"Bateman is no one, and therefore Bateman is everyone. If this guy can go throughout society unnoticed then the society is crazy" is probably the best line I've heard in the past six months. I love it so much.
This is why I think the debate of "was it all in his head or not?" misses the point. Personally, my interpretation is that it might be a little bit of both, but we can never really know for sure. It could be that he didn't kill anyone. It could be that he did kill everyone, including Paul Allen. It could be that he really did kill SOME people, but hallucinated Paul's murder and the conversations with Detective Kimball (I do kind of like the idea that Kimball could be a projection of his subconscious trying to force him to actually examine himself). But the real point is, in the reality of this movie... it doesn't matter. Nobody cares. He tells people he's "into murders and executions", and they either don't notice or don't care to notice. He brings up Ed Gein and Ted Bundy randomly in conversations, and it's shrugged off and brushed past. The only time we see a character react in genuine horror to the inner workings of Patrick's mind (apart from his victims in their final moments), is when Jean sees the book at the end. It's also, I believe, the only scene in the movie in which Patrick is not physically present. So I think, if nothing else, it can be argued that that scene "really happened". For the first time in the movie, a character comprehends the true horror of Patrick Bateman. But by that point, we know how little it will matter. At best, she might try to bring it to someone's attention, only to likely be scoffed away, and in the end simply find a new job somewhere else. At worst, she'll just pretend she didn't see it, out of fear of jeopardizing her career. No matter what, we all know damn well that Patrick won't face any sort of consequences. So, was it all in his head? The answer is it doesn't matter, because nobody cares. And that's the real horror.
@@jakek1735LITERALLY ALL OF THIS. Patrick straight up grips his lawyer by the shoulders and tells him in excruciating detail of his horrific deeds and the lawyer just laughs. Even Patrick is in disbelief of how he can just... *exist.*
You should really read "Notes from Underground", which I believe is either directly quoted somewhere in the book or is part of the epigraph. I forget, it's been a few years.
Fun fact; for the interrogation scene with Willem Dafoe there was three seperate shoots, one where he didnt think Pat killed Paul, one where he suspected it, and the last where he was basically certain. Same for the dinner later. The director cut the three shots together randomly to create a jarring feeling
I find it ironic since from what I can gather, no one seems to notice Bateman. Not even murder does that or a fucking confession. People just ignore him and mistake him for someone else. Also, he murders people, which in reality unsurprisingly, means you’re a psychopath and an inhuman monster.
@@kl41256-p This. This is what I've begun taking from the film upon my most recent watchthrough a couple years ago. I don't know if it's because when I first saw the film I was an impressionable teenager that came away with the vague imprint of "scary ax man bad", and on my last watch I finally rounded that corner of not just meeting Patrick Bateman's canoned age, but at last surpassing it, that my perspective of his place and perceived power in the world finally did a complete 180. Patrick is not an important individual. He has the same ranking job as 4 other men at his company, a job which he only acquired through an implied favor from his father, at a company where he holds no responsibilities or true authority. His fiance is cheating on him and he does little about it, save for cheating on her back, which she tends to either not notice or care about. He is forgettable to the point where he struggles for agency within his own friend circle or to be properly identified by his peers and coworkers, and he is often seen in power struggles with those he would otherwise perceive as beneath him (ie. first scene with the bartender, and later on at the dry cleaner's). When he breaks up with Evelyn, we get the sense that this is not the first time that he's attempted this and she doesn't take him seriously, reasoning that a breakup "wouldn't work" implying it'd affect his social standing. In fact, she's not even really paying attention at all. My first few viewings of this scene I was always curious why there seemed to be so much emphasis placed on her interaction with a friend trying to show off her watch from across the restaurant, but only once you stop hyperfixating on it do you hear Patrick's muttered confession of no longer feeling able to control himself, which Evelyn misses entirely (and the audience who's meant to share her perspective and be distracted along with her). I believe Patrick's lack of agency in his own relationship is a main factor in why Evelyn never seemed as though she were in any danger throughout the film. In fact, the various women he speaks to throughout the film are not listening to him 90% of the time. When he tells a model that he's into "murders and executions" she lackadaisically reinterprets it to "mergers and acquisitions". He threatens the bartender outright, but she never hears him. And this is not limited to women, as he frequently attempts to wordvomit half-confessions to those around him, such as the one to Paul at Texarkana (almost like a cry for...) The only woman who interacts with him that we see pay attention to him is Jean. And consequently, this is the first time we ever see Patrick's M.O. being thrown off. He keeps trying to choose murder weapons, but keeps putting them back everytime he receives an earnest reply from her or she questions something he said. It's almost as if he is caught in a spotlight, which continuously prevents him from pulling a trigger that he is used to doing so reflexively (especially in the case of Paul Allen, who appears unaware and undeterred to the very end). Lastly (and most heartbreaking of all imo) is that final scene where Patrick attempts to confront the man on the phone message he left him, after which his confession is dismissed as a joke, only for his identity to be mistaken yet again. "Don't you know who I am..?? You're my lawyer..." Even the one person who's job it is to ID him unmistakably has no clue who Patrick Bateman really is. The 27-yr old Patrick Bateman is invisible and powerless in his entire world, a cog in the machine, and the absolute antithesis of a "sigma male". He reminds me of every freshman roommate, awkward college kid, depressed or antisocial millennial, and left behind gen-Xer. He is the epitome of a lost young adult, so desperate for acknowledgement, validation, attention, or even consequences for acts as horrific as murder, just to confirm that he is really here, and that other people can actually see him or be affected by his presence. For he is a speck, just a ghost in his world.
@@rusteddenial453 it started off as not a joke but quickly people found these guys that take it serious funny asf and just began making ironic patrick bateman memes and sigma memes
You’re missing the point of Paul Allen’s murder. Everyone confuses everyone for someone else, so it’s completely possible that the lawyer was mistaken about having dinner with Paul. Hell, no one ever corrects anyone when mistaken identity comes up.
Agreed, this perspective is often overlooked and portrayed as "All In His Head", but what if the culture and society is just so messed up that everything was real and Bateman is still okay? It perfectly fits with the ending quote where Bateman states something like "everything was without consequence". Imagine you could go completely ballistic and no one cares after all that. Definitly a strong reason to go completely psychotic.
@@GepGren the book also illustrates and drives this point further since it has many more cases mistaken identity throughout. Virtually every social gathering has these.
"It's all in his head and he never killed anyone" is the most paper-thin, shallowest of surface readings and patently wrong. The book makes this even more obvious. EDIT: I also think he's dead wrong about the whole sigma male 'enjoyment' of this movie, and this is part of the reason why.
I vaguely remember that, in the scene where he commits suicide, he straight up _tells someone_ that he committed all of those murders, and their response is to continue gossipping about restaurant reservations and musicals. The one thing he wants is to be recognized as something, as someone, but not even admitting to being a serial killer is enough to make that happen. He's surrounded by people who are exactly as self-absorbed as he is, and he can't stand it.
In the book, bateman constantly tells his acquaintances/lovers his macabre thoughts and feelings. However, every time he does so they either ignore him(are not paying attention to what he is saying) or mistake his words for something else. At one point he actually forces someone to read an extreme poem and they brush it off saying “I can see that … that your sense of …. social injustice is … still intact.”.
Like this post. I would counter and add that it's not just the self absorbed thing that bugs him. He realizes he isn't different at all. He wants to be, but he's just not. Even murdering people doesn't differentiate himself from his peers, they won't even acknowledge it. Then at the end of the movie he grasps that fact. There will be no catharsis, this isn't a confession. Wasn't that what he said? How could there be, how could it be? It would completely destroy the stories thesis - it would completely destroy him.
Something I noticed about Patrick’s skincare routine is that it’s very harsh on the skin. Exfoliation like that should be done 1,2 times a week, not every morning
Tbf that’s what people did back in the day. People were getting recommended daily exfoliating cleansers and the most popular cleansing tool was an electric exfoliating brush up until the 2010s
In the opening shot of the apartment, there's a telescope, which seems like it should be something. Indicating a hobby, an area of interest seperate from finance, social status, maybe a world view touched by an admiration of the stars. except no it fucking doesn't because HE'S IN NEW YORK! I am like 95% certain that light polution would be bad enough that you can't see shit. A telescope wouldn't work in a city like NYC, so the one thing of actual personality in his apartment just shows even further that he is nothing. It is expensive tho so it works for the flex. Fantastic choice by the set dressers.
the only thing to look at, is other people through their windows. it's voyeuristic. nothing speaks of isolation and distance, more than looking at other people's lives through a telescope in a city. any normal new yorker would be creeped out by a telescope for this reason, but Patrick doesn't care about other peoples lives, he never looks through it, and so this never registers for him. the telescope shows how utterly incapable he is of understanding normal humans.
the first and last time i watched american psycho i was post op from a wisdom tooth surgery and just passed out for the first 90 minutes. I saw him drop a chainsaw on a woman, shoot a homeless guy, blow up a cop car, and then the ending scene. 10/10 would watch again
fun fact: the chainsaw scene is probably in his head because chainsaws can't spin without holding down the safety so it would stop the second it left his hand
A detail mostly exclusive to the book is that Patrick describes what everyone is wearing including the brand in excruciating detail, most of them being real brands and if you were to actually look up the clothes you’ll find they make no sense whatsoever. The author said how this was intentional since eventually the brand description basically just become white noise, further adding to how pointless they are despite their price
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12:06 I don’t agree with you here. I think her expressed desire to have children and a family is meant to be a genuine, albeit confused yearning for a simpler, more wholesome, and more ‘settled’ existence. As opposed to the fruitless yuppie relationship scene where women are simply traded around as trophies and status symbols. This realization fades as quickly as it arises when she falls back into her drug induced sedation.
