An explained look into the deeper messages from American Psycho

Rating: 10/10 (1 June 2017)

American Psycho follows a businessman called Patrick Bateman who has the "American Dream" – he's good-looking, has a good body, and very wealthy, and so on. He indulges, bit by bit, in murdering people with no remorse or emotions. He describes himself as not having a "single, clear, identifiable emotion". Did Patrick Bateman really kill all these people or was it a dream or a fantasy of his? You could argue it was a fantasy as a lot of his killings were unrealistic and a lot of scenes were surreal. In my opinion, it really doesn't matter. What matters is that the reason Patrick Bateman killed people was to have a unique identity, to make himself as noticeable as possible to people, even if it was to the extremes of the most ultra violent murders possible. But why did Patrick Bateman want to put his identity out there to others? I interpret this film's theme to be the criticism of how self-obsessed everybody is in society to care about anybody else. The only things people really cared about in American Psycho were the most insignificantly mundane details of life – the ties, the business cards, the reservations made for dinner. All businessmen were practically the same, their only difference in identity being their ties. As all identities were the same, dull and forgotten, Patrick wanted to make himself noticeable to society. Throughout the film, he'd say crazy things straight up to people's faces such as "I like to dissect girls. Did you know I'm utterly insane?" and "I want to stab you to death, and then play around with your blood". Yet people would either change the subject to something completely insignificant or simply ignore him – or think he's just joking. There was a scene where his victim was screaming and pounding at doors, and moments later Patrick ran after her naked, revving his chainsaw as loud as possible before killing her, and satirically, no one called anyone or did anything, as everyone was too immersed in their own lives. When Patrick had enough and began to kill anyone and a lot of people on the streets with a gun, and confessed everything he had done to his lawyer, not only had he gotten away with it but his lawyer thought it was all a large joke. The logical reason his lawyer found it as a joke was because Patrick said he killed Paul Allen, and Patrick's lawyer had recently met Paul Allen, meaning Paul was alive. This explains that all people's identities were meaningless and merged in with each other, and Patrick mistook Paul's identity for another businessman. In fact, identities are swapped throughout the movie. Patrick's murdering side is trying to stand out in society by any means possible – ironically, his other "sane" side is exactly what his "insane" side tries to destroy – his sane side is narcissistic and ignorantly self-obsessed. He takes careful measures to working out and putting a face mask on himself that represents his sanity. Beneath it he is flawed, and he must feel flawless. And when making love, he flexes in the mirror and winks at himself. His sane side represents everyone else around him. But his insane side, along with its ultra violence, wants to break out from a mundane life and have a noticed identity that's unique to all others, despite how no-one seems to notice anyhow. Wrapped up, Patrick Bateman has supposed schizophrenia – but what are the deeper thoughts to his charismatic businessman side and his psychotic murdering side? His charismatic side is the identity in which he forces himself to blend in to society, however his darker side is simply trying to do the opposite – make his identity stand out in society. But his identity isn't noticed, and as it doesn't work, Patrick becomes more and more frustrated, committing more and more murders, then cannibalising, then openly murdering people on the street, before confessing everything to his lawyer. But still, people either think he's joking or choose to ignore him, highlighting the ignorant narcissism of humanity in today's world. This is shown in Bateman's last words in the film, which are "No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing."