DOCSLIB.ORG

A Thesis Entitled Satire and Sympathy in American Psycho

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Thesis Entitled Satire and Sympathy in American Psycho A Thesis entitled Satire and Sympathy in American Psycho by Alaina Simon as palÿial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honors in English Thesis Director: Professor Reising Honors Advisor: Dr. Melissa Valiska Gregory The University of Toledo DECEMBER 2012 Abstract American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis was originally dismissed as flippant and distasteful because critics focused on the novel's excessive violence, misogyny, and shallow characters. The book remains controversial to this day, though later critics have shed light on the novel as a satirical representation of Wall Street in the late 1980s. In this thesis, I explore the ways in which Ellis satirizes Patrick Bateman and his society through dialogue, physical behavior, and relationships with each other. I argue that Patrick is essentially a victim of the possessive, technologically obsessed, patriarchal culture, ignored by others despite his cries for attention. In addition, I analyze specific passages in order to determine whether or not the novel can provoke sympathy for Patrick from the reader. Ultimately, I assert that American Psycho is a satire that attempts to expand traditional boundaries by including sympathy. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Russell Reising and Melissa Gregory for their extensive help in the drafting, revisions, and overall creation of this thesis. Without their guidance, this project would not have been possible. I would also like to thank my parents and loving boyfriend for their continuous suppolÿ and words of encouragement throughout the semester and all of my schooling. iii Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................. ii ,., Acloaowledgments ...................................................................................................... 111 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ iv Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Patrick as a Representative Character .................................................................................. 5 Culture of Cruelty .............................................................................................................. 15 Unhappiness ....................................................................................................................... 22 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 30 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 34 Works Consulted ................................................................................................................ 35 iv Introduction Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho has been a subject of controversy ever since excerpts from the novel were released in Spy and Time magazine months before its publication in 1991. Both snippets from the novel depicted main character Patrick Bateman torturing female victims in explicit detail. Due to the backlash American Psycho received almost immediately after excerpts were out, publishing company Simon & Shuster decided not to print the book, which was ultimately published by Random House instead (Mack 19). When Amertcan Psycho hit the shelves in April of 1991, it was dismissed by critics for its misogyny, extreme violence, and what was thought to be a lack of depth and characterization. An opinion article in The Tech by Bill Jackson notes that Patrick kills males much quicker and less painfully than females, briefly summarizing gory examples from the novel in the simplest terms: "page 217: Bethany, nail gun, scissors, dead; page 290: Elizabeth and Christie, butcher knife, two dead" (4). Jackson goes on to say that although the book has "literary merits" (4) and elements of black comedy, it falls short of being a great book because the shocking details inside only amount to a weak point about late 1980s culture. The violent passages, particularly against women, are what caused the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization foÿ Women to stage a boycott against Random House, calling American Psycho a "how-to novel on the torture and dismemberment of women" (qtd. in Freccero 50). Other critics included Todd Stiles who wrote the Spy article before publication, saw violence in the novel as a poor attempt at 2 shock value. Stiles claimed that because Ellis "couldn't write the same book for a third time" (43), referencing Ellis's earlier works Less Than Zero and Rules of Attraction which both deal with careless college kids, that he instead had to create a book so disturbing it would garner attention. After the uproars concerning misogyny and excessive violence began to fade, American Psycho was analyzed from a different view, "as a satire on the coke-fuelled hedonistic money culture.., of the Reagan-Thatcher years" (Tighe 105). Rather than isolating and dismissing violence and misogyny, these elements were now looked at as literary plot devices used to create the bigger picture of the novel, which Ellis said to be "alienation, pain, America, the overall tone of the culture" (qtd. in Tighe 104). American Pyscho's violent passages are now often read as echoing both the Gothic tradition as well as the postmodern. American Psycho is commonly read as an exaggeration of Gothic conventions. Helyer states that Patrick Bateman is "highly stereotyped," and the "predicted nature of his appearance" (728) as a young, rich, and masculine Wall Street executive follows the typical characterization pattern in Gothic style. The horrifying ways in which Patrick tortures, murders, and dismembers the bodies of his female victims is another exaggeration of a typical Gothic device. Throughout the novel, Patrick describes in great detail how he saws, rips, and even chews offpieces of the female body and, as Russel Potter remarks -- "from its inception, the Gothic has posited and reproduced a legion of partial, disjointed, or decomposed body parts, which by their very existence accuse the waking world of a fundamental illegitimacy" (Potter 14). These findings on American Psycho as a Gothic novel have helped to legitimize 3 the novel among scholars. But the Gothic is not the only literary tradition scholars now see at work in the novel. Descriptions included in Bateman's tortm'ing are also true to the terror typical in postmodern writing. At first, reading passages where Patrick is killing, dissecting, and dismembering women can incite feelings of disgust and make the reader uncomfortable. These violent descriptions become so gory and so out of line that by the end of the book, they are hardly believable and hit a point of ridiculousness that the reader cannot help laughing at. Though his descriptions are gross and often too detailed, there comes a point where we have to ask: what is the point of being so excessive, so exaggerated? It seems that Patrick is slipping further and further out of touch with his sanity, and we begin to question whether or not this is all actually happening, or if Patrick has become so deranged that he has been imagining the murders all along. I believe that Ellis's intention behind this is to incite and bring out emotion in the reader, just as Patrick does to his victims in the book. In this sense Ellis continually blurs the line between horror and comedy in order to cause the reader to shift between being disgusted and amused by Patrick's actions. Although the analyses of American Psycho as a contemporary Gothic novel and a postmodem experiment explain its detailed violence, they do not account for an element within the novel that I argue is thematically central; the sympathy it invites for its main character. On one hand, American Psycho appears to be a ruthless black comedy that cautions its readers against vapid materialism in society. On the other hand, the novel contains a host of surprising, sometimes offhanded moments that suggestively portray the murderous Patrick Bateman in a more sympathetic light. Despite the fact that Patrick is egotistical, narcissistic, and psychopathic, his failure to understand himself and the world 4 around him suggests that he is also a victim of society. In this paper, I will argue that Ellis not only uses satire inAmerican Psycho, but that he also creates a portrait of Patrick as a victim which suggests that we are not as different from Patrick as we believe ourselves to be. I argue that Ellis's depiction of Patrick as a victim occurs in three ways. First, Patrick is portrayed as a representation of his society that deliberately draws connections between Patrick and his readers rather than ta'eating him as a freakish anomaly. Secondly, he depicts the culture in which Patrick lives as extremely cruel and unsympathetic in the same way that he is to everyone else. Finally, Ellis repeatedly shows ways in which Patrick is personally unhappy, a sad and lonely human being who does not even recognize the level of his own isolation. These various modes of representing the novel's main character, so often seen as profoundly unsympathetic, implicitly invite the reader to sympathize with him. Ultimately, I suggest that it is the novel's sympathy for Patrick that may help to account for its initial reception even more than its violence. Patrick as a Representative
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Reading the Body in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991): Confusing Signs and Signifiers
    Reading the Body in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991) David Roche To cite this version: David Roche. Reading the Body in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991): Confusing Signs and Signifiers. Groupe de Recherches Anglo-Américaines de Tours, Groupe de recherches anglo-américaines de Tours, Université de Tours, 1984-2008, 2009, 5 (1), pp.124-38. halshs-00451731 HAL Id: halshs-00451731 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00451731 Submitted on 6 Sep 2010 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 124 GRAAT On-Line issue #5.1 October 2009 Reading the Body in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991): Confusing Signs and Signifiers David Roche Université de Bourgogne In Ellis’s scandalous end-of-the-eighties novel American Psycho , the tale of Patrick Bateman—a Wall Street yuppie who claims to be a part-time psychopath— the body is first conceived of as a visible surface which must conform to the norms of the yuppies’ etiquette. I use the word “etiquette,” which Patrick uses (231) and which I oppose to the word “ethics” which suggests moral depth, to stretch how superficial the yuppie’s concerns are and to underline, notably, that the yuppie’s sense of self is limited to his social self, his public appearance, his self-image, which I relate to D.