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he didnt make light of its genuinity, he was simply saying it is an idealized life, but not because its her preferred option, but because it is the best option as it is also her perceived only option. its making the point that she was raised to belive that as a woman her lives only purpose is to have the perfect little family and serve the man who she intends to marry
@@ando5563 I just don’t think this is what the was being communicated. I also think there’s something a bit sinister about this implication that being some, sterile, corporate girl-boss is the only decision a woman can make for herself that isn’t immediately met with suspicion. As if the rat race is all a woman can desire, and if she wants something else like a family, well she only wants that because the patriarchy told her to, or whatever. I can not imagine anything which trivializes a woman’s choices more than that. In any case, I think the scene with her in the car with Batemen was meant to be a kind of “waking up from the matrix” moment, where for just a brief moment of clarity she realized that the whole lifestyle that she and everyone she knew was caught up in was nonsensical and pointless, and with that realization came a genuine yearning from something less chaotic, more permanent, and less artificial. The implied tragedy in all of this is that any true realization of herself and her circumstances is prevented by the very sedatives she abuses to cope.
people tend to overlook this point of view and i think its like very real specially from the point of view of a mentally unwell person specially the ones that are aware of their own illness
@@gekyumeboi4930 the scary part is that i actually felt connected to patrick on a personal scale, the attempts to fit into the average friends group, saying general things that are universally acceptable and lying if it helps me to achieve something hit closer to home than i would like to admit...
I too will add "general social concern" to my vocab It's also funny that Pat says "we need to promote diversity and inclusion" but says "we need to promote traditional values" right after that. To him, neither of those, nor even the entire English language mean anything. EDIT: phrased it better and wtf is going in my replies?
actually, diversity of thought and inclusion of others is a traditional value what is NOT a traditional value, is forcing practices that put skin color of the individual>skill of the individual its not even nuanced, its common sense
@@xX_EltKLLgm-ng_XxThe term “traditional values” when used by most people that tend to bring it up is often contradictory to the aspects they proscribe to it; at least when they try to associate it to anything other than a mythical American past. Yeah, it is common sense that meritocracy should be the determining factor for how most things work, but America has never been a meritocracy unless meant in an Animal Farm type of logic. As a culture America has “forced” many practices that put insignificant traits as greater or more desirable than individual skill.
I believe that Bateman actually did kill paul Allen, and the reason it’s contradicted is because nobody knows each others real names and thinks everyone is sombody else
Honestly, the interpretation anybody can give to what happens and doesn't happen in the movie is entirely open. That's also the whole point of the film. Bateman's reality has come undone, and he has to live with that in his own personal hell.
Bateman didn't kill anyone. He is delusional. The only people he actually "kills" are Paul Allen and unknowns and even then when he goes into the closet, the body is gone, it never happened, same with the doorman where he kills him and then shows up and he's there again. This is made even more apparent when he can't bring himself to kill his secretary, that would realize the murders that are inside his head. Paul Allen is alive and Bateman is in a world of delusion and that's what happens by the end of the movie. The delusion he created of himself is that of this murderer entity that is above all others but the reality is that what others say to him at the end of the movie, he is innocent, he couldn't hurt a fly, he is a joke to everyone else.
I actually really like that interpretation as I've always kind of figured something similar but couldn't really put it to words, I would like to note that you can also extrapolate a sense of irony in that murder because to Bateman Paul Allen is someone of a higher social status, yet in this interpretation no one else knows who he even is, and his murder retroactively lacks both cause (motive) and effect.
@BeanFan999 I also think he did kill the homeless man Al (and his poor dog), and Paul Allen, but I think because his father was in charge of the company, and was allowing his son to work there and paying him to essentially not have to lift a finger. I think he did commit most of those murders, maybe not all of them, but then when he admits to the murder, his lawyer is paid to lie about it and tell him that Paul Allen was with him and not Bateman.
One amazing detail I see never mentioned, is in the dry cleaning scene the Chinese worker is yelling at Bateman that “Sir, these sheets are clean, there are no stains on them.” Something like that, literally saying there are no stains. And when the other woman comes into the store, the reason she acts strange is because they are completely white.
Maybe a slight reference to Lady Macbeth, from Shakesperes play: Macbeth. she sees a spot of blood on her hand that she cant wash off. "Out damned spot!"
好污糟 very dirty 好污糟 very dirty 十分污糟 extremely dirty 因為好白嘅 because it's very white 點白返咁污糟 how can it be white again, it's so dirty 唉呀 ai ya 先生，先生 sir, sir 我想同你講 I want to tell you 先生，先生 sir, sir According to some other guy on the internet this is what the chinese worker was saying (I dont know cantonese)
So many people forget that just because a character is relatable, that doesn’t make them a good person. Sometimes they relate to the most selfish, horrible sides of ourselves that come out on a truly bad day. That’s meant to scare us. Scott Pilgrim is another great example of this kind of character.
Would you care to explain why Scott Pilgrim is another great example for this? I haven't watched or read anything about Scott Pilgrim, only heard about it.
@@malafakka8530 "Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler" -Literally the first line of the story. Scott's incredibly, INCREDIBLY, self centered but the comic's literally about him and other flawed low key shitty people getting a little better.
Admittedly I saw an essay on the movie before the comic and knew that he sucked and why cause of it; he is however the kind of person I thought was cool when I was younger.
"Exclusivity within exclusivity." That hit close to home, literally. I live in one of the wealthiest areas in the US, but no one here would ever say that. You're never rich, it's only the guy who lives a mile east of you, makes 100 grand more than you, has the slightly bigger house than you that's rich.
I'm in NW Ct. At one place I worked we had clients like the author Philip Roth and the son of Charles Kaman (Kaman Aerospace, Ovation). To put it simply, I have done a lot of work for people with tons of money. None of the people with tons of money in that area (around Cornwall) really made any fuss about that fact. They tended to be pretty decent people for the most part. Essentially, they had enough money where the fact that they had tons of money was besides the point. +/- 100k would be a fart in the wind to these people. +/- 1 million, that might, might get their attention. Really the only people who would even use terms like "rich" were the wannabe-rich people out in Avon (really upper middle class). I worked in that area too, doing a similar job and those people were insufferable. There is such a difference between how those two groups function that it is insane. If you are an insufferable jerk about money, 99 times out of 100 you are one of those wannabe-rich fools. Who delude themselves into thinking that they are actually rich. addendum: I've watched as a homeowner went on about the new stuff they wanted done in addition to what was being done already. Watched as they were told it would be an extra $40k (this was on top of $150k or so worth of work already being done, back around 06 or so). And marveled as they just said ok, as if it was $5. Just as one example.
Grass is always greener. Looking back I had a fairly privileged childhood, but we were never led to believe that. Perhaps just my parents not wanting us to be spoiled, but also like you said, others are "rich".
That's just a pissing match that rich people have with one another. I had a friend who was actually wealthy, lived in a wealthy neighborhood, and he would swear up and down he wasn't wealthy like his neighbors next to him who barely had a larger house than his family. Tbh, the house didn't even look larger, I just think they had a slightly larger back yard.
The rich engage in this tomfoolery because it’s easier than reckoning with the fact that they don’t deserve what they have. It’s just basic finger pointing. They know it’s wrong to be rich so they pass the buck to the richer guy. Poor Americans on the other hand may be richer than a lot of humanity, but they generally still empathize with others, acknowledge the unfairness, and donate m/share whatever they can. The rich just say “but that guy is richer than me. So I won’t share.”
With why Patrick didn't kill his assistant I like the theory from another video suggesting that he decides to not kill her as she's the only person in his life who has a distinct personality of some sort, a "real person".
@@cbushin well, for me luis was disgust. He showed in the book that he knew she loved him and planned to marry her etc. (In the video) so maybe they kept some in the movie?
RENO in the crossword at 24:46 is actually BONES spelled backwards. You can see that the N and S are written mirrored, and the B is obscured beyond the camera frame and also outside of the crossword itself, and it's also not the only letter written out of place, there's B on a black square next to 37-across. But I'll leave the symbolic analysis of the significance of this to someone else
As an autistic 17 year old that thing about him just faking social queues and not knowing how to have a conversation without a certain purpose hits a bit too close to home... since I had to consciously learn how socialising works, I've been essentially doing it backwards. 😁👍
I think I can relate, I didn't found out till recently that my parents had been told on multiple occasions to get me tested for autism and they avoided it wanting me to have a "normal" childhood, granted I'm fairly capable socially I think, but when I saw that there were parts I couldn't help but relate to and it scared me to no end, I still struggle with the feeling it evoked from time to time 😂
As long as you aren't going around doing all of the other things Bateman does, you'll be fine. As a fellow person with Autism (originally diagnosed with Asperger's until it got merged into the Spectrum about a decade ago), trust me.
Sometimes I have wondered if some of Bret Easton Ellis biggest readers is on the spectrum.. I also autistic/ Asperger or what is call today and Ellis is probably one of those writers I read most of…!
I never found this movie "funny". I got the jokes. I thought they were brilliant. But the closest it brought me to laughter was a something between a smirk and a grimace. Satire doesn't get much blacker than this. The tone is closer to horror than comedy.
