#grey's thoughts

I recently finished American Psycho and I have thoughts on it.

I had some knowledge of the story going in and have seen the film once, but I tried to avoid overly reading other interpretations so that this brief impromptu essay would not accidentally be the shadow of someone else's interpretation.

American Psycho, as a novel, obviously has a lot of themes that explore yuppie culture, materialism, wealth and status, violence and control, and the loss of the self. I'm less interested in discussing the capitalist themes here and more focused on that last one-- the loss of the self, and how this novel gives Patrick Bateman layers, but Bateman himself can never access the depth of any character he might have.

To begin, let's start with... well, the beginning. Despite American Psycho being a 1st person novel, the internal narration in Bateman's head does not actually begin until about 8 pages into the story. Already the reader is subtly exposed to Bateman's complete disconnection as a person. The scene plays out, Bateman's friends talk and discuss trivialities, complain about the homeless, pretend to care about world issues, and at the center of it is a protagonist who is not even home in their own head.

As the novel goes on we get to know more about Bateman, but in a stunning antithesis to that thought terminating cliche of the "curtains being blue because the author just wanted them to be blue," it's what Bret Easton Ellis has Bateman not say that serves to emphasize his character. When we're in Bateman's head we are exposed to an analysis of every single detail of every bit of clothing he's wearing, others are wearing, who made it, how nice it is, what he owns in his apartment, what he wants to own, how involved his physical care routine is, etc. etc. etc. Everything Bateman takes note of or feels the need to explain demonstrates what he's come to value: status and importance. The details of Bateman's life are thoroughly materialistic and shallow, and his exercise and hygiene routines seem strictly rooted in maintaining beauty and attractiveness rather than out of any deeper care for his health and well-being. Everything he does is to maintain status and importance, and in Bateman's world that means having the nicest stuff and looking the nicest. He is his own visual commodity; internal depth has no social value.

Despite the appearance of superficiality, though, Patrick has feelings all the time throughout the novel. He expresses glee and joy when he's doing something horrible and asserting control over his environment, but what's more interesting are the feelings he doesn't create for himself. Throughout the novel there are moments where Patrick is suddenly sad or scared. Sometimes he imagines something that frightens him and he isn't sure where the thought comes from. Sometimes he's going through the motions and suddenly he's caught off-guard with sadness he didn't ask for. When these things happen, though, Patrick refuses to dig any deeper. If he is suddenly sad or scared or angry, he is seemingly incapable of ruminating on the emotion. Instead, he turns to attack and tries to reestablish his perceived control.

In one of the most telling (and graphic) scenes of the novel, Patrick Bateman violently tortures, sexually molests, and eventually kills a woman he had lunch with. Bethany was a fling from college and as Bateman has lunch with her, he recalls a little of who he used to be in college, before he was this preening executive. The thoughts don't go far, but it's one of the few moments he affords himself a tiny bit of introspection. Unfortunately his drive to feel important cuts off any real self-reflection, as Bethany's benign actions and life story cause him to feel completely emasculated. He learns that she's dating a chef who works at a restaurant called Dorsia. Despite Bateman and his friend's affluence, getting a reservation at this restaurant has managed to elude him every time he's tried. You can feel the tension in Bateman's mind tighten like a rope the moment you read this passage. Then she pays for the lunch... throughout the book, Bateman flashes his "American Express Platinum" like some kind of VIP badge to the world, making sure people see it, see him use it, and know it's his. By paying for the meal and dating someone who Bateman perceives as "above" him in status, he's sent into a quiet rage. Bethany continues to demonstrate healthy boundaries and sensible responses, only agreeing to go to Bateman's apartment after he quite literally begs her to. Identity in question, status fluid, emotions surging-- Bethany never leaves that apartment; she's a victim of Bateman's need to control and his inability to process what is driving his negative emotions.

Towards the end of the novel another telling event takes place, in which Bateman shoots a street musician which ends up culminating in a police chase and his most public display of violence. He gets away, runs to his office, phones his lawyer to confess his crimes, and so on, but what we're interested in is how the novel uses the mechanics of perspective to emphasize further and further disconnection. Once the scene becomes a complete spectacle, the novel transitions seamlessly from a 1st person to a 3rd person perspective. This disconnect is emphasized later during yet another lunch/dinner scene where he tells his partner she shouldn't fawn over "him," then quickly realizing he means "me." Patrick is now beginning to dissociate so often that he feels separate from his body, his words, and his motions. He feels truly alien, emphasizing an earlier narration that there is only the idea of a Patrick Bateman, but that he is simply not there.

As the novel goes on, Bateman's murders become more and more violent. He needs to draw out the sadism to get the same satisfaction, and even then it doesn't always hit. Bateman continues to spiral and he knows that something is wrong with him. Periodically the horror of his violence enters his mind, but often the thought is dismissed. What's truly wrong with Bateman, in the moments he has the lucidity to think about it, is that he can't find any substantive meaning. He's chasing status and importance but when left alone just long enough to accidentally introspect, he runs from that hollowness. There are moments where he seems to long for some magic escape from the emptiness in his soul, but all he knows how to fill it with is the short-term satisfaction of perceived status and the murder of the homeless or the subjugation of women-- a way of putting down a "lesser" person to continue to feel above them. It's interesting to note how frustrated he becomes during one scene in a video rental store with a cashier who is so "below" him that his pompous boasts have absolutely no effect on her. She simply treats Patrick like another customer she's annoyed by whom she needs to ring up to get the line moving. Patrick responds to this frustration by making it a point of mentally remarking on her clothing brands: yet another attempt to put himself above, even if the "points" are only in his head.

