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Elias Bouchendouka

Professor Arnold

English 1101

25 September 2020

American Psycho: An Evaluation and Critique of Morals

The scene is the late 80s, New York City - the architect and desecrator of bountiful

dreams and ambitions. Crime and decadence mar the unpaved and ever unrenovated superficial

alleys, bright lights and overlaid messages plaster the walls. Advertisements ring consistently,

through the hasty morning commute, to the oftentimes frightening ride home. Well dressed men

and women brave these new challenges as they spuriously innovate from cubicles, entrenched by

a rigid hierarchy where they remain, and will forever remain, at the implacable bottom. The

information age has begun, and with it, an ever imposed presence of staunch consumerism and

the development of the neo-working class. The ache for improvement and excitement pushes

these wistful people forward, but they will remain stationary, burdened by corporate greed and

strict protocol. Patrick Bateman, our protagonist, is an upstanding, rigorously thorough, and

handsome young man who works as an investment banker at an influential firm. He seems to fit

right into the crude machination of American materialism; well-dressed, handsome, eloquent.

His wealthy socialite posse stick to him and his newly fashioned fiancee due to his up and

coming status, and he lives in a trendy minimalist apartment on the eleventh floor of the

American Gardens Building on West 81st street. Yet, appearances do not always lead to proper

conclusions. Bateman diligently works by day, and kills ruthlessly by night; a serial killer in all

definitions of the word. Though a fictional tale about mundane urbane life, the film American
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Psycho (2000) depicts a grounded and very real interpretation of society and the world we live in

through the lens of an unhinged antihero who encapsulates the concept of the lost. To do this, the

film uses distinct lessons and moral probes to inquire about the questions we most often do not

ask ourselves. With films like The Shining and Memento, there is a clear set of guidelines that

are established that cement these movies as phenomenal masterpieces of their time, and magnum

opuses of their directors; these movies both draw upon the transition of morals to the audience,

the development of central themes, and the psychological instillment of dread within the viewer -

and American Psycho incorporates and improves upon each of these in a fantastically unique

manner. In an incisive evaluation of mental health and isolation, the greed and decadence of

American culture through the rise of consumerism, and the deliberate misplacement of truth in

the hands of the viewer via complex cinematography and film techniques, American Psycho

develops and creates a raw and realistic interpretation of the society in which we live doing so in

an apt and competent manner through the variance in which it portrays each of its own ideas

despite minor faults.

The bright lights and advertisements are not all just for show; no, these ubiquitous facets

of American society permeate through big city culture and daily life - and in American Psycho,

this concept remains unchanged. Through the lens of the movie, American consumerism is

managed and understood in a way that is personified by overabundance and greed over excess. In

natural American society, the American dream is to obtain wealth, and live properly in society.

American Psycho magnifies the very notion of this dream, and questions to what point does this

materialism impact and twist our culture? Mary Harron, the director of this film, attempts to

portray this sentiment through the usage of name brands and extravagant purchases. She uses
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Bateman as a prop to show the American view on consumer brands - every single time he meets

another person, be they another banker, or someone else entirely, he analyzes them not based on

the content of their character but rather the material possessions they have. The clothes they

wear, the car they drive, the food they eat, the places they shop at; everything is segmented into

their place in society monetarily. Very little is left for Bateman to emphasize with these people as

if they were human beings; thus, giving the movie its moniker, American Psycho. Consumerism

blinds Bateman. He is unable to see fashion name brands and expensive cars for what they really

are; meaningless. As such, his greed leaves him consistently left drained, tired, and completely

and utterly alone in this pursuit of the accumulation of material wealth and status. The way this is

portrayed in the movie is done well, but the execution of Bateman’s character in this regard falls

short, and is our first major pitfall in our analysis on this movie as a whole. This pitfall is

prevalent in the way Bateman’s character is developed and coded - this concept of material

consumerism entirely driving every fiber of his soul is a poor manner of symbolizing American

culture and society as a whole. Although Bateman’s characterization is multi-faceted and more

unique than a man driven by greed and corporate power, the movie simplifies it to simply a

desire for personal standing. Yet, going beyond that, a narrative could be developed that this

point serves to show the displacement of the modern worker rather than the dehumanization of

them; it is not that Bateman is driven by the pursuit of wealth, but rather he is in a state where he

consistently does not have control. In Bateman’s views, without money, he has no control, and to

obtain that control, he must acquire money; this notion is addressed with another scene in the

movie, where Bateman brutally murders a homeless person in a dark alleyway. Approaching the

man, Bateman demands he “get a job”, and tells him he can help the man; at first, the man is
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grateful, and begs Bateman for assistance, but he makes a fatal mistake - he grabs Bateman’s

arm. In this small action, Bateman perceives the homeless man as thinking he is on the same

level as Bateman, and his narcissism becomes apparent. Cinematography, and film techniques in

this regard also become apparent at this moment, in which the camera angle shifts from

Bateman’s point of view, to the homeless man - this instills even more fear, as we are unknowing

of his intentions. Bateman retaliates against the man’s actions with grave consequences, stabbing

him to death. His reasons for killing the man were so entirely unjustified, yet they can only be

attributed to two things; Bateman’s inane narcissism, and his absolute need for control and order

in his life, and the movie’s cinematography through camera angles/set design (gloomy and

atmospheric) and gradual build up accomplishes the portrayal of these ideas in spectacular

fashion.

The following concept this movie aims to communicate with the audience would be an

evaluation of mental health, once again through the eyes of the origin of the epithet “American

Psycho”, Patrick Bateman. Bateman is designed as a character that is not just a psychopath, but

one who is clinically insane as well; Bateman shows signs throughout the movie of OCD,

Narcissism, and paranoid schizophrenia. The portrayal of this mental illness is a double edged

sword for the movie; on one hand, Harron is able to show and bring to light the trouble and

struggles that people with mental illnesses deal with, and the fact that they are seemingly

drowned out by the constant humdrum of society. With Bateman, she shows he is consistently in

pain and is put into unruly and otherwise unfortunate situations because of it. His condition(s)

permeate every facet of his everyday life, be it from his meticulous morning routine (shown

through his early soliloquy in the movie), to his eventual nightly slumber - everything must be in
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order and follow his whims, or else mayhem ensues. The addition of this facet to his life sheds

light on the problem as a whole, and helps the audience who might identify with some of the

same things he is going through associate with some of his actions (at least, the ones that do not

involve killing innocent people). However, the counterpoint to this remains in the fact that she

portrays the character suffering from mental illness as a homicidal maniac; this is detrimental

because it creates and spins the narrative that people with mental illness are seperate, innately

immoral people, which is simply not true. Yet despite this, the dialogue this movie brings about

mental illness from a moral and objective standpoint is ultimately a productive one; Harron is

able to show and conclusively prove the link between this and the negative effects of American

society.

When considering the aforementioned facts about Bateman’s character, through his

excessive mental disorders to his disillusionment with American society, is it all that uncommon

to accept that he had been an unreliable and fictitious narrator the entire time? From the slow

build up to the start to the end, Bateman’s careful manufacturing of the events of the story makes

us question if Bateman - or potentially his mental disorders themselves - have been playing tricks

on us the entire time. At the end of the movie, it is revealed that every murderous action that

Bateman had committed was imagined, and was only his desire. This is proven at the end of the

movie, where Bateman has a cathartic episode. He tells all to a confidant of his, admitting he

killed a man earlier in the film - only for his confidant to state that he had dinner with the man

Bateman supposedly killed last weekend. This scene as a whole cements the fact that Bateman

had been acting as an unreliable narrator; and Harron portrays this absolutely perfectly, pulling

the right scenes and film editing through close up shots of facial expressions to relay emotion
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into effect to display how Bateman was able to deceive the audience and himself as well.

Through this, the movie accomplishes the transition of morals to the audience, and in this

specific case we are given the question; do his fabrications truly change the story in the first

place? He remains a man with a distaste for human society, and a dislike for rootless socialites,

yet he now will (presumably) never act on those intentions - yet the point that Harron proves

with this sentiment is that society, especially capitalist American society, creates people like this

- violence chained, never truly to be acted out in the guise of our ever changing demeanor. The

whole concept of the truth and reality is questioned with this reveal, and the movie’s ability to

constantly and consistently captivate the audience and capitalize on the shock from the initial

discovery is a testament to the cinematography and carefully planned writing of the film. The

purification of Bateman’s outward character, his guise that he seeks to maintain; yet, the forever

stained imagery of his internal monologue.

American Psycho differs from other psychological horror films of its caliber and echelon

- improving on psychological horror concepts that define the genre like the transition of morals,

narrations on common themes in our society, and fear. Via an array of carefully crafted and

chosen rhetoric and cinematic techniques, the movie delivers a compelling message about

American societal greed and the erosion of true moral values, as well as the importance of

mental health and struggle in these trying times, albeit with some noticeable poor design choices

in the way these ideas are expressed. These pitfalls exist in the manner in which mental health is

shown, and the ways that Bateman is characterized; both are one dimensional and could have

been fleshed out more extensively instead of portraying these important facets of the movie as

secondary or inconsequential to the main plot of gradual fear. The movie conversely does this
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very well. It is truly terrifying how Mary Harron is able to twist the narrative of the movie by

pitting truth as an enemy and the obstruction of reality as your ally. The mistrust of your natural

sense is terrifying, but what is equally and evermore frightening in these pertinent times is the

fact that this internal natural sense is completely and utterly meaningless - a sentiment that this

movie nails and cements it as a showpiece of psychological horror. As Bateman puts it, “But

inside... inside does not matter.”