the horror film, no other type of film has the bad reputation that the slasher film does.
Because we are seeing it through his eyes, unlike the fear of being murdered the main fear the audience experiences is not the thrill of a threat for ones life but instead a thrill of the threat of getting caught. This gives the viewer the feeling that they themselves have committed these crimes. On his return, there were no telltale sniffles or traces of white powder, but it raised the issue of how he felt about the world keeping him under constant surveillance.
The fact that Patrick Bateman pretends to be normal as a cover for his true motives brings out the fear that our own personal fantasies and secrets maybe discovered. Patrick Bateman is not a normal human with moments of insanity; Patrick is insane with moments of normal humanness. This can be seen when he represses his urges and decides not to kill his secretary, Jean, but it is at this moment in the film where he starts committing more and more murders. It cannot be corrected but I have no other ways to fulfill my needs.
In many respects this film shows a critique of materialism and consumerism as well as, to a further extent, sexism. Patrick is always trying to own expensive things and eat at expensive places, in particular the restaurant Dorsia which he can never get a reservation at.
This links in at the end where instead of consuming foods, furniture or music CDs he instead resorts to be consuming people for the rush of killing them and going so far as to try and cook and eat one of his victims brains.
It could be seen that consumption is the only thing that excites him now that everything he may need in the lines of money is simply at the tips of his fingers, killing people giving him excitement money cannot buy. This consumerism is also shown in his need to buy escort girls to fulfill his sick desires as many of his murders, like many serial killers in the past, are prostitutes.
Martin Rogers states,. This film also garnered criticism from feminist perspectives; many women believing the film and even the original book to be sexist because of its graphic violence towards women.
Ironically one of the feminist activists for the books release was Gloria Steinem who is the stepmother of Christian Bale, the man who played Patrick Bateman in the film.
Not being able to distinguish fantasy or dream from reality is another aspect of a post modern film. In the climax of the film where he kills multiple people and a few policemen, he rings up and confesses all his crimes to his lawyer.
The next day when he goes to the apartment where he had hidden all the bodies, they had all been cleared out, the apartment had been painted and it smelt strongly of flowers as though to hide the smell. When he asks about it he is told strangely to leave, leaving him questioning if the events had even happened. This raises the question for both the audience and himself on whether he actually committed these murders or if they were all in his head.
No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession had meant nothing. Despite its controversial nature and horrific content, American Psycho is a near perfect example of a post modern horror. Not only does it break common treads in horror archetypes and structure but its critique of consumerism and materialism gives the film a post modern complexity as an analysis of both an insane character and a time in American history.
This complexity can be seen dominantly through the ambiguity of its ending which questions the line between fantasy and reality in the film. Its references to works of art in and around the time of its setting as well as the style of the film itself shows a critique of the s yuppie consumer culture while blurring the line between history and fiction.
Its references to other serial killers, whether it be fictional in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or in reality with the people who inspired them such as Ed Gein and Ted Bundy, shows a blend in the genre of fiction and real life. Most importantly is the fact that this character gets away with it. Because of the inconclusive ending, not understanding whether he committed these murders or not due to his manipulated view of reality we are given a complex ending not for entertainment but to open up levels of thought on whether these fantasies make him guilty or not, and in turn, ourselves for our own fantasies.
Graham, Elaine L. Thanks for the awesome article, and keep up the great work! American Psycho is one of my favorite movies of all time, and you article perfectly demonstrates why. I find the whole backlash the film got from critics at first was very strange to me. It could be they focused too much on the intense violent and sexist nature, that they forgot to review it as a film first.
It could be that the film that was just ahead of its time, which is why it has gained a cult following. Intelligent analysis of this film. I had forgotten how good it was. This movie is awful. It is badly written and as an awful ending. It is not scary. I keep hearing it is comedy. Where is the hummer?
I have seen comedies were I can tell there are play something for laughs and I just did not think it was funny. But do not see this movie as bad comedy. I do no see it has being comedy at all. Serial killer is one a spear. This movie is not good for people who want to get scared. It for people who like to laugh ether. It is for people who like to see a lot of fake blood. I thought is was a badly made horror movie not a comedy.
