"American Psycho" - Bret Easton Ellis

American Psycho: Insanity and Mutilation as Social Commentary?

Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho has the reader worried from page one, and for good reason. The main character, Patrick Bateman, is a thoroughly disturbed individual, completely entranced by every single detail of his 1980’s, corporate lifestyle, from the type of clothes people wear, the music they listen too, even the water that they drink and he remembers it all. He can’t keep from analyzing his own choices in wardrobe and apartment decoration and he’s consumed by the green-eyed monster every time he is upstaged by one of this contemporaries. But it’s ok; he’s got a method for blowing off steam: he goes murdering. Don’t be alarmed, he works out too, keeping his body in perfect form with his own version of yoga and Pilates, but when the exercising is over, he exorcises his demons by picking up hookers and torturing them, physically and sexually, often videotaping the acts for his own viewing pleasure later. It’s this mix of insanities that Ellis uses to keep the reader entranced that makes American Psycho a perplexing story of the tragic lifestyle of business well-offs in the 1980’s, and a book that should be required in all college freshman English survey courses. All at once you are thrown into the world of cocaine use, binge drinking, big spending and bad habits, and by the time Bateman gets down to his true passion, you’re hooked and waiting for the next victim to stroll alongside his limousine. So how can a decisively unreal portrayal of the work world serve as a social commentary of the very real Wall Street boom that took place while the rest of us danced to Huey Lewis and the News? Even without the butchering and brutality, Bateman and his co-workers are still disturbed, seeking only to gratify themselves in any way, shape or form, be it lavish parties, high-priced dinners and cocktails and sexual escapades that would make Bill Clinton blush. Bateman serves as the narrator and jack-the-ripper minded socialite who can’t make enough money, have enough sex, or drink enough J&B on the rocks to ever be satisfied, and so he’s constantly envious of his friends to the point of rage. Business cards become the new “Whose dick is bigger?” game, and the inevitable whipping out of the herring-bone white status symbols only serves to drive Bateman further into his own downward spiral. The thing is, if he weren’t tearing people limb from limb and mutilating them he’d still be just as crazy as the rest of them, as is made painfully apparent during the long conversations devoted to popular music, proper times to wear a sweater vest and, of course, bottled water. Considering the fact that Ellis has been known to be semi-autobiographical in his writings, you might want to avoid any book signing tours of his. The point is: everyone’s crazy; some are just crazier than others. American Psycho, the book, will keep you on the edge of your seat and probably give you nightmares (I was afraid of jumper cables for weeks), but at the end of it all you’ll understand the madness that was corporate 1980’s. Avoid, however, the movie version. Despite the fact that Christian Bale is spot on as Bateman, sporting the rock hard abs and sadistic taste like he’s got a dungeon/gym in his own basement, and even despite the fact that Willem Dafoe is in it, the film version chooses to gloss over the normal insanities and fixates on the killing aspect, completely missing the point. Like most adaptations, the book trumps, and I highly suggest that those of you with strong stomachs and a weakness for the finer, slightly demented, things in life pick up this classic and seriously reconsider that major in accounting.