The Wall Street people Bale spoke with who revered Bateman reminds me of Walter White and how most people completely took the series the wrong way and thought of him as a hero, which by saving Pinkman he did kind of accomplish, but it was nullified by everything leading up to that
@Lee-km7qq " what someone takes from a movie may not be the same as what you take from it" doesn't mean that it's a wrong take. idk how you watch that movie and not think negatively of patrick bateman maybe except for all the "self care" he does. "subjective" doesn't mean it can't be wrong or it's not prone to scrutiny
@Lee-km7qq art is "mostly" subjective. There are, however, objective criticisms. There is such a thing as intentional writing. There is such a thing as authorship. There is such a thing as story structure, character development, moral dillema's and how these affect our characters. There is such a thing as color theory, there is such a thing as GOOD writing using tools EFFECTIVELY and PURPOSEFULLY. Everything about breaking bad is SUPPOSED to tell you that Walter lost everything due to his own horrible personality. He could have had his cancer cured. He could have accepted help. He could have provided for his family in a more meaningful way. He could have NOT traumatized his wife and son. He COULD have lived to be a father to his daughter. He COULD have helped jesse. But he didn't do any of these things. He chose power, a sense of accomplishment and greed all because of the youth, vigor and fame he believed he lost unfairly. He lost his life and his family, not to mention did horrible things along the way, because of pure pettiness. Yes, you CAN sympathize with that. You CAN discuss the morality of any of his actions I'm not discussing in detail here. That's a good thing. But this DOESN'T take away what the series was trying to tell you. The "art is subjective" line is just a cliché. It's used by people who try to hide behind dogmatic sentences as if they are unquestionable. It's used by people that refuse to discuss the art they consume. It's used by easily offended snowflakes who hate having their favourite product made for financial gain criticized or talked negatively about in any way shape or form. It's used by normies like you. Be better.
the guys who made american psycho watching the fandom become the very thing they mocked: Edit: (no, BTW, didn’t change “guy” to “guys”, it was always like that) *_BREAKING NEWS_* Twitter users find youtube replies
Right? Very similar to Fight Club in that way. With both movies you can learn a lot about a person by asking a two part question: "Do you like the movie if so, what's your favorite scene?"
I cant believe you didn't mention in the scene when he tries to clean his bloodstained sheets before he leaves his face turns to one of disgust just before the door closes, just thought it was a cool detail
Honestly, I read this book as soon as it came out, and thought: THIS! He has captured the spirit of the Ruling Class of the 80s and explains why we've been spinning out of control ever since. Into a universal lack of empathy and self-absorbtion.
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Bro... You did not just call "Hip to be Square" mediocre. Don't you know that it's a song so catchy that most people probably don't listen to the lyrics, but they should...
I think it's a bit more fair to say that it was popular hence it would not be weird to be perceived as good by a character like Bateman, but on a very surface level with no understanding what it's about.
Honestly I thought that all the murders were fantasy. And more importantly, I think that his claim that he is an unfeeling psychopath is *also* a fantasy. He clearly goes through a rollercoaster of emotions in the film. He also experiences a lot of distress in his life. I think that telling himself he's a psycho is a cope. He doesn't want to feel the feelings he has, or confront the causes of them. So he stares himself in the mirror and demands himself to be dead inside. It's almost a "tough, stoic badass" fantasy taken to the extreme.
The tough stoic badass fantasy isn't his psychopathy - it's his suit and tie. The whole point of Patrick's life is he has NO hardship - He's rich beyond belief, he's attractive and affable enough to date supermodels, he does no work and goes to clubs and restaurants every night. For any sane person this would be a life of luxury, but Patrick is not sane. He's a narcissistic psychopath. The harshest blow to his character comes from having the worst business card- and for that he either kills, or dreams of killing a homeless person. He tells you himself - his only identifiable feelings are greed and disgust, though you can contend he also feels panic and rage. Why is it so hard to take his word for it? The whole joke the story plays on Patrick is he thinks that in order to fit in, he has to hide that side of himself - when the grim reality is nobody around him actually cares. Patrick's character literally has a mental breakdown because nobody will listen to anything he's telling them - not even you.
@@PWN3GE but what if the lack of hardship has led to the feelings of being empty, and a husk of a person. plenty of people would say that hardship builds character and without character, are you even a person? what I'm saying is that the life of luxury your describing is supposed to be your reward at the end of a life well lived... Bateman is a 27-year-old with ABSOLUTELY no purpose in life, no passions to pursue, nothing to really strive for so all he can do at this point is play the social games he clearly doesn't enjoy with people he clearly doesn't like for the rest of his life... i think that would drive anyone mad personally.
@@seanunknown6868 But Patrick does have a passion: murder. It's the only thing that gives him any sense of individuality in a sea of identical suits. Which is why he goes insane when he _can't_ gain recognition for it - Patrick realizes he is truly unremarkable in a society that places so little value in human life. There are no barriers to cross, and his confession means nothing.
My favorite scene is when he returns to his previous appartment where he was hiding all the woman's corpses and he founds out, confusingly, that the place is actually in the middle of someone moving out of it. There, there is an older lady who greets him and, while at first polite with Bateman, seems to immediatly understands what this man is about and the level of danger hiding behind his falses interactions. She became stern and severe with him and just stood firm and strong as she asks him to leave, wich he does with his tail between his legs. Before that, every woman figure in the movie was in a way or another vulnerable and/or oblivious towards Patrick Bateman. Your video is about masculinity, and the Sigma phenomenom is inherently linked to the capactity of male individuals to interact with women by dissociation as a showcase of dominance in society. Bateman entire discourse with every women he meets is always towards the goal of getting power over them, wich is also a hidden goal behind the Sigma male idea. But while Sigma malism encourages men to act apathetically as a seductive display, Patrick Bateman simply can't act. He has no desires and no goals but he has to fake that he cares to hide his hate for everything. So yes, your take about Patrick Bateman being a poor Sigma male representative is entirely correct, because he's not. To go back to the old lady scene. As I said, she instantly catch that there's something off about him. And in contrast to every other women beforehand, she looks like someone who had enough experience in life to know that this man is full of violence, and to not let him go any further in their exchange. And in front of a woman who's not scared, not shy, not drunk and with no particular feelings towards him, he has nothing to grasp and no control. The only thing he can do is run away from someone who saw right through his mask.
She's a fellow psycho, ruthlessly hiding the bodies and cleaning the place up so she can sell the apartment and earn her commission. Bateman wasn't ready for that + the shock of the change left him disoriented.
@@INspectre691 It was a Broadway hit. Broadway in New York in the 1980s was bigger than Hollywood. Movies were for the dirty, uneducated masses, whereas Broadway was for the "Civilized and Sophisticated".
I do think that there is a hidden message in the scene where he kills Al and his dog. He says "I don't have anything in common with you". He does not only mean that they are in different hierarchical positions, but also that Al at least felt something, even if that was cold and hunger. This also implies that if their positions were reversed, Al would probably feel empathy towards him, unlike Bateman does.
Nice video, one thing that I think is clearer if you read the books is that he did kill Paul Allen, when he goes to the apartment the woman who knows who he is knows because she's been paid off, the book mentions that his family cleans up his messes after him. Another thing is one of the best jokes that everyone misses, when he says he has a meeting with Cliff Huxtable at 10:50, Cliff Huxtable is Bill Cosby's character in the Cosby show.
Wow, I never noticed that before during the Willem Defoe scene he's says he has a lunch with Cliff Huxtable. Which is Bill Cosby's character on the Cosby Show. The most popular television show of the 80's.
If you read he book, virtually everything Bateman "enjoys" from TV shows to music to cars are the most mass-market, shallow, paper-thin, pop culture crap (and by "enjoy" I mean absolutely obsess over to the point of literally writing deep, chapter-long essays on the most shallow meaningless crap like a Whitney Houston album because his entire existence is aping real humanity like some kind of masquerading alien trying to blend in by reverse engineering of culture and social interaction).
@@J.DeLaPoerWait.... absolutely obsess over to the point of literally writing deep, chapter-long essays on the most shallow meaningless crap.......... wait... he is a more tame Pyrocynical????
It's the fact that he's so bad and awkward at trying to cover up his crimes that irl he would immediately be caught that makes the sigma community worshipping him all the funnier.
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I have an entire queue's worth of video essays just about the Literally Me phenomenon and how it relates to American Psycho specifically clogging up my watch later, I can't keep up bwahahaha
I find that the most profound thing about this movie, is that right from the get go,you can tell that everything is fake, the dialog is choppy and doesn't make sense, nobody acts how a human would act, the set pieces are to superfluous. As you go through the movie you really start to understand how fake it is, his entire being is fake and so is the reality he lives in. Small detail, but the only people who actually act human are the ones that Bateman see's below himself. Also I don't really find the movie funny, I'm just amazed how much symbolism is in the movie.
Except it's not supposed to be like that! Every murder he commits is real! The point of the book is that everyone is as psycho as him! They constantly mix each other up without correcting one another. The landlord covers up the murders so that way the value of the property doesn't go down. Please get some media literacy! People who think it's not real have the most shallow reading of this story. Everyone is shallow, they're too busy doing their own thing to pay attention to a serial killer underneath their nose! It's supposed to be hyperbole and satire of nepotism. Everyone acts fake because they're ALL hiding something. The only people Bateman doesn't kill are the people that show their true selves, IE his assistant. No one cares to look deeper into what Bateman is doing, because they either cover it up for convenience, or are exactly like him and just don't care enough to look any deeper.
@@citizenvulpes4562 Fair points, although Batemen's reality is definitely skewed, it's fake not because the murders are, but how he perceives it all as, he thinks of himself as inhuman, so his reality reflects that being how everyone acts, you have a point about why everyone contradicts each other, but most of the falseness is what Batemen sees.
@@citizenvulpes4562Relax. You can make your points without sounding that upset. Also, there often isn't only one viable interpretation of a story. As long as it is internally sound and coherent different viewpoint of the same story can be valid. A work can have different meanings that an author did not intentionally create. This does not mean that an author's intention can be disregarded, but things can be more interesting that way. OP also didn't say anything about the murders but about the fake world that Bateman lives in.
@@xaevius5319 Its not up to intrepretation, that is the point. The movie leaves it open to interpretation, but the book all but confirms the murders and later books build upon it. The murders did happen. Bateman himself was killed by another psychopathic yuppie. It is 100% about media literacy because people wouldn't cling to the fantasy angle if they actually read the books. The director herself admits she screwed up badly by portraying it as fantasy in the movie.