    [Show full text]
  • Unreliable Narration in Bret Easton Ellisâ•Ž American Psycho
    Current Narratives Volume 1 Issue 1 Narrative Inquiry: Breathing Life into Article 6 Talk, Text and the Visual January 2009 Unreliable narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho: Interaction between narrative form and thematic content Jennifer Phillips University of Wollongong, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/currentnarratives Recommended Citation Phillips, Jennifer, Unreliable narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho: Interaction between narrative form and thematic content, Current Narratives, 1, 2009, 60-68. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/currentnarratives/vol1/iss1/6 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Unreliable narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho: Interaction between narrative form and thematic content Abstract In this paper I analyse the narrative technique of unreliable narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991). Critics have been split about the reliability of Patrick Bateman, the novel’s gruesome narrator- protagonist. Using a new model for the detection of unreliable narration, I show that textual signs indicate that Patrick Bateman can be interpreted as an unreliable narrator. This paper reconciles two critical debates: (1) the aforementioned debate surrounding American Psycho, and (2) the debate surrounding the concept of unreliable narration itself. I show that my new model provides a solution to the weaknesses which have been identified in the rhetorical and cognitive models previously used to detect unreliable narration. Specifically, this new model reconciles the problematic reliance on the implied author in the rhetorical model, and the inconsistency of textual signs which is a weakness of the cognitive approach.
    [Show full text]
  • There Is an Idea of a Patrick Bateman, Some Kind of Abstraction, but There
    1 “…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.” Bret Easton Ellis, author of the controversial book American Psycho (1991) puts forward the thought that mind and body are distinct. The quote I shall be discussing is one of the protagonists’ (Patrick Bateman’s) key self-analysis, in which he believes that even though he physically exists, he is nothing more than an illusion and an abstraction. Bateman’s feelings of absence are reinforced by his numerous internal monologues, this quote being one of them. I will use Rene Descartes’ meditations along with the concept of the self in order to differentiate between mind and body, and to conclude whether Bateman is really not there. Firstly I will look at the concept of the self. Self-analysis is the first step to understand who you are, and self-conceptualization is a cognitive component of oneself. Once one is fully aware of oneself, that person then has a concept of himself/herself. This concept is usually broken down into two parts: The Existential Self and The Categorical Self. The existential self is the sense we get of being different from those around us, and the realization of the constancy of the self. The categorical self is when one realizes that he or she is distinct as well as an object in this world, thus having properties that may be experienced, just like any other object.
    [Show full text]
  • A Retrospective Reading of Glamorama's (1998) Reception1
    Re1•ista de Estudios Norteamerica11os. 11. º JO (2004), pp. 47 - 56 WHEN CONTEXT HIDES CONTENT: A RETROSPECTIVE READING OF GLAMORAMA'S (1998) RECEPTION1 SONIA B AELO ALLUÉ Universidad de Zaragoza This essay aims at studying the reception of Glamorama (1998), the Iatest novel to date of Bret Easton Ellis, one of the most controversial contemporary US authors. The analysis of this reception and its conclusions goes well beyond the specific case of a single author and constitutes, rather, a reflection of a cultural trend that usually takes place in the reception of literary works. This study delves into a series of questions: do contemporary authors' public personae play an important role in the way their works are interpreted? Is there an obsession with considering a literary work in relation to previous works of the same author? Do reviews of literary works deal with literary merit/demerit at ali? These are questions that pop up as we analyze the type of immediate reviews that the publication of Glamorama brought forth in the media, especially newspapers and magazines. The study of this reception will be used as basis to answer these introductory questions and to examine the role that context plays in the reception of literary works. The fact that these questions arise may support the belief that literary texts cannot be studied on their own anymore. As Tony Bennett claims, when analyzing a literary work one has to take into account «that everything which has been written about it, everything which has been collected on it, becomes attached to it - like shells on a rock by the seashore forming a whole incrustation» (1982: 3) (Klinger 107).