This element is present in the novel as well, but the film version-- appropriately--has taken it to be the most crucial element, the level that constructs the entrance point for the spectator into the film. From the very beginning, the spectators are invited to see the image of Bateman as an imaginary double construction, both within and beyond the cinematic diegesis and narration. The double image of Patrick Bateman is constructed both within the novel and the film, and both media help to construct the double image of the yuppie and the serial killer--which, in the end, becomes actualized only in an empty symbol, a reflection.
Bateman is shown placing an ice mask on his face, training his abdominal muscles, taking a shower, and applying a facial mask. As he removes the mask that has formed a screen on his skin, Bateman's voiceover reveals an explicit self-analysis: There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction.
But there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory. Although I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable--I simply am not there. This self-analysis also appears in the novel, though almost at the end, on pages , and is the key to understanding American Psycho. Bateman strives to conceal his lack of being with designer suits and pop culture, but remains aware of the meaninglessness of his project: "Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in As a result, he tries to narrate himself an identity as a serial killer, but fails in this project too, as he is unable to maintain his reliability as the narrator of his own life.
By striving to embody both the image of a yuppie Wall Street stockbroker and a serial killer, Bateman becomes a dark double of the s New York yuppie subculture that reveals nothing but meaninglessness.
From the start of both the novel and the film, Bateman's identity is unclear. He is repeatedly recognized as somebody else, he often confuses the identities of his fellow yuppies, and more than once he deliberately misidentifies himself to others. Bateman's cameo appearance in Bret Easton Ellis's second novel The Rules of Attraction--telling his brother Sean to "Stop deliberately misunderstanding me" --introduces the identity confusion that is dominant in American Psycho, the novel and the film.
When the novel was published in , many critics Iannone, Mailer, and Manguel focused on the "boring" enumerations of brand name consumer goods and the "revolting" descriptions of the raping, butchering, and killing of women, rather than recognizing the narrator's confused identity and unreliability.
They perceived the novel as a manifestation rather than merely a description of a nihilistic and empty culture.
As post-feminist Naomi Wolf exclaimed American Psycho was "the single most boring book I have ever had to endure" However, the unreliability in narration ironizes the overload of brand names and butchered body parts, suggesting that the distinction between serial consumption and serial killing has disappeared.
Although his sharp eye for detail suggests a careful and selective observer, Bateman continuously makes seemingly unimportant mistakes. Progressing into the novel, as the killings become more explicitly described, the "errors" increase. Bateman's seemingly structured, yet boring and revolting world proves to be inconsistent and illogical, both in time and space.
A Christmas party is followed by a night in May; the daily references to the topics of that morning's Patty Winters Show change within the course of the day; the pop artists Bateman mentions do not match the pop songs he hears on the radio. Bateman is in fact an unreliable narrator whose credibility and identity should be questioned, including his confession of being "a fucking evil psychopath" Ellis Bateman's unreliability as narrator forces the reader to realize that the killings only take place in Bateman's mind.
Such a realization is significant, as it shows that Bateman appropriates objects and images of pop consumer culture--both the "boring" and the "revolting" ones--to construct a double identity of himself, one that by definition is mistaken. In this way, the brand names are equated to the violence, and vice versa, reflecting the way in which Bateman's double identity is constructed as mutually incoherent. In her discussion of the novel, Elizabeth Young has argued that Patrick Bateman is not a "character" but a "cipher"--an empty sign denoting the nothingness of yuppie identity.
Bateman is "Everyyuppie, indifferent to art, originality or even pleasure except in so far as his possessions are the newest, brightest, best, most expensive and most fashionable" The Everyyuppie is a flat "character" whose nihilism is concealed by his perfect exterior, a depersonalization ironically contrasted by the "personal names" of his clothes: Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani.
His subjectivity is based on capitalist materiality and symbolic expression, as haute couture fashion and cosmopolitan lifestyles have become identity building blocks that communicate the subject's social desirability and status, articulating the subject's cultural body Lauer and Lauer; Silverman. Bateman is an inscriptive surface that can be signified, "masked" through fashions, lifestyles, habits and behaviours Grosz.
