Great American Psycho

On the Film and Novel, 25 Years Later

Jared Leto on the American Psycho Film Set, 1999, Photograph, Getty Images

Search the internet far and wide, and you’ll find that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of fan-edited videos of Patrick Bateman, the serial killer from Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho; Bateman is portrayed by Christian Bale in the film adaptation directed by Mary Harron. Beneath these videos is an interpretation of Bateman as an Übermensch figure with the ideal body. This powerful investment banker lives in luxury, carved from nowhere like a porcelain statue, with a devil-may-care attitude.

Many of the movie’s scenes have been parodied numerous times. A scene where Bateman walks into the office while listening to Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine” shows him in his glory through bright and distorted filters. His morning routine — an obsessive attempt to have the perfect skin texture through conditioners, as well as an intense exercise regimen — is also highlighted in these edits. Other popular scenes include all the men comparing their business cards and Bateman becoming very envious when one’s more textured; the infamous sequence of Bateman’s execution of Paul Allen, after he monologues about Huey Lewis and the News, is recreated with Huey Lewis. There’s also no shortage of memorable quotes like “cool it with the antisemitic remarks” or “I’m going out to return some videotapes.”

It is unclear whether they are in on the joke or unironically endorse the viewpoint. One can argue that the people making these edits do not understand the movie, nor are they supposed to sympathize with a megalomaniac. Others say that American Psycho is necessary and a warning about the plight of men. But 25 years on, the film is a memetic reflection on not just Reagan-era materialism and machismo, but the viewer’s own vices. And it has determined how one should interpret the villain’s neuroses.

Bret Easton Ellis’ novels have been notoriously difficult to translate into film, and American Psycho was no exception. According to the New York Times review, Patrick Bateman was like a sophomore who turned Dorian Gray into a bore. But he’s a template that’s akin to Alex DeLarge and the narrator from Notes from Underground. When the novel was published in 1991, the graphic violence inspired widespread outrage. Gloria Steinem notably condemned the novel for its alleged misogyny. (Ironically, Steinem happened to be Bale’s stepmother, which Ellis notes in his mock memoir Lunar Park). News outlets often singled out the novel for the inspiration of real-life massacres and murders. (In Australia, where I’m writing this essay, it was shrink-wrapped and restricted to adult readers). Harron achieved what seemed to be impossible: staying properly faithful to the novel and retaining much of Ellis’ substance.

The film adaptation received better mainstream reviews than the novel, but it still inspired a great deal of outrage due to its violent nature. For his part, Ellis has gone on the record about his mixed feelings on Harron’s adaptation. He felt that the book is Bateman’s stream of consciousness, but that the medium “demands answers,” meaning that the ambiguity will be completely lost. Spoken in first person, the novel lays bare Patrick’s propensities for violence and treating women, whether it’d be his fiancée or various mistresses, as individuals to be conquered. But for all of its subversions, it was difficult to make his downward spiral an endpoint of Bateman seeing everything as a commodity, perhaps the core of Ellis’ critique of an era where wealth seemed easier to accumulate.

There are certain elements that Harron didn’t translate from the novel to the screen. Rather than highlighting Bateman’s ambiguity, she focused mostly on the pomposity of the yuppies. This choice was ripe for social satire, but it also meant that American Psycho’s gory violence is minimized while the viewer laughs at the character’s vapidities. Huey Lewis and the News and Genesis are signifiers of middlebrow taste, and Bateman’s intense monologues about the bands before he turns lustful or murderous are the biggest punchlines. Harron also turned Donald Kimball, a private detective played by Willem Dafoe, into the film’s moral conscience, in contrast to Bateman’s amorality. All of this to balance the film’s darker tones with a playful bounciness that results in the film’s high rewatchability.

Harron and Ellis both have the same aim to see Bateman as ultimately inhuman, but understand that he’s supposed to have a conception of being one. He is a product of high-end consumerism. It seems easier to embrace the film rather than the novel because of the perception of the author and filmmaker. Ellis is far more sympathetic to Bateman’s plight and has embraced the role of the artist provocateur. In the novel, it’s never entirely clear whether Bateman is killing or hallucinating. Harron, meanwhile, ultimately views Bateman with disdain, and she doesn’t miss the opportunity to make fun of his vanity. One has to admit this decision has served American Psycho, the film, well.

The film proved to be bleak and hilarious, largely thanks to Christian Bale’s magnetic performance as Bateman. He delivers his lines with such a sarcastic punch and revels in the film’s self-awareness that this character is ultimately childish and privileged. The violence is still shocking, with one scene involving him wielding a chainsaw naked while chasing a prostitute who has already witnessed his body count. Harron directs it from the victim’s point of view as if it’s a typical slasher movie. The never-ending hallways she tries to run away from are delirious and stressful. Simultaneously, there’s a hilarious bit where Bateman takes a break from his carnage to taste her feet.

Bateman’s inner remorse can be a bit of a charm, in contrast to his friends and fiancée, who are about as self-satisfied as he is. He briefly becomes vulnerable when he’s around his secretary Jean (played by Chloe Sevigny) and struggles to execute her. Only when she finds out about sketches of his murders does she react with emotional distress.

So what do netizens see in Patrick Bateman? There’s an internet phenomenon called Literally Me that refers to the ability of the viewer to relate to certain characters. It’s an umbrella that consists of disaffected young men, including Tyler Durden, Alex DeLarge and Patrick Bateman. All of whom are largely flawed, unreliable narrators who rebel against polite society. The empathy towards Bateman, as a sigma male — seen as self-reliant, independent and a lone wolf, who has no affection for any other human being — from young men almost matches with Ellis’. After all, he told UnHerd: “It was the end of the Reagan era: yuppies, Manhattan, Wall Street. What it meant to be a man, how masculinity was defined, was very different from what I aspired to be. And yet . . . I wanted to fit in.”

Some are confused as to why fans won’t understand that Bateman is ultimately a punchline on privilege. I feel that they speak more or less with their social anxieties without having the capacity to commit heinous acts; these characters are shaped against what society demands of them.

Through memes and a perpetual search for meaning, millennial and zoomer humor has become more surreal than it is up-to-date with the film’s absurdity. As Elizabeth Bruenig wrote, “Rather than trying to restore meaning and sense where they’ve gone missing, the style aims to play with the moods and emotions of an illegible world.”

Fans of American Psycho view Bateman as someone who fulfills himself with deluxe experiences, filling in whatever blank slate he has. That fantasy is reflected not just in fan edits of the character, but is extended through the macho posturing of influencers and content creators that would algorithmically shape the minds of young scrollers.

But by the end of the movie, Bateman wants to be recognized for his killing. Following his execution of Paul Allen, he uses his apartment to hide all of his bodies. Eventually, the place became clean, and no proof of his crimes can be traced. His confession does not alarm any of his colleagues, and so when he tries to be plain about it, they become offended. He did not achieve closure, so he is stuck in the cage built around him.

American Psycho was released with a wave of movies about being detached from society — Fight Club, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich and American Beauty — near the end of the 20th century. The trope of young men’s struggles for recognition has only become more prevalent, particularly in entertainment. As digital natives, young men have never been more lonely and directionless. And with Luca Guadagnino directing another adaptation featuring Austin Butler in the lead, there’s a possibility that it may follow the discourse it has already inspired, or produce one that could be even more absurd than Harron’s. But the discourse has already ensured that Ellis’ vision of Patrick Bateman is intact, as long as many people are interested in seeing him as someone other than a serial killer.

Adrian Nguyen is a freelance writer and essayist. He currently writes the Substack newsletter

Lack of Taste

. He lives in Sydney, Australia.