American Psycho

January 26, 2013


In a world of pretentious yuppies and superficial social-climbing aristocrats, it just wouldn't make sense for all of them to keep their heads on straight and remain, if ever were, sane.  American Psycho is the satirical film depicting this concept through Christian Bale's performance of a character whose mind slowly but forcefully shatters while his psychological reality goes with it. It is also the perfect depiction of white male privilege and entitlement at its worst.


Christain Bale. American Psycho. Harron, Mary. Lions Gate Films. 2000.


Bale depicts a notoriously narcissistic character who not only strives to be the best, but is convinced that he certainly must be because in his mind that is how he sees himself. This character resorts to the extremes of killing the person who upstages him as though they are nothing.. but ordinary. Bale brings a somewhat shocking, yet accurate look at what a privileged, violent egomaniac looks like in this early 2000 movie. It would be an understatement to say that his character cares too much about himself and how he is perceived, because it has become embedded in his mind and evident in his persona to think that everyone has to know and see him as a "big shot", a somebody of importance when he clearly isn't. The character moves along the two extremes, accentuating the psychopathic and egotistic. The female-directed (Dir. Mary Harron) film does not forget to show the misogyny extricated by this character. Myriad scenes exemplify the character's misogynistic, psychopathic tendencies from preying on, objectifying, and murdering women. But it doesn't stop there he further traverses the streets to kill other innocent people, a homeless person, then slashing co-workers and, by the end, killing anyone who cross his ridiculous inhumane path.


Christain Bale. American Psycho. Harron, Mary. Lions Gate Films. 2000.


By the end of it, through the bloodshed, we see a character psychologically breaking down, struggling to cope with who they really are after realizing what they have become and what they have always been.

One that expresses in extreme measure, the ridiculous and the absurd to the point where the audience questions whether the scene was one that actually happened or if it was just imagined by the character. Through all the absurdity of this killing satire, the point comes across in shocking ways. The biggest problem and most important point of this is that he still gets away with it because he is the result of as well as the embodiment of a misogynistic, white Capitalist male privilege and entitlement.


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