Through the inscription of cultural values, signified by the brand names like Clinique and Giorgio Armani, Patrick Bateman embodies the s yuppie cultural environment. In fact, Bateman succeeds in establishing the image of the Everyyuppie to the extent that he is constantly mistaken as being someone else who embodies the same image; indeed his firm is full of Bateman-clones.
Several critics have pointed out that the film version captures the satire contained within the novel, how its cinematography and production design mirrors Bateman's narcissism and love of designer goods, and how this is juxtaposed to the killings Bateman commits Kauffman, Porton, Rayns, Smith.
More importantly, the film version highlights the way in which Bateman constructs his identity as yuppie with the cliche images of consumer goods and pop culture, and the way in which the construction of his identity as serial killer is based on the cliche images of horror and porn films.
While getting his silver colored axe like his s mobile phone, a gadget of high design ready to butcher, Bateman lectures about the Huey Lewis hit single "Hip To Be Square"--"A song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics, but they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of friends, it's also a personal statement Since it's impossible in the world we live in to empathize with others, we can always empathize with ourselves.
It's an important message, crucial really, and it's beautifully stated on the album" our italics. Once the music stops, the sound is immediately taken over by the puffing sounds of Bateman having sex with two women, abruptly transforming into screams, as Bateman chokes one and chases the other with a chain saw, with blood all over the place. The juxtaposition of the banality of pop song philosophy with the stereotypical actions and sounds of the porn star and serial killer reinforces the notion that Patrick Bateman's identity is constructed as an empty sign of pop consumer culture.
The inconsistent and illogical narrative structure of time and place in American Psycho appears to be solved after Bateman's murder of Paul Allen, which subsequently leads to an investigation by detective Donald Kimball Willem Dafoe.
The murder not only provides an explanation for Bateman's deliberate attempts to be mistaken for Marcus Halberstram, but also suggests a motive. Paul Allen has the nicest business card, has succeeded in obtaining the Fisher account, and is always able to get a reservation for the Dorsia restaurant on Friday night, making Allen, rather than Bateman, Everyyuppie.
By being the ultimate successful yuppie, Allen challenges Bateman's subjectivity as the Everyyuppie--and thus needs to be exterminated. In Allen's embodiment of the Everyyuppie, Bateman sees himself more perfect than he feels himself like the child before the Lacanian mirror , and he experiences his yuppie subjectivity to fade away. As a result, the subjectivity of the serial killer emerges.
In addition, the investigation suggests that the outside world is finally reacting to Bateman's actions as serial killer, implying that Bateman's imaginary world is in fact "real. At this point, the comparison between the novel and the film becomes most relevant. In the novel the "cinematic" narration takes over, meaning that the narrative follows the conventions of the traditional Hollywood thriller.
As according to convention the murderer always gets caught, the next murder Bateman commits is followed by a stereotypical chase scene--Bateman is chased by the police cars and helicopters, including a conventional exchange of fire.
The chase is the only part of the novel which is written in the third person narrative, rather than in the first person, enhancing the image of Patrick Bateman--the Hollywood killer--starring in the role of his life. Ellis , our italics The film version brings Bateman's movie to life, as the cinematic techniques of narration used in the novel are adopted in the film.
With the "voice" of the ATM-machine telling him to "feed me a stray cat," Bateman enters the movie in which he stars as the main villain. As Bateman pulls his gun on the small kitten, an elderly woman passing by shouts "Oh my God, what are you doing? Stop that! As the non-diegetic music swells, Bateman adds to the cacophony by setting off the alarms of the parked BMW's and Porsches.
With its use of the cliche elements, the chase scene is a direct caricature of the action genre, including exploding police vehicles and the exchange of fire. As the star of his own action film, Bateman succeeds in killing all the policemen and making the police cars blow up in an atomic explosion. By bringing Bateman's movie to life, the film invites the spectator into the process of Bateman's identity construction: the way in which Bateman sees himself as a star in his own movie indicates the way in which he has assumed the modes of his social conduct, either as Everyyuppie or as serial killer.