    [Show full text]
  • AMERICAN PSYCHO by Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner
    AMERICAN PSYCHO by Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis Fourth Draft November 1998 INT. PASTELS RESTAURANT- NIGHT An insanely expensive restaurant on the Upper East Side. The decor is a mixture of chi-chi and rustic, with swagged silk curtains, handwritten menus and pale pink tablecloths decorated with arrangements of moss, twigs and hideous exotic flowers. The clientele is young, wealthy and confident, dressed in the height of late-eighties style: pouffy Lacroix dresses, slinky Alaïa, Armani power suits. CLOSE-UP on a WAITER reading out the specials. WAITER With goat cheese profiteroles and I also have an arugula Caesar salad. For entrées tonight I have a swordfish meatloaf with onion marmalade, a rare-roasted partridge breast in raspberry coulis with a sorrel timbale... Huge white porcelain plates descend on very pale pink linen table cloths. Each of the entrees is a rectangle about four inches square and look exactly alike. CLOSE-UP on various diners as we hear fragments of conversation. "Is that Charlie Sheen over there?" "Excuse me? I ordered cactus pear sorbet." WAITER And grilled free-range rabbit with herbed French fries. Our pasta tonight is a squid ravioli in a lemon grass broth... CLOSE-UP on porcelain plates containing elaborate perpendicular desserts descending on another table. PATRICK BATEMAN, TIMOTHY PRICE, CRAIG MCDERMOTT and DAVID VAN PATTEN are at a table set for four. They are all wearing expensively cut suits and suspenders and have slicked-back Script provided for educational purposes. More scripts can be found here: http://www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/library hair.
    [Show full text]
  • Consumerism's Serial Annihilation of Women and the Self in American Psycho
    Fast Capitalism ISSN 1930-014X Volume 13 • Issue 1 • 2016 doi:10.32855/fcapital.201601.008 “Inside Doesn’t Matter”: Consumerism’s Serial Annihilation of Women and the Self in American Psycho Reagan Ross That…consumption is no longer restricted to the necessities but, on the contrary, mainly concentrates on the superfluities of life…harbors the grave danger that eventually no object of the world will be safe from consumption and annihilation through consumption. — (Arendt, 1958: 133) Perhaps no film more radically reveals the “serial killer” (cannibalistic) nature of consumerism than American Psycho (2000, Mary Harron). The implications of this disturbing “reality” are cataclysmically far reaching: The end of the world may not come from some tangible material catastrophe (at least insofar as it isn’t a corollary of this dehumanization process); rather, more insidiously, it may come via a psychological de-humanization process whereby we literally lose our humanity from the inside out. To understand this development, the film didactically reveals an all- consuming consumption fixation that begins with a food fetish but then is extended to the consumption of women in particular, Others in general, and, most disturbingly – and informing the first two – the “self.” The Political Didactic Before I discuss this film, I want to defend the importance of the popular political film (and I would strongly argue that American Psycho is one of the most radical political films ever to come out of Hollywood as I will show in this paper). Indeed, I would argue that the progressive (and subversive) potential of popular cinema in general is substantial.
    [Show full text]
  • Autofictional Thought Experiments in Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
    Johannes Franzen Alternate Lives: Autofictional Thought Experiments in Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis Fictional narratives can be used to experiment with real lives: In 2005, after a seven-year hiatus, controversial American author Bret Easton Ellis published his fifth novel, Lunar Park. The publication of the book was met with some astonishment. In contrast to the cool detachment with which the author had evoked the cruelty of modern greed and consumerism in his other books, this novel seemed psychologically intimate and emotionally frank. Furthermore, the distinctive minimalism of Ellis’s style had been replaced by a reflective, almost garrulous narrator, who identified himself as the author Bret Easton Ellis. Especially this last detail seemed unsettling since thus far, Ellis had been known for his elaborate autobiographical evasions. His many media appear- ances and his well-publicized life as the enfant terrible of the literary world projected a highly artificial persona, more of a fictitious character than a real person. Lunar Park seemed like an aggressive break with this game of public hide and seek. On its first 30 pages, the book offers straightforward autobiography. Ellis tells the story of the early breakthrough with his first novel Less than Zero, which was published in 1985, when he was still in college. What follows is an account of his ascent to literary stardom, in which the author became part of the American celebrity culture. The shocking content of his books – the amoral attitude of his characters to drug abuse and sexual encounters as well as the depiction of extreme violence – gave him some notoriety.
