American Psycho': What Mental Illness Patrick Bateman Suffers from Easton Ellis' 1991 Harron's Mary American Psycho introduces audiences to Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a Wall Street yuppie with a deliberately nondescript job whose financial success is matched only by his greed, obsession with material goods and himself. It is revealed early in the film that in addition to his lust for wealth and aesthetics, Patrick Bateman is a serial killer. Harron's film delves deep into the "darker side of consumerism..." while revealing Patrick Bateman's aspirations for conformity through his (male) identity. The purpose of this essay is to examine how many themes can be seen from a nominal interpretation of the film, such as appearance versus reality, forgetfulness and indifference, and what mental illness suffers from Patrick Bateman. Specifically, the main focus of this essay will be centered on the male gaze through Patrick Bateman and the motif of personal versus collective identity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay To address the topic of personal versus collective identity and consumerism, it is important to understand the image of masculinity Patrick Bateman (and the other yuppies) project in the film. Released in 2000, American Psycho came out during the height of beta male comedy. The protagonists of beta male comedies lacked the suave, confident personalities of male protagonists decades before, but their desire for any form of sexual encounter was wrapped up in comedy (e.g., Jim Levinstein in American Pie). “For all their pinched humor, beta male comedies emphasize the masochistic suffering of male characters.” Although set about ten years before American Pie, American Psycho reintroduced audiences to a dominant, alpha, sexually active straight man from the 1950s and 1960s (albeit a serial killer). Steven Cohan's Masked Men explains how Hollywood in the mid-20th century represented masculinity as a masquerade in different genres. In “The Spy in the Gray Flannel Suit,” Cohan emphasizes the idea that there is nothing beneath the mask…masquerade is subjectivity,” Cohan discusses mask theory with a soldier-spy in a suit well ironed, “the male mask is worn to achieve a normative and performance-oriented phallic heterosexual male sexuality. This relationship between masculinity and sexuality can also be applied to the horror genre in the form of the “psycho” or “split subject”. In Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Carol J. Clover notes that in the slasher film, violence is often the source of the voyeurism of the male gaze. This “psychosexual fury” is always linked to sexual repression. However, while Clover's theory could apply to Psycho's Norman Bates, it cannot apply in the same way to Patrick Bateman. displaced by violence and narcissism.” One thing Patrick Bateman loves more than murder is himself, and especially how others perceive him. Bateman fetishizes and obsesses over his own "physical condition...like the female 'hard bodies' he objectifies, he also objects his own body." Bateman's obsession with himself is established during the famous "morning routine" scene. Slow pans and tracking shots of a beautiful apartment dominated by white. The foreground withBateman shows him walking towards a toilet bowl to urinate as he introduces the audience to where he lives, his name and his age (in that order). In the next shot, he looks at himself through a glass poster of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, which becomes the first of many reflective shots throughout the film that show Bateman's obsession with himself and his duality. Les Misérables is mentioned throughout the film and shows the disconnect between yuppie brokers and reality. They see the coin as a status symbol, a sign of wealth, because they can afford expensive bills. Meanwhile, the story is exactly the opposite. It is about class tensions and how the excesses and wealth found in the upper class causes angst and rebellion in the lower class, and how this causes a breakdown within society. In the film Paris at the beginning of the 19th century is a parallel to New York at the end of the 20th century, the same problems are found in both cities, but now the upper class glorifies the lower class without even realizing it. In Masculinity in fiction and film: Representing men in popular genres, Brian Baker theorizes that the shot of Bateman taking out an ice mask to wear "...undermines the preceding sequence of shots." Baker believes this because the "mask concept" is eventually introduced as a "dominant visual signifier" which is then completely followed by arguably the most famous shot in the film. Bateman, filmed in close-up, removes his herbal and mint facial mask while the voiceover narration continues with the monologue "There's an idea from Patrick Bateman." As Bateman peels off his "mask", just as a snake sheds its skin, his narration ends with "I'm just not here", announcing to the audience that what Patrick Bateman sees in his co-workers and girlfriends is not not real. Baker also notices a certain shot composition that is seen several times in American Psycho: every shot of a naked Patrick Bateman is always taken below and behind his waist. Even for an R-rated film, the penis is "entirely denied and removed from the visual field", the way each "nude" shot is composed is in such a way as to suggest nudity. Baker does not expand on this idea of nudity further, but Carol J. Clover's theory of "gender distress" could help expand on Baker's ideas on nudity. Clover writes: "The notion of a killer driven by psychosexual fury, specifically a man in sexual distress, proved enduring..." Bateman is more comfortable in his "birthday suit" than in that of Armani because he considers himself a Greek. -a kind of god every time he looks at himself naked. In a scene focused on the male gaze, Bateman sets up a video camera in the corner of the room and begins to have sex with two prostitutes. Baker describes the scene using harsh language to emphasize Bateman's power, "...Bateman fucks a prostitute...", he is the dominant and alpha male throughout this scene but his intention is neither on the girl he “fucks” nor the other who is filming. In the video, however, all of Bateman's attention and "desiring gaze" is on the spectacle of his reflection staring back at him in the mirror as he bends over, poses heroically, and combs his hair. Even though this sequence speaks to his "charismatic" side, we still see hints of Bateman's darker side. For one, the camcorder view is black and white, denoting Bateman's black and white sides. The lighting comes from the left side of the frame and casts a shadow of Bateman on the wall behind them, as if to say that Bateman's darker side is also present in the room. The shadow ofBateman even appears to strangle the prostitute's shadow while he has sex with her. His hard body is visible and he is not playing for the diegetic camera in the actual scene but is playing for the camera shooting the American Psycho movie. It doesn't break the fourth wall, but rather plays to the audience while heavily fetishizing itself. In the film's final sex scene, Bateman is caught trying to eat alive one of the women he is having sex with. He attempts to eat her, while he is in the process of "eating" her and as another woman notices in horror, the sex scene abruptly stops and turns into a "murder spectacle". As the second prostitute begins to run away from the apartment (Paul Allen's apartment), Bateman enters the scene, completely naked except for a new pair of white sneakers and doing his best impersonation of leather face while brandishing a buzzing chainsaw, covering his entire penis. time. This scene is a nod to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He misunderstands the purpose of horror films, instead of being invested in the story in atmosphere Bateman simply puts it in the background while he trains showing how desensitized he is to violence. This is also how he treats pornography, by looking at it casually. The "chainsaw murder" scene also has a paradoxical setting, when it connects the phallic symbol of the chainsaw with it blocking Bateman's phallus, both used to "kill" women. Bateman's obsession with himself competes with what others think of him. When his girlfriend asks him (played by Reese Witherspoon) why he wants to stay at his father's company, he responds aggressively: "Because that…I…want…to…fit in…” This is first noticed before the audience even learns the first name of Bateman and his colleagues. everyone has the same fashion style and the same credit card when paying for lunch and Bateman introduces himself by where he lives; “I live in the American Gardens building on W. 81st St. on the 11th floor… my name is Patrick Bateman.” The film is littered with consumerism, from each of Bateman's "identity colleagues" to Bateman trying to get a dinner reservation at an exclusive restaurant. Consumerism and greed are major themes throughout the film, as is the simple narrative of appearance versus reality. However, after watching the ending several times, one can notice that the ending is the perfect embodiment of the central theme of personal and collective identity. The ambiguity of the ending gives the audience two choices: either Patrick committed all the murders shown (and especially Paul Allen), or he didn't and the murder scenes the audience witnessed were only illusions of violence in Bateman's mind. David Greven believes that Bateman "undoubtedly committed the murders and everything the audience saw in the film happened as presented", except of course moments like the ATM needing a stray cat. If Patrick Bateman really killed everyone in the film, how can the lawyer make it clear that he had dinner with Paul Allen in London? The answer is constant misidentification. This abundant recurrence in the plot occurs in a world in which everyone is part of the materialistic and yuppie culture. Everyone is easily confused with someone else or, more interestingly, each person presented has their personal identity synonymous with that of their collective identity. Personal identity is pretty self-explanatory, it's how people identify themselves apart from others, it's what makes us unique independent actors on earth. Collective identity is.