Disagree. I am absolutely puzzled, is this meant to be trying to create atmosphere and general vibe of Bateman's persona of generic pretense, or does the author is just that flat, boring and uninspired. Either way, this wasn't amusing but rather boring, rehashed video, which was done better a hundred times already.
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I appreciate you going out of your way to identify John Cale as a former member of The Velvet Underground. The fact that they got such a legend to do the score for this movie isn't talked about enough imo
got introduced to your channel from the funny lego movie video, was immediately blown away, and it looks like based on this video that I will continue being blown away as long as you keep making this stuff. it's genuinely incredible stuff especially for video essays that aren't multiple hour long deep dives
I think he didnt kill the gay guy in the bathroom not because he's disgusted but because the guy was the first person to show him some modocom of actual care and this freaked him out so much he couldnt handle it
The analysis of the pedestal the young male community has put Patrick Bateman on is correctly recognized, but not correctly analyzed. It's not the status of Patrick Bateman materialistically that brings attention to him, but more of the personality traits that he presents that make young men (aka, the "Sigma Community") feel like they can relate to the character. He makes terribly disturbing choices and has cringeworthy dialogue with others that makes him a relatable figure to young men. This is amplified by the fact that Patrick is on the "top" of the social and economic ladder, especially in relation to those young men who view him. He acts a certain way and gets away with what he wants while at the same time struggling with relatable insecurities. They aren't idolizing him because he's stylish and has a cool apartment, it's his persona, and the things he struggles with that run parallel to those materialistic items. To simply say "there is a lack of media literacy in male social circles" is a poor analysis of the reality of why he is seen in the way he is.
The movie is made by 2 women and it’s making fun men like Patrick. Even the book is making fun of men like this, showing how ridiculous they are. The young men, in this community, are only looking at the top layer. They aren’t interacting with the story, and lesson it’s teaching them
I mean more directly Bateman comes across as vaguely closeted and neurodivergent. NPD, ASPD and other personality disorders are also extremely disabling.
The scene with Patrick and Jean at his place couldn't have ended in her death, as the nail gun wasn't plugged into a compressor. Although he thought about it, he chose not to because she's the only character that's an actual person and not just some concept or something
Were they ever ironic? I always saw it as a grift targeting the self-proclaimed alphas that knew deep down they couldn't pull the act off. Sigma allows them to save face while maintaining their inability to socialize. It's like, they still get to be alpha, but without all the leg work. Considering the vast, vast majority of males on the internet think of themselves as alpha, because of course they do, it's only natural that this would come about. Grifters gotta grift the smoothbrains.
@@OpposingFork any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company. Long winded but fits this situation exactly.
Great video though I would disagree on two things: 1. I think he did kill Paul Allen and the confirmation of him being alive was just another mix up. Like it constantly happens in the movie. Bateman killed him out of jealousy just like he tried to kill the other man on the toilet. 2. Bateman is not a homosexual. Honestly the way this was delivered in the essay was a little offensive even though I do not believe it was meant that way. The reason why he stares at himself is that he does not actually enjoy or care about sex itself. He cares about the sovial implications of sex e.g. the social dominance it can represent. He looks at himself because he cares about his self image and wants to make sure he looks good during sex.
I don't think I ever have been so confident that a channel will eventually have a million subs down the line from just 5.28K at the time of this comment. I watched your Lego Movie analysis and it was amazing to see genuinely thoughtful and logical ideas presented with your amazing narration. I love your video style, keep on uploading and I'm sure I'll be looking back on this comment in months or years time thinking how much your channel has grown!
That handwritten menu is _abysmal._ Everytime when I just start thinking I've gotten all I can get out of a film I've rewatched and reanalyzed 110 times, I find some brand new overlooked niche characteristic to fawn over. It was truly a project of passion, I love it so much lmao
An excellent video! However, I disagree with your take on Jean. Especially given the line "Get out of here before I do something I regret" (iirc). Now this is Bateman, of course, but there's also how Bateman describes her in the book ("who i'll probably end up marrying.") There is also the promotional emails not written but approved by the author, where he and Jean are married and he laments that she isn't the same person she once was, having grown vain and materialistic, concerned about her image. So while I think it's "very clear" that the only thing that stopped him from killing her was the phone call, I don't think you should brush over Jean's purity so easily. I don't think you should ignore Patrick's complicated look of disgust after the phone call from Evelynn (disgust at Jean, or at himself?). I don't think you should ignore that he said to her "I don't think I can control myself." Is there anyone more "special," so to speak, to Bateman than Jean? That he would say to her the equivalent of "leave, as I otherwise can't restrain myself"? Is that not inconvenient??? To have her live?????? Is it not inconvenient? To sit through that phone call with her listening? I would have loved to see you dive into that scene further, although perhaps not relevant to the video. Anyhow, all those nuances are brushed away with the "very clear" fact that he was interrupted by a phone call. The reading that in the scene, he is trying to find the "bad" in Jean but fails to, is also a "very clear" fit imo. Others have said in the book, the only non-violent fantasy he has is running through central park with baloons, with Jean. My one complaint: just be careful not to dismiss these things, and with the brievity of your commentary on that scene and the "very clear" remark, you risk people like me getting peeved and either writing essays on how you have made a great error yadayadaor telling you to go f*** yourself lol. A thoroughly novel and refreshing reading of this excellent work, however. Subscribed!
Don't forget that Patrick actually spares two people: Jean, and Lewis Carruthers. I believe he spared them for the same reason: they both see him with his mask off. Jean learns he's a liar who'd cheat on his own fiancé, and Lewis is actively aroused by the idea of Patrick doing violence to him. In both scenes, as soon as Patrick is found out he simply wants to get out of the situation. He's more tactful with Jean because he has the opportunity to be - she didn't catch him at his most heinous, so if he feigns regret and tells her to leave he can salvage his relationship with her in spite of such an obvious faux-pas - but I think the conflicted emotion on his face is because he still wants to tell her what he really does, even alluding to it slightly. With Lewis on the other hand, Patrick has a panic attack because Lewis sees him for what he is, and not only is he unafraid, he welcomes it.
Even more ironic is that the whole sigma male shit is just a meme. We understand he's an asshole, it's just funny to pretend like it's 'sigma'. How the fuck do so many of you not get it? Lol.
PB specifically tailors his speeches to be as average and pretentious an opinion-piece as possible in order to construct an external persona that fits in with the collective, explaining their strange, rehearsed sound. However, he cannot help but let his internal persona bleed through, explaining the ways in which his interpretations of the music are warped, almost backwards, to the generally accepted meaning. So, the subtextual theme arrives in a triple layer of irony: that PB accidently shows his true individualistic side when he copies the collective (un-individual) attempts of his peers to be seen as individuals. Perhaps, after all, it is clear that (despite their external efforts to appear so) his peers are not individual, they are carbon-copies of one another in both appearance and demeanor. Pat Bateman attempts to follow suit, but he is the only one who is truly an individual, his psychopathy being the only distinguishing feature in a sea of yuppie corporatism and Oliver People’s glasses.
Patrick’s line “inside doesn’t matter” sums up the movie. They don’t care about working diligently because only the Fisher Account will help your career. Patrick is engaged to someone he dislikes because they’re in the same social group. Nobody listens to each other and they pick up women in noisy clubs.
Bateman is literally the personification of modern societal virtue signaling, saying whatever he thinks is necessary to appeal and manipulate others for his own gain. Bro's the king of getting brownie points.
Which is exactly what I think many people mean when saying that in response to Bateman. He's not "literally them" because the people watching him are murderous psychopaths, but because they're relating to his obvious mental struggles that come with living in a superficial world as he does.
_"My pain is constant and sharp. But I do not seek relief from this state; in fact I wish to inflict it on others."_ --- Literal direct quote from the book.
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I actually sat here and tried the hand gesture from the Huey Lewis scene. Also, Bateman is definitely a pathetic dude, possibly one of the lowest forms of human life. People probably get confused and think he's somehow a cool on that Sigma grind when it's actually Bale's magnetic performance drawing them in. Key word there being "performance".
lmao same, had to get off the floor to do it. it’s a very pop & lock move, especially the way he bounces it for emphasis. it’s been so long tho that I couldn’t make mine nearly that crisp :P
@@thegatorhator6822that’s how it starts sure, but a lot of times in these online communities “satire” is just a thin veil for real beliefs. Source: I was one of those guys for like 2 years
I think you have to be from that era to really get the "hip to be square" song scene in the movie. The song was never meant to be taken seriously. It was a joke song similar to Weird Al, but with a bit more class. Most people that watched it on MTV back then get that and its a guilty pleasure, while also having a fun and catchy beat, but the reason it is used in that scene is because Bateman does NOT get that and in turn describe the song way more serious than it really is. In short, him trying to mimic humanity and failing. A few other comments: Nail gun scene: I actually think he has doubt because you have the trigger finger scene moving to pull, but then steps back a bit just before the distraction. Then you have the "you should go" part afterwards. Sure, via something she said and so on. He could have killed her, but the bathroom scene has already showed that he is unable to kill if he reasons something is off. Lawyer saying he met Paul Allan: They know, just like the house broker at the end. They, via hes father and hes political power and so on, are covering for him. They dont care that hes valuable son, who he has working a "none job" in hes company, killed some low life people. They clean up everything. While the Paul Alan being dragged out to a car and blood scene is more likely hes imagination or maybe just the blood. One can argue that Paul Allen is cleaned up by other people afterwards. Police officer: I kinda think he is also in on it. Hired by hes dad and that is why the cops seems to know everything, has all the clues, yet do not really do anything. Christian Bale meeting Wallstreet floor workers (When that was a thing): I think allot of them just view going for the kill as an analogy for what they are doing and therefor liked the character. Lets not forget that ALL the banks knew years before that Bernard Madoff was scamming people. That is why they, the banks and their employees that invested money for the banks, did not invest in Bernard hedge fund, but none of them said anything ether. With that kind of morals and selfishness. I am not surprised a decent number of them would not view Bateman character as an ironic one, but maybe more like a metaphor for what was needed to succeed.