    [Show full text]
  • American Psycho Malignant Narcissism on the Screen
    Psychoanalytic Psychology Copyright 2001 by the Educational Publishing Foundation 2001, Vol. 18, No. 4, 737-742 0736-9735/01/S5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0736-9735.I8.4.737 American Psycho Malignant Narcissism on the Screen Isaac Tylim, PsyD Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and Maimonides Medical Center American Psycho (1999) may be described as a vivid screen illustration of malignant narcissism. Adapted from Bret Easton Ellis's (1991/2000) eponymous novel, the film was elegantly directed by Mary Harron, whose previous work includes I Shot Andy Warhol (1996). Harron's films transfer the classical American myth of individualism and self-sufficiency—so often depicted in Westerns—to the urban landscape. Instead of cowboys, her films present creatures that roam around free, not in the big empty spaces of the American West, but the overbuilt and menacing jungle of America's big cities with their canyons-streets of cement. The conquest of the West is now the conquest of the Metropolis, and the brave and lone ranger of yesterday has been replaced by the greedy and lone narcissist of today. Despite the obvious differences between / Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho, these films share the director's sensitivity towards characters that live their lives on the edge. They are young, obsessed individuals enveloped by the endless allure of commercialism and con- sumerism spiced with the cult of celebrity and the hunger for power. While riding in luxury cars these contemporary urban cowboys are struggling desperately to contain the fragility of their respective selves.
    [Show full text]
  • American Psycho As a Social Critique
    ”There is no real me” An analysis of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho as a social critique Master’s Thesis Mette Timmy Dahl Kastrupsen Aalborg University May 2020 Supervisor: Bent Sørensen Abstract In this master’s thesis, I examine how Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991) can be seen as a critique of American society and the mass consumer, through the novel’s use of features of the postmodern Gothic, its portrayal of consumerism, its usage of the serial killer narrative, as well as how the novel uses unreliability to convey this critique. In addition, I discuss how the character of Patrick Bateman can ultimately be seen as emblematic of the central ideas of this society. In order to analyse these aspects of the novel, I use theories on the parallels between the Gothic and postmodernism to examine how the Gothic has evolved into a contemporary version of the genre, which can be used to portray the darker sides of humanity, and the consequences of capitalism and consumerism in contemporary society. To analyse the novel in terms of the serial killer narrative as a fictional genre, I use theory on how this particular type of narrative has been influenced by, for example, folklore and the Gothic, and additionally, how a specific type of serial killer narrative, the “wilding” serial killer, can be used to analyse American Psycho. Based on my analysis of the postmodern Gothic, consumerism, the serial killer narrative and unreliability in the novel, I find that Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho uses all of these aspects to convey a critique of capitalist society and consumerism.
    [Show full text]
  • AMERICAN PSYCHO Außer Konkurrenz AMERICAN PSYCHO AMERICAN PSYCHO
    Wettbewerb/IFB 2000 AMERICAN PSYCHO Außer Konkurrenz AMERICAN PSYCHO AMERICAN PSYCHO Regie: Mary Harron USA 1999 Darsteller Patrick Bateman Christian Bale Länge 101 Min. Donald Kimball Willem Dafoe Format 35 mm, Paul Allen Jared Leto Cinemascope Courtney Rawlinson Samantha Mathis Farbe Jean Chloë Sevigny Evelyn Williams Reese Witherspoon Stabliste Timothy Bryce Justin Theroux Buch Mary Harron Luis Carruthers Matt Ross Guinevere Turner, David Van Patten Bill Sage nach dem Roman Christie Cara Seymour von Bret Easton Ellis Craig McDermott Josh Lucas Kamera Andrzej Sekula Elizabeth Guinevere Turner Kameraführung Paul Boucher Stash Park Bench Kameraassistenz Jayson Clute Vanden Catherine Black Schnitt Andrew Marcus Harold Carnes Stephen Bogaert Ton Henry Embry Daisy Monika Meyer Musik John Cale Obdachloser Reg.E.Cathey Production Design Gideon Ponte Kellner Blair Williams Ausstattung Andrew Stearn Victoria Marie Dame Kostüm Isis Mussenden Krista Sutton, Christian Bale, Cara Seymor Foto: K. Hayes Barmädchen Kelley Harron Maske Sandra Wheatle Mrs.Wolfe Patricia Gage Regieassistenz Andrew Shea Sabrina Krista Sutton Herstellungltg. Victoria Hirst AMERICAN PSYCHO Aufnahmeleitung Michael Blecher Patrick Bateman verkörpert den Geist und die Werte der 80er Jahre nahezu Produzenten Edward R.Pressman perfekt. Der junge New Yorker sieht blendend aus und kleidet sich elegant. Chris Hanley Designer-Ware muß es sein – sein Label-Bewußtsein ist nur schwer zu über- Christian Halsey treffen. Er besucht die richtigen Clubs und Lokale und modelliert seinen Solomon Executive Producers Michael Paseornek Körper im richtigen Gym. Patrick Bateman profitiert vom Boom: Sein Geld Jeff Sackman verdient er an der Wall Street. Er investiert es in Dinge, die wichtig, gut und Joe Drake teuer sind: das Appartment, die Stereoanlage, den Video-Recorder und But- Co-Producers Ernie Barbaresh ton-down-Oberhemden.Er ist freundlich,guterzogen,intelligent.Dabei legt Clifford Streit er Wert auf Distanz:„Don’t touch the Rolex.“ Joseph Drake Doch die glatte Oberfläche täuscht.