Conventional elements of the thriller and horror film genre can also be found in the film's other chase scene, in which, after choking his friend Elizabeth Guinevere Turner , Bateman kills Christy Cara Seymour , a prostitute that he has picked up from the street.
The chainsaw chase scene is drastically different from the style and pace of the rest of the film. In this way, the film systematically incorporates female POV's other than Bateman's, suggesting a gendered identification, which will be discussed later on. Christy's POV's are intercut with long shots of her fleeing from the crime scene, her finding dissolving bodies of earlier killed women in Bateman's closet, and of Bateman chasing her with a chainsaw in his hands, blood dripping from his mouth.
The fast-paced scene ends with the absurd murder of Christy at the bottom of the staircase, as, from an impossible angle, the dropped chainsaw slices her in two. Together with the police chase scene, the absurdity of this scene suggests that the murders take place in Bateman's fantasy; not in the diegetic world of the film, but in the universe of Bateman's cinematic fiction.
As a result, we as spectators are drawn into his cinematic fantasy, a "film" that is playing in Bateman's head, featuring the exaggerated parody elements of the horror genre that Bateman uses to construct his identity as serial killer. Patrick Bateman is constantly confronted with the possibility of his hallucinatory identity as Everyyuppie fading away. When his colleagues seem to have more elegant and stylish visiting card than he has, he suffers a panic attack.
His corporeal body is brought into asynchrony with its environment as it collapses under the fancy suit: we can see sweat drops appearing on his well groomed skin and we can hear his heartbeat speeding up. In order to hold on to his hallucination, Bateman "kills" the ones--like his colleague Paul Allen--that present a threat to his hallucinatory identity. Yet his attempt to murder another colleague in "real life" fails, and this results in another threat to his serial killer identity.
The appearance of detective Kimball provides a credible plotline to the narrative of Bateman's life. But all the other characters pose a potential threat to Bateman's hallucinatory identity, and this is why he cannot encounter anyone except on the most superficial level. In the film, however, the cinematic fictional world is made explicit through the use of horror and action film conventions.
Bateman cannot separate the "real" world from the world of fiction--mostly horror and porn films--that he fills his days with.
As a result, he sincerely believes that these actions have really taken place and, after the police chase scene, he calls his lawyer all confused and shaken, and "confesses" the murders. Bateman knows that, in a conventional fictional thriller, the murderer always gets caught, and that is why his twisted mind has to invent a chase scene. Yet it is clear that Bateman has fantasized the chase, as well as the murders, in order to provide himself with an exciting identity as serial killer, desperately trying to retain meaning into his life.
Through the juxtaposition of the spectators in between the "subjective reliability" and "objective unreliability" in the process of narration, the spectators are invited to participate in the process of cinematic meaning production.
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the divided subject misrecognizes itself as a unified subject who acts in the world. This means that to be able to function in the world, the subject has to "accept" its fundamental disunity. This takes place for the first time in what Lacan calls the mirror stage. In the mirror stage the infant becomes aware of itself as an autonomous entity that is distinct from its environment.
At night, the same obsessive passion for excellence is transformed into a passion for violence. Seeing an unemployed bum in an alley, Patrick at first wanted to help him, and then impulsively killed, opening bloody and senseless crimes.
Moreover, the image of Patrick Bateman is introduced as the element of psychoanalysis of the self and its different variations, suchlike self-control, self-expression, self-discovery, self-fulfillment, self-denial, self-realization, self-help, and self-refusal. Which one dominates? What do we know about the narcissistic yuppie? As suggested by Campbell ,. To conclude, the image of Patrick Bateman can be treated as a vivid representation of the consumer society and contradictions between taking and giving.
The main character of American Psycho is a successful representative of modern society; he takes everything that life can suggest to him in terms of his financial position and gives back the psychopathic consequences of consuming goods available to him as a yuppie. The movie partially includes the concept of contradiction between consuming and accumulating because the accumulation is not typical of the modern fast liver.
Kooijman, J. Post Script , Lizardo, O. Journal for Cultural Research, 11 3 , Messier, V.
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