flamingdog

It's intended as a black comedy.

Bateman seemed to me to be ambivalent about his life. He could have anything he wanted at the snap of a finger, women, material goods, drugs, etc. But in spite of that he was just another drone in corporate 80s culture. Hence people kept thinking he was Marcus Halberstram - everybody is so anonymously dressed and styled, they all look identical.

Consider when Bateman flips out in Paul Owen's apartment and ends up daubing 'Kill All Yuppies' on the wall. Does that seem like a man who's happy with his life? Yet as he tells his Jean, his secretary who is in love with him, "I just want to fit in".

I think Bateman, as was said above, is a psychopath who happens to work in Wall Street. He's not happy with his life, but he's happy enough with it to keep up appearances, perhaps because he doesn't know what else to do. So much for Bateman.

What's really going on here is a commentary about American culture in general. Bateman is so bereft of identity, the rigid conformity of his peers, his social situations, his job mean his killings become his way of manifesting his identity in the world. Consider the way he plays with dismembered victims, making sausages out of them, or arranging entrails artfully around their bodies. It seems like a twisted equivalent of someone like you or I painting a picture or writing a story in order to manifest ourselves.

And the sheer audacity of his murders, the lengths he seems to go to to try and get caught, just demonstrate a society so in love with itself that it simply does not care. As long as Bateman looks and acts the part of a Wall Street broker, he is relatively safe. Even when he calls his lawyer and confesses after the cop chase, his lawyer assumes he is making a joke. Ellis shows us a world completely closed to compassion and love. Accumulation of wealth is the be-all and end-all, and external appearances are everything.

In the end, I don't think it matters whether the murders are real or not, and it's up to the reader/viewer to decide. The film is obviously biased towards the idea of the murders being imaginary, but I had read the book some years before the film was made, and I was never drawn to that conclusion myself. For instance, Bateman's lawyer dismisses his confession by telling him Paul Owen has been spotted in Europe. Well, we know how reliable that sighting is likely to be.

Whether the murders are real or not, the comment remains the same, and perhaps becomes even more sharp if you accept Bateman is imagining the killings. On reflection, I don't think the book gives enough evidence either way.

Excellent American Psycho site:

http://www.briankotek.com/psycho/frame.html