    [Show full text]
  • AMERICAN PSYCHO Musical in 2 Acts
    AMERICAN PSYCHO Musical in 2 acts. Music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik; book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa; Based on the 1991 novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and the film Almeida Theatre, London - 12th December, 2013 - 1st February, 2014 SYNOPSIS Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho is about the daily life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Living the high life in 1980s Manhattan, Patrick Bateman has it all – looks, money, style and status. He and his entourage buy the most expensive designer clothes, eat at the most exclusive restaurants and party at the hottest clubs. But privately, Patrick indulges in another kind of transgression. And people - including those closest to him - keep disappearing. STORY Act I Patrick Bateman is a 26-year-old investment banker living in New York City at the end of the 1980s. As the show begins, Bateman documents his morning routine, which involves fastidious grooming, tanning and carefully selecting a designer suit, before travelling to Wall Street (“Opening (Morning Routine)”/”Selling Out”). He arrives at Pierce & Pierce, the elite bank for which he works, and is greeted by his doting secretary, Jean (“Everybody Wants to Rule the World”). He anxiously enquires about the Fisher account, an exclusive account that is highly sought after by Patrick and his colleagues. Later, Patrick has lunch with his coworkers, Tim Price, Craig McDermott, Luis Carruthers and David Van Patten. They exchange fashion tips and critique restaurants before another colleague, Paul Owen, enters. Patrick learns that Owen has secured the Fisher account as well as reservations at Dorsia, New York’s most exclusive new restaurant.
    [Show full text]
  • Simply Not There: Externality Versus Internal Identity in American Psycho
    Simply Not There: Externality versus Internal Identity in American Psycho BY DERIK COOL The executive world of 1980’s New York is not commonly considered one of discord and debauchery. Instead, trends of modernity, class, and style may color images of such times. Although not wholly untrue, these visions are not nearly so limited or so innocent. In her 2000 film, American Psycho, Mary Harron depicts characters living at the peak of grandeur, with a heavy underscore on the grotesque. Due to their overtly extravagant lifestyle and obsession with appearance, the characters have largely become stark, empty canvases incapable of individuality and able only to perform the simplest of actions: consume. Not only are the characters entirely absorbed in the microcosmic world of privilege and substance they’ve created, but they are completely oblivious to the actions of those around them. This creates a distorted reality where internalization becomes meaningless, if not impossible, and only concepts such as conformity and exteriority prevail. It is in this plane that the film attempts to explore its characters and make sense of their situations. Rather than relying on traditional internal characteristics, American Psycho develops and defines its characters entirely through the use of external objects and consumerist actions, poignantly demonstrating the superficiality and emotional shallowness that ultimately leads to an eroding of self definition and ability to form meaningful relationships. Valley Humanities Review Spring 2012 1 While in the traditional sense of literary practice characters are typically constructed and discerned through their unique characterization and individual personality traits, this method simply does not hold true for the characters of American Psycho.
    [Show full text]