American Psycho explores the inherent violence of corporate greed, using Patrick Bateman's sadistic acts as a metaphor for the callousness of Wall Street. The film's ambiguous ending signifies Bateman's moral awakening, as he tries to hold himself accountable for his actions while those around him remain indifferent.
The film suggests that the pursuit of material wealth and status ultimately leads to a dehumanizing existence, where individuals become objects in a transactional society. Another significant message in “American Psycho” revolves around the erosion of identity and the loss of individuality.
While it's true that Patrick is experiencing delusions and hallucinations, it doesn't mean that the murders are in his head. Turner blames the muddiness of the ending on the dichotomy between the fantasy world that Bateman is currently living in and the reality of the murderous situation at hand.
Rather, American Psycho continues to be a memorable film because of how Harron and her collaborators created a satirical portrait of toxic masculinity and its cinematic take on the subjective mental state of its protagonist.
The story follows the descent into total insanity of the main character and narrator, Patrick Bateman, an elite, narcissistic investment banker in Manhattan. The book portrays his daily life as skewed within a path of murder and crime, a vice in which he partakes in his free time.
In Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, the protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is apparently simply a psychopath. However, Bateman can be diagnosed with other mental illnesses such as Asperger's syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, narcissism, and antisocial personality disorder.
Toxic masculinity is depicted in American Psycho through its destructive aspects. In the movie, Patrick Bateman is the main character who portrays destructive aspects of toxic masculinity.
More than a character, he is practically a symbol. However, his image has not always been seen as a parody of ultra-capitalism. At times, Bateman has also been a role model, devoid of any irony.
Patrick pulls out his business card while drinking with Pierce & Pierce colleagues expecting to impress them. However, Patrick is humiliated when each of his co-workers produces in turn his own business card of increasingly superior quality.
This, combined with sex, violence, drugs, and other desires of the id, is how Bateman enacts his sociopathic violence in a superficial world. Bateman's episodes of schizophrenia also shows clear signs on how he copes with being an affluent person living in a superficial world, fashioned on consumerism.
Despite his affluence and high social status, Bateman is constantly plagued by unsettling feelings of anxiety and low self-esteem. He kills many of his victims because they make him feel inadequate, usually by having better taste than he does.
Patrick Bateman's crimes were not a dream, at least not all of them, instead, the real message that both Herron and Eston Ellis wanted to convey was that a man of such social status could literally get away with murder.
American Psycho explores the inherent violence of corporate greed, using Patrick Bateman's sadistic acts as a metaphor for the callousness of Wall Street. The film's ambiguous ending signifies Bateman's moral awakening, as he tries to hold himself accountable for his actions while those around him remain indifferent.
The female gaze centralizes the female perspective, especially during sex scenes, often turning men into sex objects. In American Psycho director Harron and co-screenwriter Guinevere Turner suggest that the female gaze can do much more than this. They turn it on violence and the ugly underbelly of the male ego.
Patrick Bateman is surrounded by fellow materialistic, self-centred narcissists who barely pay attention to what he is saying and sometimes don't even remember his name and confuse him with someone else, not to mention they are dumb and don't always get his references.
He's crying because he's finally having a fully psychotic breakdown — all of the things that he imagined that he did were very real to him, and he's coming to the realization that they actually didn't happen, and he's really just a normal person with a rich fantasy world — something in complete opposition to his ...
It's made clear there is no "top" to Bateman. There is only becoming more successful than the previous day. Therefore, Bateman would be a Sigma in that regard. In American Psycho's first act, Bateman makes it known to his fiancée that he wishes to conform to society as best he can, unlike his other roles.
Patrick Bateman's killings are a mix of delusions and real murders, with his schizophrenia causing reality and delusion to merge, leading him to lose control of his own mind.
Throughout the novel, Patrick Bateman exhibits many characterisitcs that lead him to being categorized as a Sociopath. For example, Bateman is known to have a lack of empathy for others around him.
He displays a high functioning form of Asperger's syndrome, yet there are still symptoms present in Bateman of which even the highest functioning people with Asperger's syndrome cannot rid themselves. One of the key symptoms in Asperger's syndrome is the need for strict routine.
“In the morning if my face is a little puffy, I'll put on an ice pack while doing stomach crunches. I can do 1,000 now. After I remove the ice pack I use a deep pore cleanser lotion. In the shower I use a water-activated gel cleanser, then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub.
What happened to all the bodies in American Psycho?
In the final scene of American Psycho, serial killer Patrick Bateman returns to Paul Allen's apartment, the location of some of his worst crimes, and finds it to be clean and free of bodies.