I always thought he couldn't kill Jean and the other guy because they were the only people to actually recognize him as a person (in the books they're the only ones who remember his name, for example)
At 22:11 Bateman says he has a lunch meeting with "uh, Cliff Huxtable." Cliff Huxtable was a character in an 80's American sitcom, The Cosby Show. The show was very popular so the name would have been instantly recognizable to a lot of Americans. It's pretty funny that Bateman chose that name for his lunch lie.
Bateman has been prime meme material for years whether it's the sonic OC business card scene or dubs guy on 4chan. People harnessing his meme potential doesn't mean they all love murder.
"I have a lunch meeting with Cliff Huxtable" Don't gloss over the fact that he lied to Willem Defoe by saying he has a meeting with Bill Cosby's character in Cosby Show.
Could it be that Patrick Bateman is a metaphor for corporate banking. Empty, not of substance, psychotic, mean and will say nice sounding things that are actually empty and cheap
I mean you do. Not to a murderous extent, but you for sure struggle with the concept more than the neurotypical types. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just the nature of your struggle.
@@EddyOfTheMaelstromwrong. A lot of us have a blunted affect which means even though we feel emotions it isn’t displayed. I can feel extremely happy yet I look pissed off. It sucks.
The lack of details in the book with simple commonplace nouns to represent everything is an indication of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia and schizotypical disorders are incapable of retaining detailed information about their confabulations so yeah that might also explain the masterful writing of the book
Both the book and the film absolutely have misinterpretations in mind, it's a part of the art of laughing at the people the story is about. The reader who understands the text is encouraged to think about the reader who doesn't, and laugh at them. They probably didn't expect the deification of Patrick to play out the way it did, what with our newfangled internet culture changing everything, but it still fits in perfectly, becoming another facet of how we enjoy this work.
Patrick Bateman is literally me because I have a mental illness that borders to insanity and I have constantly violent urges and tendencies. The quote I felt most represented by which Patrick said is the one when he says he doesn't want a better world for anyone and that he wants to conflict his own pain onto others. When he said that, I understood that he was literally me.
well that's really not cool for you, my condoleances. Out of morbid curiosity, what is the particular disorder (if you're cool with telling, of course) ?
@@jeanremi8384not them but the story is relatable. I was closeted transfem with autism, anxiety and undiagnosed ADHD. I probably have some kind of personality disorder like avoidance or narcissism. Not really sure of the details but I feel extremely disgusted with intimacy and affection. I do not have the ability to form emotional connections with others. I feel empathy, compassion and have a strong sense of duty and justice. I try to be kind but I don't really feel affection for other people. Doesn't mean I want to hurt others but I don't get close to them. Anyhow I used to struggle a lot with hypersexuality, anger and resentment and I had vivid homicidal and suicidal fantasies. Life's pretty shit but it's a lot better than before.
I also love the way the male sigma community, in a so fun way but at the same time scared, goes to admire Bateman which is exactly the opposite of what they aspire to become.
10:50 "He's definitely lying about his lunch meeting, the clock shows 11:29 AM" What are you on about? That's a perfectly normal time to go out for lunch.
My name is Yoshikage Kira. I'm 33 years old. My house is in the northeast section of Morioh, where all the villas are, and I am not married. I work as an employee for the Kame Yu department stores, and I get home every day by 8 PM at the latest. I don't smoke, but I occasionally drink. I'm in bed by 11 PM, and make sure I get eight hours of sleep, no matter what. After having a glass of warm milk and doing about twenty minutes of stretches before going to bed, I usually have no problems sleeping until morning. Just like a baby, I wake up without any fatigue or stress in the morning. I was told there were no issues at my last check-up. I'm trying to explain that I'm a person who wishes to live a very quiet life. I take care not to trouble myself with any enemies, like winning and losing, that would cause me to lose sleep at night. That is how I deal with society, and I know that is what brings me happiness. Although, if I were to fight I wouldn't lose to anyone.
I think he is suppost to be a sympathetic character it’s easy to relate somehow to his suffering and lack of meaning and I think he’s suppost to represent what a materialistic hyper image focused world (which is what the world was at the time) breeds. The reason he does kill that one girl is because she represents someone real and a sence of value.
I disagree that he only spared Jean because of the phone ringing. I always interpreted scene to represent the fact that Jean is the only person who genuinely cared for him. She is the only person he interacts with who isn't consumed by consimerism and therefore he couldn't bring himself to kill her
mmm.... not really though, I think he wants to kill somebody and in a fit, he choose Jean, however in the moment of truth the phone call happen, and he now can re-think how this will affect him, (always him) and this is not from some "she cares for me" but a "she could maybe become a problem" (I think a lot of people have this idea of the clasic, oh this fella is bad but she...oh she is special, she cares for him and so... he will care for her eventually" and that is not always true).
I think you have to pair the breakdown of reality of whether or not patrick killed paul allen with his closing statements: it doesn't matter if it was real or not. Regardless if he literally killed someone, they reflect his innermost, darkest desires. But in a society where it honestly doesn't matter, there is no catharsis to be reached, no acknowledgement of a deeper self. Just like in the beginning, there's only an abstract idea of him that everyone already has of him and what their roles are; he simply is not there.
I think people miss the importance of Evelyn's line - "Your father practically owns the company. You can do anything you like, silly." This implies Patrick's family is also wealthy and can be covering up or ignoring his crimes to protect their image.
What he says: ^
What he thinks: "I want a reservation at Dorsia! I want a reservation at Dorsia!"
this is the most clever well-written comment on a video essay, on the entire internet.
Bateman is cool, this guy drools
can somebody please explain what the fuck this guy is trying to say
@@nettle7057 you know when someone types “^” online to say they agree with the above statement?
@@TheONLYFeli0 no, that only works if explicitly stated or on its own, here in context it just illustrates that "what he says" is the above statement
lets see paul allen’s video essay
I love this comment dude 😂
im exhausted of this comment
@@ezzzzoteric you can't ruin my fun
@@ezzzzoteric it's a good bit
Hey, I had lunch with him the other day. He came over after for drinks and a lil 'Huey Lewis & The News' IF ya catch my drift.
"Bateman is no one, and therefore Bateman is everyone. If this guy can go throughout society unnoticed then the society is crazy" is probably the best line I've heard in the past six months. I love it so much.
This is why I think the debate of "was it all in his head or not?" misses the point. Personally, my interpretation is that it might be a little bit of both, but we can never really know for sure. It could be that he didn't kill anyone. It could be that he did kill everyone, including Paul Allen. It could be that he really did kill SOME people, but hallucinated Paul's murder and the conversations with Detective Kimball (I do kind of like the idea that Kimball could be a projection of his subconscious trying to force him to actually examine himself). But the real point is, in the reality of this movie... it doesn't matter. Nobody cares. He tells people he's "into murders and executions", and they either don't notice or don't care to notice. He brings up Ed Gein and Ted Bundy randomly in conversations, and it's shrugged off and brushed past.
The only time we see a character react in genuine horror to the inner workings of Patrick's mind (apart from his victims in their final moments), is when Jean sees the book at the end. It's also, I believe, the only scene in the movie in which Patrick is not physically present. So I think, if nothing else, it can be argued that that scene "really happened". For the first time in the movie, a character comprehends the true horror of Patrick Bateman. But by that point, we know how little it will matter. At best, she might try to bring it to someone's attention, only to likely be scoffed away, and in the end simply find a new job somewhere else. At worst, she'll just pretend she didn't see it, out of fear of jeopardizing her career. No matter what, we all know damn well that Patrick won't face any sort of consequences.
So, was it all in his head? The answer is it doesn't matter, because nobody cares. And that's the real horror.
@@jakek1735very well written
@@jakek1735LITERALLY ALL OF THIS. Patrick straight up grips his lawyer by the shoulders and tells him in excruciating detail of his horrific deeds and the lawyer just laughs. Even Patrick is in disbelief of how he can just... *exist.*
You should really read "Notes from Underground", which I believe is either directly quoted somewhere in the book or is part of the epigraph. I forget, it's been a few years.
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Fun fact; for the interrogation scene with Willem Dafoe there was three seperate shoots, one where he didnt think Pat killed Paul, one where he suspected it, and the last where he was basically certain. Same for the dinner later. The director cut the three shots together randomly to create a jarring feeling
That's genius
@@masonmunkey6136it is🎉
when are people going to get bored of copy/pasting this
@@themoviechef9413 right after they get bored of your mother
@@themoviechef9413 when everyone knows it. And I didn't know it! So shut the hell up!
"No, I'm in touch with humanity" is such an incredibly funny line and the way he delivers sends me
I find it ironic since from what I can gather, no one seems to notice Bateman. Not even murder does that or a fucking confession. People just ignore him and mistake him for someone else. Also, he murders people, which in reality unsurprisingly, means you’re a psychopath and an inhuman monster.
@@kl41256-p This. This is what I've begun taking from the film upon my most recent watchthrough a couple years ago. I don't know if it's because when I first saw the film I was an impressionable teenager that came away with the vague imprint of "scary ax man bad", and on my last watch I finally rounded that corner of not just meeting Patrick Bateman's canoned age, but at last surpassing it, that my perspective of his place and perceived power in the world finally did a complete 180.
Patrick is not an important individual. He has the same ranking job as 4 other men at his company, a job which he only acquired through an implied favor from his father, at a company where he holds no responsibilities or true authority. His fiance is cheating on him and he does little about it, save for cheating on her back, which she tends to either not notice or care about. He is forgettable to the point where he struggles for agency within his own friend circle or to be properly identified by his peers and coworkers, and he is often seen in power struggles with those he would otherwise perceive as beneath him (ie. first scene with the bartender, and later on at the dry cleaner's).
