American Psycho: Where did you get that overnight bag? (2024)

What is Patrick Bateman?Rather than inquiring about Patrick Bateman per se, thus distinguishing him as a protagonist capable of compassionate understanding, a more considered approach to the author 's original creative propose is to explore what's concealed beneath Bateman's gilded persona, shrouded in premium designer labels and restaurant reservations. Only an entity, something illusory, quoted from Patrick Bateman's introspective monologue, a succinct yet potent portrayal of the business card typography aficionado. Bateman epitomizes the sportive nature of capitalism aesthetics and the lavish lifestyle of New York City's elite in the 1980s. The satellite characters in Ellis' novel seem merely the mundane fulfillment of Max Weber's prophecy that modern capitalism would nurture a generation of "sensualists without hearts."Any attempt to dissect and comprehend PB's psychological mechanism would be futile, as there exists only an empty void echoing one's own interpretations . Time has proven a better friend to the book.33 Years after its first publication, American Psycho continues to captivate readers and provoke debate, decorated with more than 1 million copies sold and successful adaptations in various media despite initial backlash and boycott for its excessive graphic violence depiction and controversy over misogyny. The author goes above and beyond a satire of simple narcissism or even consumerism in the extreme by the straitjacketed quality of the young men's commercial proclivities. If you spend a few minutes scrolling through social media platforms like RED, you will be reminded that a superficial bent hardly requires a stunning lack of imagination. To that end, what is striking about the young men of Ellis' world is less that they are superficial, per se, than that they are strictly conformist in their superficiality.They attended the same school,share more or less the same profession, even sleep with the same women, the melding of identity left no room for their distorted self-expression, only resorted to the slightest nuance in their expenditure. it’s a running joke that all of the 20-something professionals so closely adhere to the same lifestyle aesthetic that they are constantly mistaken for one another.Bateman is swamped in his reflexive affliction, torn between his desire to stand out and his need to fit in. He requires the recognition of the other yuppies to confirm his identity as a murderer, craving to stand out from a superficial homogenized society. Just in accordance with his taste excess，the thrill lies not in the act itself but in the knowledge of not suffering by comparison. Yet, he is pathologically obsessed with adhering to the fashionable behaviors and demeanors of his Wall Street peers, even if it means working a job he doesn't particularly enjoy—a fact his fiancée callously highlights during a limousine ride. Patrick Bateman, of course, is a breed apart from his fellow bankers, but only by evolutionary degrees,which is the most haunting suggestion from the film. When the mayhem begins, it is presented as nothing more than another instance of sybaritic excess. To demonstrate your superiority was the motivating force of modern capitalism, and the opportunities that provided for it might be sportive in nature or something more ominous.Jealousy is the consequence of domination as well as the spur to its achievement. All of them are eternally worried that their failure to precisely observe some cultural practice will see them regarded with the same scornful glances they casually inflict on others, and insofar as their understanding of status is inseparable from a stale assessment of youthful beauty, the young men surely make for a fey portrait of fragile masculinity.And in an achievement shared by only a handful of American authors, Ellis bequeathed a character of such salience that he has been thoroughly appropriated by popular culture, as a alluring option for Halloween cosplays and Internet memes.If the first wave of readers missed the moral conundrums of American Psycho, it may be because they mistook a catalogue of outrage, excruciating in detail and description, for an endorsement of carnal extravagance. If so, it is a tribute to the salacious subtlety of Ellis’s novel, which, like The Great Gatsby, blinds more than a few readers by its meretricious glint.Such subtlety, substantial not stylistic, is a hallmark of exceptional imaginative literature, which so often contributes to ethics by making everyday discernments seem slightly more ambiguous. The enduring significance of American Psycho is not that it demonstrates the obvious, namely that between the casual cruelty of the Salomon trading floor and the extravagant barbarity of Patrick Bateman there is a point at which the sadism stops being funny. Still,It is challenging not to notice how young people who grew up under the publication of this book, relentlessly trying to survive and to navigate a cycle of mimicry and conformity,reminiscent of the predicament faced by Bateman himself. As young generation emulate Patrick Bateman's disciplined demeanor and hedonism practice, they inadvertently perpetuate the very superficiality and cruelty that he personifies, much as Louis stumbles upon Bateman dragging Paul Allen's body in the night after hacking him in half, but only cares to ask what brand of overnight bag it is,blurring the line between his fictional world and our own. To ask, as a matter of moral reckoning: Between the two, what’s the difference?