The American Psycho: Me & U
It’s undeniable that Patrick Bateman might be one of the most interesting, psychologically disarrayed individuals ever to grace the big screen. He’s a bloodhound, a Wall Street mad man, a self obsessed, sex obsessed, violence fiend whose attention to his own appearance is laughable. We giggle as he flexes in the mirror, as he dances around his victims, and as he peels off extravagantly named face mask, after extravagantly named face mask. At first glance, the comparisons that have been made to Donald Trump are uncanny. A narcissist who seems to believe that power and financial success contain a certain value which supersedes human lives. The red hats that flock to his rallies to blindly follow him give him a sense of importance, and the balls to disregard an entire group of human beings based on what God they choose to worship. However, after taking a closer look, I believe Patrick Bateman’s relevance to our society goes deeper than the humanity challenged orange blob that is Donald Trump.
While I was watching American Psycho last Friday night, curled up on my sofa with phone in hand, refreshing periodically to see if the photo I took of the mediocre dinner I made garnered anymore likes — I found myself ashamed. How many times have I watched someone drag out their phones to do the same — or worse, stare blankly at someone else’s photo before saying “How did she get two-hundred likes on this?” Their expression visibly tightens, even the lint flying lazily around their heads seems to have intensified, to have completely lost its already flimsy direction. It’s not that this person actually cares about the heavily filtered photo of a fellow millennial’s shoe, but rather that they’ve crawled deep into the abyss of their minds and are wondering, what’s wrong with my business card?
This business card was Patrick Bateman’s Instagram. It was his Twitter, his Facebook, his Linkedin. It was a tiny rectangle of tearable paper that is now unbreakable, that is now our everything. Our resumes have turned into one hundred and forty characters of glorified bullshit, and our personas have been tinted with filters. When someone feels their mask slipping they just post another Instagram, send another tweet. They do anything to trump what they see as competition littering their feed, anything to satisfy their cravings for validation. It’s inescapable, as validation is paramount to the modern day American Psycho’s ability to get through each twenty four hour period.
It’s become so common place to obsess over image, that we do it shamelessly in the presence of others. Patrick Bateman was no stranger to this. In a famously disturbing scene, he smiles broadly with his muscular arm flexed in the mirror, while having sex with multiple women. Re-watching this scene sent my head reeling into the archives of my mind, watching Instagram after Instagram zip behind my eyes like shooting stars. I thought of the half naked gym pictures, of the spring breakers, of those looking absentmindedly into the sunset as they pretend not to pose. It made me sad. It made me mad at myself for being one of these people, for falling into the trap. I am Patrick Bateman. Too many of us run past mirrors and stop to gloat, eye others as competition rather than as friends, are incapable of accepting our flaws. We are all Patrick Bateman.
I was initially shocked at how furiously all these thoughts ran through my mind, how frustrated I felt at the importance of technology, and the importance that’s placed on narcissism in success. The world has changed a vast amount since Patrick Bateman was originally created, and to what I can imagine is Bret Easton Ellis’ horror, we’ve each taken a piece of him and placed it in ourselves. Self promotion is not just hard work and confidence. It’s an endless comparison of how many likes, how many followers, how many people besides yourself that you can impress. It’s our business cards, and tireless updating of our social media accounts. It’s being out of touch with the air and the trees and the faces you meet, except for when your fingers graze by them on your touch screen.
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“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.” — Patrick Bateman