When he breaks up with Evelyn, we get the sense that this is not the first time that he's attempted this and she doesn't take him seriously, reasoning that a breakup "wouldn't work" implying it'd affect his social standing. In fact, she's not even really paying attention at all. My first few viewings of this scene I was always curious why there seemed to be so much emphasis placed on her interaction with a friend trying to show off her watch from across the restaurant, but only once you stop hyperfixating on it do you hear Patrick's muttered confession of no longer feeling able to control himself, which Evelyn misses entirely (and the audience who's meant to share her perspective and be distracted along with her). I believe Patrick's lack of agency in his own relationship is a main factor in why Evelyn never seemed as though she were in any danger throughout the film.
In fact, the various women he speaks to throughout the film are not listening to him 90% of the time. When he tells a model that he's into "murders and executions" she lackadaisically reinterprets it to "mergers and acquisitions". He threatens the bartender outright, but she never hears him. And this is not limited to women, as he frequently attempts to wordvomit half-confessions to those around him, such as the one to Paul at Texarkana (almost like a cry for...) The only woman who interacts with him that we see pay attention to him is Jean. And consequently, this is the first time we ever see Patrick's M.O. being thrown off. He keeps trying to choose murder weapons, but keeps putting them back everytime he receives an earnest reply from her or she questions something he said. It's almost as if he is caught in a spotlight, which continuously prevents him from pulling a trigger that he is used to doing so reflexively (especially in the case of Paul Allen, who appears unaware and undeterred to the very end).
Lastly (and most heartbreaking of all imo) is that final scene where Patrick attempts to confront the man on the phone message he left him, after which his confession is dismissed as a joke, only for his identity to be mistaken yet again. "Don't you know who I am..?? You're my lawyer..." Even the one person who's job it is to ID him unmistakably has no clue who Patrick Bateman really is.
The 27-yr old Patrick Bateman is invisible and powerless in his entire world, a cog in the machine, and the absolute antithesis of a "sigma male". He reminds me of every freshman roommate, awkward college kid, depressed or antisocial millennial, and left behind gen-Xer. He is the epitome of a lost young adult, so desperate for acknowledgement, validation, attention, or even consequences for acts as horrific as murder, just to confirm that he is really here, and that other people can actually see him or be affected by his presence. For he is a speck, just a ghost in his world.
@@kl41256-pit also, in a way, sounds panicky to me, almost insistent that he’s in touch with humanity knowing that he really isn’t
@@loveinthetimeofsocialism I think it’s because Bateman desperately wants to be seen, but he can’t.
@@kl41256-p for sure
The sigma male portrayal of Patrick Bateman has to be one of the funniest things in the world.
Pretty sure it started off as a joke😊
@@rusteddenial453 it started off as not a joke but quickly people found these guys that take it serious funny asf and just began making ironic patrick bateman memes and sigma memes
@@lautaro4630 it was 100% something that started as an ironic thing, but some (especially the younger among us) started taking it seriously.
@@lautaro4630 the sigma male thing was a meme from the beginning, but like every joke it has a grain of truth.
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You’re missing the point of Paul Allen’s murder. Everyone confuses everyone for someone else, so it’s completely possible that the lawyer was mistaken about having dinner with Paul. Hell, no one ever corrects anyone when mistaken identity comes up.
Exactly. Everyone's the same.
Agreed, this perspective is often overlooked and portrayed as "All In His Head", but what if the culture and society is just so messed up that everything was real and Bateman is still okay? It perfectly fits with the ending quote where Bateman states something like "everything was without consequence". Imagine you could go completely ballistic and no one cares after all that. Definitly a strong reason to go completely psychotic.
@@GepGren Even the director said it wasn't all in his head. This is just a plot synopsis with lazy 'analysis' tossed in.
@@GepGren the book also illustrates and drives this point further since it has many more cases mistaken identity throughout. Virtually every social gathering has these.
"It's all in his head and he never killed anyone" is the most paper-thin, shallowest of surface readings and patently wrong. The book makes this even more obvious. EDIT: I also think he's dead wrong about the whole sigma male 'enjoyment' of this movie, and this is part of the reason why.
I vaguely remember that, in the scene where he commits suicide, he straight up _tells someone_ that he committed all of those murders, and their response is to continue gossipping about restaurant reservations and musicals.
The one thing he wants is to be recognized as something, as someone, but not even admitting to being a serial killer is enough to make that happen. He's surrounded by people who are exactly as self-absorbed as he is, and he can't stand it.
Literally me.
In the book, bateman constantly tells his acquaintances/lovers his macabre thoughts and feelings. However, every time he does so they either ignore him(are not paying attention to what he is saying) or mistake his words for something else. At one point he actually forces someone to read an extreme poem and they brush it off saying “I can see that … that your sense of …. social injustice is … still intact.”.
Like this post. I would counter and add that it's not just the self absorbed thing that bugs him. He realizes he isn't different at all. He wants to be, but he's just not. Even murdering people doesn't differentiate himself from his peers, they won't even acknowledge it. Then at the end of the movie he grasps that fact. There will be no catharsis, this isn't a confession. Wasn't that what he said? How could there be, how could it be? It would completely destroy the stories thesis - it would completely destroy him.
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@@SuperMrHigginst i
Something I noticed about Patrick’s skincare routine is that it’s very harsh on the skin. Exfoliation like that should be done 1,2 times a week, not every morning
Tbf that’s what people did back in the day. People were getting recommended daily exfoliating cleansers and the most popular cleansing tool was an electric exfoliating brush up until the 2010s
In the opening shot of the apartment, there's a telescope, which seems like it should be something. Indicating a hobby, an area of interest seperate from finance, social status, maybe a world view touched by an admiration of the stars.
except no it fucking doesn't because HE'S IN NEW YORK! I am like 95% certain that light polution would be bad enough that you can't see shit. A telescope wouldn't work in a city like NYC, so the one thing of actual personality in his apartment just shows even further that he is nothing.
It is expensive tho so it works for the flex. Fantastic choice by the set dressers.
the only thing to look at, is other people through their windows. it's voyeuristic. nothing speaks of isolation and distance, more than looking at other people's lives through a telescope in a city.
any normal new yorker would be creeped out by a telescope for this reason, but Patrick doesn't care about other peoples lives, he never looks through it, and so this never registers for him.
the telescope shows how utterly incapable he is of understanding normal humans.
the first and last time i watched american psycho i was post op from a wisdom tooth surgery and just passed out for the first 90 minutes. I saw him drop a chainsaw on a woman, shoot a homeless guy, blow up a cop car, and then the ending scene. 10/10 would watch again
Still literally me
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@@abig_old_swanwhat the fuck
If you read the book, he has done worser shit. There’s even a section that’s titled “killing kid at a zoo.”
Relatable
fun fact: the chainsaw scene is probably in his head because chainsaws can't spin without holding down the safety so it would stop the second it left his hand
@2a-le6lr maybe, but they seemed to have a high attention to detail
The centrifugal force of the chainsaw spinning held down the safety n_n
Implying that chainsaws always had these safety features.
I can’t take any “patrick didn’t actually kill anyone” theories seriously.
They actually can especially if the idle is set high and the clutch doesn't disengage but what do I know
'When he's having sec he only stares at the mirror, making him a homosexual'
yeah that is not how it works it just means he is a narcissist like all psychopats
@@Andres-rr4gj Its a quote from the video you absolute potato
Homo Literally means Same .
@@Andres-rr4gjthat is how he chose to interpret the scene bro is literally attracted to himself more then women
@@Andres-rr4gj thanks capt obvious
A detail mostly exclusive to the book is that Patrick describes what everyone is wearing including the brand in excruciating detail, most of them being real brands and if you were to actually look up the clothes you’ll find they make no sense whatsoever. The author said how this was intentional since eventually the brand description basically just become white noise, further adding to how pointless they are despite their price
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
I know it's a great point in the book but it makes reading it so fucking annoying.
@@drivernephi2212 tell me about it but I guess that was the intention
@@drivernephi2212 just skip that part?
I loved that part, and learned a fair bit about fashion.
12:06
I don’t agree with you here. I think her expressed desire to have children and a family is meant to be a genuine, albeit confused yearning for a simpler, more wholesome, and more ‘settled’ existence. As opposed to the fruitless yuppie relationship scene where women are simply traded around as trophies and status symbols.
This realization fades as quickly as it arises when she falls back into her drug induced sedation.
I think so too
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google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
he didnt make light of its genuinity, he was simply saying it is an idealized life, but not because its her preferred option, but because it is the best option as it is also her perceived only option. its making the point that she was raised to belive that as a woman her lives only purpose is to have the perfect little family and serve the man who she intends to marry
@@ando5563
I just don’t think this is what the was being communicated. I also think there’s something a bit sinister about this implication that being some, sterile, corporate girl-boss is the only decision a woman can make for herself that isn’t immediately met with suspicion. As if the rat race is all a woman can desire, and if she wants something else like a family, well she only wants that because the patriarchy told her to, or whatever. I can not imagine anything which trivializes a woman’s choices more than that.
In any case, I think the scene with her in the car with Batemen was meant to be a kind of “waking up from the matrix” moment, where for just a brief moment of clarity she realized that the whole lifestyle that she and everyone she knew was caught up in was nonsensical and pointless, and with that realization came a genuine yearning from something less chaotic, more permanent, and less artificial.
The implied tragedy in all of this is that any true realization of herself and her circumstances is prevented by the very sedatives she abuses to cope.
@@ando5563To think that a woman wanting to have children is some kind of nonsense is really quite pathetic of you
patrick bateman is literally me, not because hes a charming investment banker, but because hes simply a psychotic lizard mimicking human emotions
I feel seen and represented
same
people tend to overlook this point of view and i think its like very real specially from the point of view of a mentally unwell person specially the ones that are aware of their own illness
@@gekyumeboi4930 the scary part is that i actually felt connected to patrick on a personal scale, the attempts to fit into the average friends group, saying general things that are universally acceptable and lying if it helps me to achieve something hit closer to home than i would like to admit...