Essay / American Psycho': What Mental Illness Patrick Bateman Suffers from Easton Ellis' 1991 Harron's Mary American Psycho introduces audiences to Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a Wall Street yuppie with a deliberately nondescript job whose financial success is matched only by his greed, obsession with material goods and himself. It is revealed early in the film that in addition to his lust for wealth and aesthetics, Patrick Bateman is a serial killer. Harron's film delves deep into the "darker side of consumerism..." while revealing Patrick Bateman's aspirations for conformity through his (male) identity. The purpose of this essay is to examine how many themes can be seen from a nominal interpretation of the film, such as appearance versus reality, forgetfulness and indifference, and what mental illness suffers from Patrick Bateman. Specifically, the main focus of this essay will be centered on the male gaze through Patrick Bateman and the motif of personal versus collective identity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay To address the topic of personal versus collective identity and consumerism, it is important to understand the image of masculinity Patrick Bateman (and the other yuppies) project in the film. Released in 2000, American Psycho came out during the height of beta male comedy. The protagonists of beta male comedies lacked the suave, confident personalities of male protagonists decades before, but their desire for any form of sexual encounter was wrapped up in comedy (e.g., Jim Levinstein in American Pie). “For all their pinched humor, beta male comedies emphasize the masochistic suffering of male characters.” Although set about ten years before American Pie, American Psycho reintroduced audiences to a dominant, alpha, sexually active straight man from the 1950s and 1960s (albeit a serial killer). Steven Cohan's Masked Men explains how Hollywood in the mid-20th century represented masculinity as a masquerade in different genres. In “The Spy in the Gray Flannel Suit,” Cohan emphasizes the idea that there is nothing beneath the mask…masquerade is subjectivity,” Cohan discusses mask theory with a soldier-spy in a suit well ironed, “the male mask is worn to achieve a normative and performance-oriented phallic heterosexual male sexuality. This relationship between masculinity and sexuality can also be applied to the horror genre in the form of the “psycho” or “split subject”. In Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Carol J. Clover notes that in the slasher film, violence is often the source of the voyeurism of the male gaze. This “psychosexual fury” is always linked to sexual repression. However, while Clover's theory could apply to Psycho's Norman Bates, it cannot apply in the same way to Patrick Bateman. displaced by violence and narcissism.” One thing Patrick Bateman loves more than murder is himself, and especially how others perceive him. Bateman fetishizes and obsesses over his own "physical condition...like the female 'hard bodies' he objectifies, he also objects his own body." Bateman's obsession with himself is established during the famous "morning routine" scene. Slow pans and tracking shots of a beautiful apartment dominated by white. The foreground withBateman shows him walking towards a toilet bowl to urinate as he introduces the audience to where he lives, his name and his age (in that order). In the next shot, he looks at himself through a glass poster of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, which becomes the first of many reflective shots throughout the film that show Bateman's obsession with himself and his duality. Les Misérables is mentioned throughout the film and shows the disconnect between yuppie brokers and reality. They see the coin as a status symbol, a sign of wealth, because they can afford expensive bills. Meanwhile, the story is exactly the opposite. It is about class tensions and how the excesses and wealth found in the upper class causes angst and rebellion in the lower class, and how this causes a breakdown within society. In the film Paris at the beginning of the 19th century is a parallel to New York at the end of the 20th century, the same problems are found in both cities, but now the upper class glorifies the lower class without even realizing it. In Masculinity in fiction and film: Representing men in popular genres, Brian Baker theorizes that the shot of Bateman taking out an ice mask to wear "...undermines the preceding sequence of shots." Baker believes this because the "mask concept" is eventually introduced as a "dominant visual signifier" which is then completely followed by arguably the most famous shot in the film. Bateman, filmed in close-up, removes his herbal and mint facial mask while the voiceover narration continues with the monologue "There's an idea from Patrick Bateman." As Bateman peels off his "mask", just as a snake sheds its skin, his narration ends with "I'm just not here", announcing to the audience that what Patrick Bateman sees in his co-workers and girlfriends is not not real. Baker also notices a certain shot composition that is seen several times in American Psycho: every shot of a naked