Returning to the point of Bateman wanting to find some "magic escape," there are many points in the novel in which Bateman blatantly states that he is a murderer, that he wants to hurt women, that he tortures people and animals, and so on. Very few times in the novel do people actually hear what Bateman is saying, as their responses usually indicate that they've misheard him, are misunderstanding him, or they simply don't acknowledge what he said at all. This tendency points towards a drive for self-destruction. Bateman avoids the responsibilities of his crimes, but is often deliberately haphazard and reckless. He leaves mutilated corpses in the apartment of Paul Owen (a previous victim and rival) for over 160 days without once ever checking on it or cleaning it up. He describes gore and mutilated body parts decorating his own apartment and the smell of decay, yet he often he can't be bothered to clean up these horrific scenes very quickly, if at all. Status is important to Bateman, but simultaneously he seems almost taunted by what he can seemingly get away with. He takes unnecessary risks and sometimes acknowledges those risks, and yet almost nothing ever comes of his violence. He challenges the barriers by blatantly confessing that he's a violent psychotic murderer and those around him only see it as a quirk of his, a bad joke, if they acknowledge it at all.

The world Bateman lives in is vapid, too vapid to acknowledge his confessions. A repeating motif in the novel that delves into the themes of conformity is this tendency for all the characters to continuously get other characters' names mixed up. Mistaken identity happens all the time and this fluidity isolates Bateman even further. He chases status, but the novel constantly reminds us that all of these people, Bateman included, are completely interchangeable. During the segment where the novel switched from 1st to 3rd person, Bateman called his lawyer to confess his crimes but he never learned if his lawyer got that message. Patrick finally confronts him about it and the lawyer laughs it off as a joke, doesn't even realize it's Bateman he's talking to despite being face-to-face, says Patrick could never do anything like that because he's too much of a coward, and finally states that those crimes are impossible anyway because he had lunch with Paul Owen in London 10 days ago. The novel repeatedly emphasizes Patrick's unreliable narration and calls into question whether ANY of the violence happened at all, but the maddening detail here for Patrick is that not even he can know. These characters are so interchangeable, so alike in their conformity, that he can't know if the lawyer truly had lunch with Paul Owen or just one of the many other executives who are just like him. Bateman pushes the boundaries through explicit dialogue revealing what he is doing (or thinks he's doing), but no one really cares and even if they did, they can barely be bothered to remember who Patrick Bateman is to separate him from any of the others. In chasing status and importance, his character is trapped in a limbo devoid of any real consequence and this isolates him further.

In one of the final scenes of the novel, Patrick has lunch with his secretary, Jean, and she is one of the only people that Patrick shows any modicum of sincerity towards. Jean confesses that she has feelings for Patrick and Patrick seems to feel something close to sympathy for her when he realizes that she is incapable of understanding how much evil really exists in the world, and in him. While Bateman has not been kind towards Jean, her sincerity in confessing and simply being a "regular" person gives Bateman pause. In that moment he feels Jean is somehow stronger, less controllable, and wholly unfamiliar to him. She represents that "magic escape" that may take him to places with more profound meaning. Jean acting as a regular person who genuinely cares about Patrick with no ulterior motive causes him to surge in wild and hopeful emotions. That genuine human connection, however brief, allows Patrick to see something beyond the suit he's wearing and the mousse in his hair. She is, he realizes, wholly alien to his alien existence.

In order to escape such a mundane prison, however, one can't rely on just one single person to be the anchor back to humanity. Support systems and communities are needed, and Patrick has none. Jean represents something good and real, and he is fascinated by it, but his life continues to play out in much the same way: trivial conversations, violent murders, vapid status, and empty people. Whether the violence is real or not is of little consequence to the point. His character does not change and there is very little hope for him to change, but we see the catalyst for how he could change, if he could escape this purgatory of his own making.

One final repeating aspect of Bateman's internal narration that I thought was fascinating was his tendency to go on side tangents about musicians. Periodically, throughout the novel, there are chapters in which Bateman talks about musicians such as Huey Lewis and the News or Whitney Houston. There's likely a lot of analysis one could pull from Bateman's opinions on music and how it might conflate with commercial success, but I want to focus on the sheer passion that I believe these passages illuminate. While these chapters continue the stream-of-consciousness narration, they often function as complete asides from the main narrative. One purpose these chapters could serve is to demonstrate fully that Bateman IS human. He has a hobby and passion that he is intimately knowledgeable about, and unlike the film version, these tirades about musicians and the evolution of their albums and musical themes are never stated to another character-- they're only told to us, the reader. In this sense they feel like almost like a secret. The only other niche topic Bateman seems to know just as much about as he does music are the invisible and ridiculous "dos and dont's" of business wear rules. His friends often ask Bateman his opinion on what suspender thickness is best, what socks are acceptable in what type of suits, and so on. Despite always having a knowledgeable answer to such a vapid topic, not once are these rules of business wear ruminated on by him in private or to the reader. Patrick Bateman, the man behind the mask, likes music and he likes to think about music, but this is an aspect of himself he never shares with anyone else or gives much thought to outside of those private monologues.

Patrick Bateman is a complex character posing as a vapid and shallow one because he will never allow himself to explore his own depths. He will never allow himself to be a person. He has to continue to be shallow in order to maintain the horrific equilibrium he's found. It's all he knows, and he can't face the world outside of it because he does not know how to exist outside of the opinions of others.

ok so i just realized this but of the two teams (in the live action), happy is the one with grey in its logo, while ee is the one with white in its logo...so why did ee's uniform use red and GREY and happy's uniform use red and WHITE?