...I need to return some videotapes
I too will add "general social concern" to my vocab
It's also funny that Pat says "we need to promote diversity and inclusion" but says "we need to promote traditional values" right after that. To him, neither of those, nor even the entire English language mean anything.
EDIT: phrased it better and wtf is going in my replies?
Also how he talks about helping the poor, but he murders a homeless man
actually, diversity of thought and inclusion of others is a traditional value
what is NOT a traditional value, is forcing practices that put skin color of the individual>skill of the individual
its not even nuanced, its common sense
@@xX_EltKLLgm-ng_Xx depends on what you mean by “traditional value”
@@xX_EltKLLgm-ng_Xx And?
@@xX_EltKLLgm-ng_XxThe term “traditional values” when used by most people that tend to bring it up is often contradictory to the aspects they proscribe to it; at least when they try to associate it to anything other than a mythical American past. Yeah, it is common sense that meritocracy should be the determining factor for how most things work, but America has never been a meritocracy unless meant in an Animal Farm type of logic. As a culture America has “forced” many practices that put insignificant traits as greater or more desirable than individual skill.
I believe that Bateman actually did kill paul Allen, and the reason it’s contradicted is because nobody knows each others real names and thinks everyone is sombody else
Honestly, the interpretation anybody can give to what happens and doesn't happen in the movie is entirely open. That's also the whole point of the film. Bateman's reality has come undone, and he has to live with that in his own personal hell.
Bateman didn't kill anyone. He is delusional. The only people he actually "kills" are Paul Allen and unknowns and even then when he goes into the closet, the body is gone, it never happened, same with the doorman where he kills him and then shows up and he's there again. This is made even more apparent when he can't bring himself to kill his secretary, that would realize the murders that are inside his head. Paul Allen is alive and Bateman is in a world of delusion and that's what happens by the end of the movie.
The delusion he created of himself is that of this murderer entity that is above all others but the reality is that what others say to him at the end of the movie, he is innocent, he couldn't hurt a fly, he is a joke to everyone else.
I actually really like that interpretation as I've always kind of figured something similar but couldn't really put it to words, I would like to note that you can also extrapolate a sense of irony in that murder because to Bateman Paul Allen is someone of a higher social status, yet in this interpretation no one else knows who he even is, and his murder retroactively lacks both cause (motive) and effect.
@BeanFan999 I also think he did kill the homeless man Al (and his poor dog), and Paul Allen, but I think because his father was in charge of the company, and was allowing his son to work there and paying him to essentially not have to lift a finger. I think he did commit most of those murders, maybe not all of them, but then when he admits to the murder, his lawyer is paid to lie about it and tell him that Paul Allen was with him and not Bateman.
When I watched it, I interpreted it as the lawyer explaining to Bateman how easy it is for an alibi or story to be fabricated.
One amazing detail I see never mentioned, is in the dry cleaning scene the Chinese worker is yelling at Bateman that “Sir, these sheets are clean, there are no stains on them.” Something like that, literally saying there are no stains. And when the other woman comes into the store, the reason she acts strange is because they are completely white.
It was stained. With cran… cran apple
omg cool to know what she said, no one ever mentioned that, it's a great piece of "lore"
Maybe a slight reference to Lady Macbeth, from Shakesperes play: Macbeth. she sees a spot of blood on her hand that she cant wash off. "Out damned spot!"
Cool never heard that!
好污糟 very dirty
好污糟 very dirty
十分污糟 extremely dirty
因為好白嘅 because it's very white
點白返咁污糟 how can it be white again, it's so dirty
唉呀 ai ya
先生，先生 sir, sir
我想同你講 I want to tell you
先生，先生 sir, sir
According to some other guy on the internet this is what the chinese worker was saying (I dont know cantonese)
So many people forget that just because a character is relatable, that doesn’t make them a good person. Sometimes they relate to the most selfish, horrible sides of ourselves that come out on a truly bad day. That’s meant to scare us. Scott Pilgrim is another great example of this kind of character.
Would you care to explain why Scott Pilgrim is another great example for this? I haven't watched or read anything about Scott Pilgrim, only heard about it.
@@malafakka8530 "Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler" -Literally the first line of the story.
Scott's incredibly, INCREDIBLY, self centered but the comic's literally about him and other flawed low key shitty people getting a little better.
@@zashgekido5616 thanks for the reply.
Fr bro
Admittedly I saw an essay on the movie before the comic and knew that he sucked and why cause of it; he is however the kind of person I thought was cool when I was younger.
"Exclusivity within exclusivity." That hit close to home, literally. I live in one of the wealthiest areas in the US, but no one here would ever say that. You're never rich, it's only the guy who lives a mile east of you, makes 100 grand more than you, has the slightly bigger house than you that's rich.
I'm in NW Ct. At one place I worked we had clients like the author Philip Roth and the son of Charles Kaman (Kaman Aerospace, Ovation). To put it simply, I have done a lot of work for people with tons of money. None of the people with tons of money in that area (around Cornwall) really made any fuss about that fact. They tended to be pretty decent people for the most part. Essentially, they had enough money where the fact that they had tons of money was besides the point. +/- 100k would be a fart in the wind to these people. +/- 1 million, that might, might get their attention.
Really the only people who would even use terms like "rich" were the wannabe-rich people out in Avon (really upper middle class). I worked in that area too, doing a similar job and those people were insufferable.
There is such a difference between how those two groups function that it is insane. If you are an insufferable jerk about money, 99 times out of 100 you are one of those wannabe-rich fools. Who delude themselves into thinking that they are actually rich.
addendum: I've watched as a homeowner went on about the new stuff they wanted done in addition to what was being done already. Watched as they were told it would be an extra $40k (this was on top of $150k or so worth of work already being done, back around 06 or so). And marveled as they just said ok, as if it was $5. Just as one example.
Grass is always greener. Looking back I had a fairly privileged childhood, but we were never led to believe that. Perhaps just my parents not wanting us to be spoiled, but also like you said, others are "rich".
That's just a pissing match that rich people have with one another. I had a friend who was actually wealthy, lived in a wealthy neighborhood, and he would swear up and down he wasn't wealthy like his neighbors next to him who barely had a larger house than his family. Tbh, the house didn't even look larger, I just think they had a slightly larger back yard.
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The rich engage in this tomfoolery because it’s easier than reckoning with the fact that they don’t deserve what they have. It’s just basic finger pointing. They know it’s wrong to be rich so they pass the buck to the richer guy.
Poor Americans on the other hand may be richer than a lot of humanity, but they generally still empathize with others, acknowledge the unfairness, and donate m/share whatever they can. The rich just say “but that guy is richer than me. So I won’t share.”
You can go check on every movie essay you can find! Characters may have names but William Defoe’s character is always just William Defoe
He has way too many popular characters to remember all their names.
With why Patrick didn't kill his assistant I like the theory from another video suggesting that he decides to not kill her as she's the only person in his life who has a distinct personality of some sort, a "real person".
The way I always saw it is that he didn't kill her because he finally had an excuse not to take her to Dorsia
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@@brasshydra1389holy fuck that makes so much sense.
I thought he didn't kill her because she was in love with him. That saved Evelyn and Luis Carruthers from being killed too.
@@cbushin well, for me luis was disgust. He showed in the book that he knew she loved him and planned to marry her etc. (In the video) so maybe they kept some in the movie?
RENO in the crossword at 24:46 is actually BONES spelled backwards. You can see that the N and S are written mirrored, and the B is obscured beyond the camera frame and also outside of the crossword itself, and it's also not the only letter written out of place, there's B on a black square next to 37-across.
But I'll leave the symbolic analysis of the significance of this to someone else
I just realized that JoJo’s parodies American psycho in Diamonds is Unbreakable
Very unlikely, araki isn't very subtle with his inspirations, and I don't think he ever mentioned the books inspiring him
@@20thcentury_toy He's talking about Yoshikage Kira's speech that resembles Patrick Bateman's internal monologue where he describes himself
@@Misanthropolis Read my message again.
There's a fantastic video up on UA-cam about how the book may have inspired Kira and it's unbelievable fitting
@@20thcentury_toy "araki isn't very subtle with his inspirations" i guess?? if you knew every single one of the inspirations he takes from i'll say...
As an autistic 17 year old that thing about him just faking social queues and not knowing how to have a conversation without a certain purpose hits a bit too close to home... since I had to consciously learn how socialising works, I've been essentially doing it backwards. 😁👍
I think I can relate, I didn't found out till recently that my parents had been told on multiple occasions to get me tested for autism and they avoided it wanting me to have a "normal" childhood, granted I'm fairly capable socially I think, but when I saw that there were parts I couldn't help but relate to and it scared me to no end, I still struggle with the feeling it evoked from time to time 😂
@@theMimicsBox Exactly, but hey.. no one can be free of all vices.
As long as you aren't going around doing all of the other things Bateman does, you'll be fine. As a fellow person with Autism (originally diagnosed with Asperger's until it got merged into the Spectrum about a decade ago), trust me.
same brother
Sometimes I have wondered if some of Bret Easton Ellis biggest readers is on the spectrum.. I also autistic/ Asperger or what is call today and Ellis is probably one of those writers I read most of…!
I never found this movie "funny".
I got the jokes. I thought they were brilliant.
But the closest it brought me to laughter was a something between a smirk and a grimace.
Satire doesn't get much blacker than this. The tone is closer to horror than comedy.
