In one of the more famous scenes of the 2000 movie American Psycho, Patrick Bateman is a sweating, nearly a trembling mess as he sees his colleagues’ business cards come out one after another in a moment so intense you’d think you were watching a Western stand-off. The men whip out their cards with sound effects fitting for guns being lifted out of their holsters, and immediately start to compare them, with all the subtext that implies. Patrick Bateman seethes internally with the attitude of a catty preteen, and the audience almost forgets that they’re talking about typefaces and watermarks. All of the cards really look almost identical: white, bland, and completely devoid of personality — just like the characters. However, Patrick Bateman isn’t actually upset over the cards, but of the men.Â
The film American Psycho, based on the 1991 book by Bret Easton Ellis, chronicles the story of Patrick Bateman, a narcissistic, vain, and pathetic investment banker who moonlights as a serial killer in Uptown Manhattan. It had a polarizing reception at the box office in its initial debut, but it’s turned into a cult classic in recent years. Mostly due to the fact that many people appreciate the film as a black comedy satirizing rampant consumerism, vapidity, and, above all, masculinity. It’s pretty fitting that American Psycho had a female director — Mary Harron. As observed by film critic Roger Ebert in 2000, Harron “transformed a novel about bloodlust into a movie about men’s vanity.” Many of its iconic scenes have an absurd edge in the film, ruthlessly mocking Patrick Bateman’s psychology instead of pitying him. Most interactions between Patrick Bateman and other people lack any sort of coherence, as he spends more time worrying about the “right thing to say” rather than actually responding to what is being said.Â
The “right thing to say” is something of supreme importance to Bateman, as he is more of an idea of a person than anything else. A nice apartment, a well-tailored suit, a reservation at a luxury restaurant — Patrick Bateman doesn’t actually enjoy these things, but rather does them, and covets them, because he finds them necessary to sustain the mirage that is Patrick Bateman. He is utterly dependent on others’ opinions of himself and on how they perceive him. Conversations for him are an intense social calculus where he somehow has to come out on top, like it’s some sort of card game. However, it’s chiefly with the men that he’s interested in doing this. Women, being relegated as inferiors — the “meat” — don’t get a similar treatment.Â
In 1983, philosopher Marilyn Frye published Politics of Reality, a series of feminist essays examining the gay rights movement, the exploitation of women, sexism, and a myriad of other topics. Being a radical feminist, her work is certainly controversial, but it’s extremely relevant when examining the character — or void of a character — that is Patrick Bateman.
“Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving,” Frye wrote, and it encapsulates the bizarrely aggressive masculine reality Patrick Bateman is immersed in. He seems to hold pleasure in deriding gay people — a hatred that rivals the one he holds for women. Yet, he’s entirely obsessed with obtaining male approval and attention, constantly speaking with his peers in attempts to assert his superiority — or equality — in conversations. He both idolizes and is extremely envious of the men around him, picking pieces of identities so that he may fit in and be accepted by them. Whatever they find important is important to him, even something as absurd as business cards with glaring spelling errors on them.Â
Patrick Bateman is so intensely obsessed with the heterosexual ideal of how a man is meant to be and act that he really becomes one of his most dreaded fears. The homoeroticism within him doesn’t seem to stem from any true desire towards men themselves, but to the male form and what its status represents for someone like him in modern society. In most scenes when he’s with women, either physically or otherwise, his mind isn’t on the female characters, but on what their presence serves to further construct his image as this lusted-after and powerful man in the eyes of his male peers. Why else, when on a date with a woman, would he be thinking about how one of his male coworkers would react the entire time? Once again, his enjoyment from the interaction stemmed from the thought of a male colleague’s reaction, not from her company or even the simple fact that the woman was beautiful.Â
For some, Patrick Bateman’s repressed sexuality emerges in the violent, misogynistic outbursts he has towards women, arguing that his internalized homophobia drives his actions. While he isn’t exactly holding untold depths in his person, waving away his misogyny as a symptom of his possible gayness, or his gayness manifesting in his sadistic treatment of women, feels reductive. While there’s more evidence of him potentially being scared of his own attraction towards men in the novel, the film portrays his sexualized violence towards women as more of a struggle of power and control in relation to other men. As in, he tends to murder women when interactions with men don’t go the way he planned, or as a way to reassert his view of himself and soothe his ego.Â
What then, of the notable scene in which he’s confronted by an actual gay man? As Patrick Bateman typically murders those he considers lesser, he considers killing a coworker whom he considers pathetic and useless; in his eyes, the man is effectively emasculated. His attempt to choke the other man is foiled by the fact that the man thinks that Bateman is coming onto him, and, as such, he spares him. In the novel, this scene is much more charged, and, with the additions of some other moments, holds some weighty implications about how these two characters actually knew each other. However, in the movie, Bateman backs away in disgust because, as a typical self-denominated straight man, sex and all that pertains to it is meant to come exclusively from women.Â
Patrick Bateman is not a tragic figure. To imply tragedy means he doesn’t deserve the hell he finds himself in. He’s an intensely unhappy person, but his unhappiness is entirely a prison of his own making. It’s a result of his own obsession, of so intensely wanting that approval from the men around him that he’s willing to act in whatever way makes that possible. But when he acts like everyone, he turns into no one. Patrick Bateman is the hollow corpse of masculinity, killed by his own adoration.