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Directed by Mary Harron
Starring Christian Bale
“There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.”
My grandfather once said that “everything that happens in America will some day come here”, and it stuck with me as I saw the modest Netherlands shift further into media glorification and endless consumerism. Black Friday is coming up and Singles Day just happened; for me, wholly new concepts designed to further enrich billionaire-led corporations and for many others another opportunity to seek escapism in materialism.
In American Psycho we observe Patrick Bateman, an American twenty-something 80s yuppie who is desperate to fit in with his narcissistic colleagues who are constantly busy with making reservations at fancy restaurants and getting luxurious name-brand suits and subtly off-white colored business cards to impress each other. Bateman is often misidentified by his peers and then insulted for being a spineless dork, contrary to how we see the stunning Christian Bale, a well-groomed and exceptionally fit man with heaps of natural charm.
One such colleague is Paul Allen, another sleek businessman who manages to impress by reserving at the exclusive Dorsia, on a Friday night, all the while showing off his new business card, infuriating Bateman to no end. From here on out we indulge in Bateman’s wild delusions as he imagines murdering Allen, as well as homeless people, prostitutes, and eventually everyone as he attempts fleeing from the cops.
In one key piece of monologue Bateman explains he feels only two emotions: greed and disgust. Allen is murdered because of sheer envy, because he achieved the successes that Bateman desperately tried to replicate to no avail, and those with a lower social standing get murdered because he feels no connection and is even disgusted. A particularly funny bit is after Allen’s death when Bateman breaks into his apartment and is deeply envious with the view, which is marginally better.
Bateman too, however, is a figment of his own fantasy. He self-aggrandizes himself to look like a smooth talking, fit Hollywood actor but when push comes to shove he breaks down and stumbles awkwardly into saying he has to return some tapes, further emphasized when his peers unknowingly call Bateman a coward. Its commentary about the image of oneself is especially apt in the social media era where we tie much of our worth to addicting yet fake internet points.
Our desperate desire to trump over other’s possessions makes us hollow and fuels us negatively. Patrick Bateman is wealthy and extremely well-off but struggles with existence as he fails to bond meaningfully, or even empathize, with anybody. His reality is vapid and so is anything that he, and by extent his colleagues, pursue.
American Psycho is a highly unique postmodern work analyzing absurdity in a society so desensitized to stimulation by virtue of our excess, and an overwhelming insatiable desire for more. But there’s inevitable pointlessness to all of this; there is no catharsis. As long as we remain gluttonous we will want to inflict pain upon others while not gaining a greater knowledge of ourselves. Patrick Bateman is the same character that he is from the very first scene. Him confessing his murderous imagination has meant nothing for the world remain a hollow shell seeking out a next physical thrill.
The films title is apt and doubly layered. Bateman undoubtedly is one but what could be said about the rest of this careless society moving at lightning speed. As Bateman carries Paul Allen’s corpse out his apartment all that his friend can remark is interest in the lavish Jean-Paul Gaultier duffel bag.
It might seems ridiculous but we all have a little bit of Patrick Bateman within ourselves. We, as a society at large, are the American Psycho. We too are hollow beings seeking out validation by meaningless possessions. We too gamified our self-confidence with Instagram and Twitter likes. We too dehumanize ourselves as we consciously discard our beings to let our accessories craft our identity, hoping to feel some importance in this utterly pointless life, where we suffer from a perpetual disconnect with our individual ‘reality’.
At some point we could all say that we are Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction who have a physical form and as we shake hands and feel our flesh gripping each others and maybe for a second we think our lives are probably comparable…
We are simply not there.
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