American Psycho: a double portrait of serial yuppie Patrick Bateman.(Critical Essay)

A double relation is accentuated by mental processes leaping from one character to another--or is marked by the fact that the subject identifies himself with something else, so that he is in doubt as to which his self is.

--Sigmund Freud, 1919

He wears the finest clothes, the best designers heaven knows. Ooh, from his head down to his toes. Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci. He looks like a still that man is dressed to kill.

--Sister Sledge, 1979

In 2000, director Mary Harron adapted Bret Easton Ellis's controversial third novel American Psycho (1991) to the screen, starring Christian Bale as the 27-year-old yuppie/serial killer Patrick Bateman. Like the novel, the film American Psycho can be seen as an ultimate portrayal of the 1980s New York yuppie lifestyle, depicting a world dominated by hedonism, greed, and egocentrism. The novel's long enumerations of brand name consumer goods, denoting the fashion-dictated materialism that constitutes yuppie life, have been translated cinematically into a sterile space of (now extremely dated) 1980s designer goods. The film version anatomizes the construction of Bateman's double identity that in the novel is created through the use of an unreliable narrator, the appropriation of pop cultural products (particularly brand names, pop songs, and the images of horror and porn movies), and the use of "cinematic" techniques of narration. In this article, we will treat the fictional character Patrick Bateman as a double construction of narration and identity by examining the ways in which Bateman is constructed as both a yuppie and a serial killer. By focusing on his being an unreliable narrator in the novel and a reliable narrator in the film, we will show how readers/spectators make sense of Bateman's constructed identity through their role as Bateman's "witness" within his own fictional and cinematic world.

Rather than considering the film version to be an adaptation of the novel, we argue that the novel and film complement each other. In both the novel and the film, Bateman's identity is based on a double construction. Bateman embodies both the well-groomed image of the Wall Street yuppie and the gruesome image of the serial killer. Yet, while Bateman manages to establish the image of the yuppie as a credible appearance before others within the fictional world, beyond the world of fiction it is clear that his identity as cold-blooded serial killer is merely a hallucination. By creating himself an identity as a serial killer, Bateman attempts to connect with something real beyond the superficiality of brand names. However, his serial killer identity appears to be an illusion and this renders his identity as yuppie as artificial, meaningless, and invented. In other words, the readers/ spectators are invited to enter into the process of Bateman's double identity construction, as American Psycho reveals Bateman's techniques of the self. By clearly indicating that Bateman's identity as serial killer is a hallucinatory construction, American Psycho--both the novel and the film--suggests that Bateman's identity as yuppie is a construction as well.

This is the essence of the novel, which in the film version is made palpable through the process of narration, and specifically through the use of an unreliable/ reliable narrator. While in the novel, Patrick Bateman gradually proves to be an unreliable narrator, in the film Bateman's unreliability towards those within the fictional world is made explicit to those outside--paradoxically thereby making him a reliable narrator for the spectators. For example, when Bateman takes his drugged mistress Courtney (Samantha Mathis) to the fashionable restaurant Barcadia, she explicitly asks if they are at the more fashionable restaurant Dorsia. Bateman confirms this, while at the same time showing the spectators in close-up the menu that shows the restaurant's real name. This construction of double narration, where the spectators are placed in-between, suggests that we are watching a film that takes place within Bateman's world of facade, his imaginary world. This element is present in the novel as well, but the film version--appropriately--has taken it to be the most crucial element, the level that constructs the entrance point for the spectator into the film. From the very beginning, the spectators are invited to see the image of Bateman as an imaginary double construction, both within and beyond the cinematic diegesis and narration. The double image of Patrick Bateman is constructed both within the novel and the film, and both media help to construct the double image of the yuppie and the serial killer--which, in the end, becomes actualized only in an empty symbol, a reflection.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SERIAL YUPPIE

One of the first scenes in the film American Psycho features a sequence of shots that portray Patrick Bateman doing his daily morning routines. Bateman is shown placing an ice mask on his face, training his abdominal muscles, taking a shower, and applying a facial mask. As he removes the mask that has formed a screen on his skin, Bateman's voiceover reveals an explicit self-analysis:

 
   There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, 
   some kind of abstraction. But there is 
   no real me, only an entity, something 
   illusory. Although I can hide my cold 
   gaze and you can shake my hand and 
   feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe 
   you can even sense our lifestyles are 
   probably comparable--I simply am 
   not there. 

This self-analysis also appears in the novel, though almost at the end, on pages 376-377, and is the key to understanding American Psycho. Bateman strives to conceal his lack of being with designer suits and pop culture, but remains aware of the meaninglessness of his project: "Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in …