Patrick Bateman is always taken below and behind his waist. Even for an R-rated film, the penis is "entirely denied and removed from the visual field", the way each "nude" shot is composed is in such a way as to suggest nudity. Baker does not expand on this idea of nudity further, but Carol J. Clover's theory of "gender distress" could help expand on Baker's ideas on nudity. Clover writes: "The notion of a killer driven by psychosexual fury, specifically a man in sexual distress, proved enduring..." Bateman is more comfortable in his "birthday suit" than in that of Armani because he considers himself a Greek. -a kind of god every time he looks at himself naked. In a scene focused on the male gaze, Bateman sets up a video camera in the corner of the room and begins to have sex with two prostitutes. Baker describes the scene using harsh language to emphasize Bateman's power, "...Bateman fucks a prostitute...", he is the dominant and alpha male throughout this scene but his intention is neither on the girl he “fucks” nor the other who is filming. In the video, however, all of Bateman's attention and "desiring gaze" is on the spectacle of his reflection staring back at him in the mirror as he bends over, poses heroically, and combs his hair. Even though this sequence speaks to his "charismatic" side, we still see hints of Bateman's darker side. For one, the camcorder view is black and white, denoting Bateman's black and white sides. The lighting comes from the left side of the frame and casts a shadow of Bateman on the wall behind them, as if to say that Bateman's darker side is also present in the room. The shadow ofBateman even appears to strangle the prostitute's shadow while he has sex with her. His hard body is visible and he is not playing for the diegetic camera in the actual scene but is playing for the camera shooting the American Psycho movie. It doesn't break the fourth wall, but rather plays to the audience while heavily fetishizing itself. In the film's final sex scene, Bateman is caught trying to eat alive one of the women he is having sex with. He attempts to eat her, while he is in the process of "eating" her and as another woman notices in horror, the sex scene abruptly stops and turns into a "murder spectacle". As the second prostitute begins to run away from the apartment (Paul Allen's apartment), Bateman enters the scene, completely naked except for a new pair of white sneakers and doing his best impersonation of leather face while brandishing a buzzing chainsaw, covering his entire penis. time. This scene is a nod to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He misunderstands the purpose of horror films, instead of being invested in the story in atmosphere Bateman simply puts it in the background while he trains showing how desensitized he is to violence. This is also how he treats pornography, by looking at it casually. The "chainsaw murder" scene also has a paradoxical setting, when it connects the phallic symbol of the chainsaw with it blocking Bateman's phallus, both used to "kill" women. Bateman's obsession with himself competes with what others think of him. When his girlfriend asks him (played by Reese Witherspoon) why he wants to stay at his father's company, he responds aggressively: "Because that…I…want…to…fit in…” This is first noticed before the audience even learns the first name of Bateman and his colleagues. everyone has the same fashion style and the same credit card when paying for lunch and Bateman introduces himself by where he lives; “I live in the American Gardens building on W. 81st St. on the 11th floor… my name is Patrick Bateman.” The film is littered with consumerism, from each of Bateman's "identity colleagues" to Bateman trying to get a dinner reservation at an exclusive restaurant. Consumerism and greed are major themes throughout the film, as is the simple narrative of appearance versus reality. However, after watching the ending several times, one can notice that the ending is the perfect embodiment of the central theme of personal and collective identity. The ambiguity of the ending gives the audience two choices: either Patrick committed all the murders shown (and especially Paul Allen), or he didn't and the murder scenes the audience witnessed were only illusions of violence in Bateman's mind. David Greven believes that Bateman "undoubtedly committed the murders and everything the audience saw in the film happened as presented", except of course moments like the ATM needing a stray cat. If Patrick Bateman really killed everyone in the film, how can the lawyer make it clear that he had dinner with Paul Allen in London? The answer is constant misidentification. This abundant recurrence in the plot occurs in a world in which everyone is part of the materialistic and yuppie culture. Everyone is easily confused with someone else or, more interestingly, each person presented has their personal identity synonymous with that of their collective identity. Personal identity is pretty self-explanatory, it's how people identify themselves apart from others, it's what makes us unique independent actors on earth. Collective identity is.

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