The lines between horror and comedy are always blurry
Istg I won't be surprised if someone laughed at the Paul Allen's death scene
@@Mentallyheld That's really deep for someone your age, young man.
nah i laughed my ass off at some scenes this shit is hilarious
idk I laughed when Bateman was getting touched by the gay ginger
The Wall Street people Bale spoke with who revered Bateman reminds me of Walter White and how most people completely took the series the wrong way and thought of him as a hero, which by saving Pinkman he did kind of accomplish, but it was nullified by everything leading up to that
Thank you for posting spoilers to a completely unrelated series, thank you for existing and having a pulse.
there is no objective morality to breaking bad
@Lee-km7qq " what someone takes from a movie may not be the same as what you take from it" doesn't mean that it's a wrong take. idk how you watch that movie and not think negatively of patrick bateman maybe except for all the "self care" he does. "subjective" doesn't mean it can't be wrong or it's not prone to scrutiny
@Lee-km7qq art is "mostly" subjective. There are, however, objective criticisms. There is such a thing as intentional writing. There is such a thing as authorship. There is such a thing as story structure, character development, moral dillema's and how these affect our characters. There is such a thing as color theory, there is such a thing as GOOD writing using tools EFFECTIVELY and PURPOSEFULLY.
Everything about breaking bad is SUPPOSED to tell you that Walter lost everything due to his own horrible personality. He could have had his cancer cured. He could have accepted help. He could have provided for his family in a more meaningful way. He could have NOT traumatized his wife and son. He COULD have lived to be a father to his daughter. He COULD have helped jesse.
But he didn't do any of these things. He chose power, a sense of accomplishment and greed all because of the youth, vigor and fame he believed he lost unfairly. He lost his life and his family, not to mention did horrible things along the way, because of pure pettiness.
Yes, you CAN sympathize with that. You CAN discuss the morality of any of his actions I'm not discussing in detail here. That's a good thing. But this DOESN'T take away what the series was trying to tell you.
The "art is subjective" line is just a cliché. It's used by people who try to hide behind dogmatic sentences as if they are unquestionable. It's used by people that refuse to discuss the art they consume. It's used by easily offended snowflakes who hate having their favourite product made for financial gain criticized or talked negatively about in any way shape or form. It's used by normies like you.
Be better.
"most people"
-citation needed
He’s literally me, not for anything else besides the fact he wants to see Paul Allen’s card.
the guys who made american psycho watching the fandom become the very thing they mocked:
Edit: (no, BTW, didn’t change “guy” to “guys”, it was always like that)
*_BREAKING NEWS_*
Twitter users find youtube replies
The director of the movie was a woman actually.
@@toaster9922 the movie wasnt a solo project💀💀💀💀💀
@@toaster9922
The author of the book was a gay man AyKChuALLy
Right? Very similar to Fight Club in that way. With both movies you can learn a lot about a person by asking a two part question: "Do you like the movie if so, what's your favorite scene?"
@@citizenvulpes4562 XD
I cant believe you didn't mention in the scene when he tries to clean his bloodstained sheets before he leaves his face turns to one of disgust just before the door closes, just thought it was a cool detail
Honestly, I read this book as soon as it came out, and thought: THIS! He has captured the spirit of the Ruling Class of the 80s and explains why we've been spinning out of control ever since. Into a universal lack of empathy and self-absorbtion.
One thing i never see people mention about the book is how frequently Donald Trump is brought up as Patricks number one hero
@@hendog5667 Donald Trump's car is mentioned once in the movie iirc
@@hendog5667 shots fucking fired
"it can be palped" fucking sent me
I am the one who palps
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google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
The latin word that it comes from means to grope :)
Bro... You did not just call "Hip to be Square" mediocre. Don't you know that it's a song so catchy that most people probably don't listen to the lyrics, but they should...
I think it's a bit more fair to say that it was popular hence it would not be weird to be perceived as good by a character like Bateman, but on a very surface level with no understanding what it's about.
@@Cavi587
The joke
Your head
I’ve searched for this comment
Bale's performance is literally one of the best in all of cinema. His range is insane.
Hey you are the guy in the thumbnail of this video lol
Honestly I thought that all the murders were fantasy. And more importantly, I think that his claim that he is an unfeeling psychopath is *also* a fantasy. He clearly goes through a rollercoaster of emotions in the film. He also experiences a lot of distress in his life. I think that telling himself he's a psycho is a cope. He doesn't want to feel the feelings he has, or confront the causes of them. So he stares himself in the mirror and demands himself to be dead inside. It's almost a "tough, stoic badass" fantasy taken to the extreme.
Whether he killed anyone or not he is definitely a variety of psychopath lol
The tough stoic badass fantasy isn't his psychopathy - it's his suit and tie. The whole point of Patrick's life is he has NO hardship - He's rich beyond belief, he's attractive and affable enough to date supermodels, he does no work and goes to clubs and restaurants every night.
For any sane person this would be a life of luxury, but Patrick is not sane. He's a narcissistic psychopath. The harshest blow to his character comes from having the worst business card- and for that he either kills, or dreams of killing a homeless person. He tells you himself - his only identifiable feelings are greed and disgust, though you can contend he also feels panic and rage. Why is it so hard to take his word for it?
The whole joke the story plays on Patrick is he thinks that in order to fit in, he has to hide that side of himself - when the grim reality is nobody around him actually cares. Patrick's character literally has a mental breakdown because nobody will listen to anything he's telling them - not even you.
@@PWN3GE but what if the lack of hardship has led to the feelings of being empty, and a husk of a person. plenty of people would say that hardship builds character and without character, are you even a person? what I'm saying is that the life of luxury your describing is supposed to be your reward at the end of a life well lived... Bateman is a 27-year-old with ABSOLUTELY no purpose in life, no passions to pursue, nothing to really strive for so all he can do at this point is play the social games he clearly doesn't enjoy with people he clearly doesn't like for the rest of his life... i think that would drive anyone mad personally.
@@seanunknown6868 But Patrick does have a passion: murder. It's the only thing that gives him any sense of individuality in a sea of identical suits. Which is why he goes insane when he _can't_ gain recognition for it - Patrick realizes he is truly unremarkable in a society that places so little value in human life. There are no barriers to cross, and his confession means nothing.
Psychopaths feel emotions, just not empathy.
My favorite scene is when he returns to his previous appartment where he was hiding all the woman's corpses and he founds out, confusingly, that the place is actually in the middle of someone moving out of it. There, there is an older lady who greets him and, while at first polite with Bateman, seems to immediatly understands what this man is about and the level of danger hiding behind his falses interactions. She became stern and severe with him and just stood firm and strong as she asks him to leave, wich he does with his tail between his legs.
Before that, every woman figure in the movie was in a way or another vulnerable and/or oblivious towards Patrick Bateman. Your video is about masculinity, and the Sigma phenomenom is inherently linked to the capactity of male individuals to interact with women by dissociation as a showcase of dominance in society. Bateman entire discourse with every women he meets is always towards the goal of getting power over them, wich is also a hidden goal behind the Sigma male idea. But while Sigma malism encourages men to act apathetically as a seductive display, Patrick Bateman simply can't act. He has no desires and no goals but he has to fake that he cares to hide his hate for everything. So yes, your take about Patrick Bateman being a poor Sigma male representative is entirely correct, because he's not.
To go back to the old lady scene. As I said, she instantly catch that there's something off about him. And in contrast to every other women beforehand, she looks like someone who had enough experience in life to know that this man is full of violence, and to not let him go any further in their exchange. And in front of a woman who's not scared, not shy, not drunk and with no particular feelings towards him, he has nothing to grasp and no control. The only thing he can do is run away from someone who saw right through his mask.
She's a fellow psycho, ruthlessly hiding the bodies and cleaning the place up so she can sell the apartment and earn her commission. Bateman wasn't ready for that + the shock of the change left him disoriented.
I love that Patrick Bateman has a poster of Les Miserables in his bathroom, thats fun
It was wildly popular among New York elites in the 80s.
@@mollymillions6586 honestly I wouldn't have imagined that
I believe it's a reference to the first chapter of the novel.
@@ROLLERMOBSTER2137 neat, maybe I should check out the novel then? my favorite horror movie's novel version mentions my favorite musical, neat
@@INspectre691 It was a Broadway hit. Broadway in New York in the 1980s was bigger than Hollywood. Movies were for the dirty, uneducated masses, whereas Broadway was for the "Civilized and Sophisticated".
I do think that there is a hidden message in the scene where he kills Al and his dog. He says "I don't have anything in common with you". He does not only mean that they are in different hierarchical positions, but also that Al at least felt something, even if that was cold and hunger. This also implies that if their positions were reversed, Al would probably feel empathy towards him, unlike Bateman does.
You can not put "He is just a loser" and "he no-scopes her with a chainsaw" in the same video
Nice video, one thing that I think is clearer if you read the books is that he did kill Paul Allen, when he goes to the apartment the woman who knows who he is knows because she's been paid off, the book mentions that his family cleans up his messes after him.
Another thing is one of the best jokes that everyone misses, when he says he has a meeting with Cliff Huxtable at 10:50, Cliff Huxtable is Bill Cosby's character in the Cosby show.
Wow, I never noticed that before during the Willem Defoe scene he's says he has a lunch with Cliff Huxtable.
Which is Bill Cosby's character on the Cosby Show. The most popular television show of the 80's.
If you read he book, virtually everything Bateman "enjoys" from TV shows to music to cars are the most mass-market, shallow, paper-thin, pop culture crap (and by "enjoy" I mean absolutely obsess over to the point of literally writing deep, chapter-long essays on the most shallow meaningless crap like a Whitney Houston album because his entire existence is aping real humanity like some kind of masquerading alien trying to blend in by reverse engineering of culture and social interaction).
@@J.DeLaPoerWait.... absolutely obsess over to the point of literally writing deep, chapter-long essays on the most shallow meaningless crap.......... wait... he is a more tame Pyrocynical????
@@Misanthropolis unlucky
Cliff I noticed immediately in the movie. lol
It's the fact that he's so bad and awkward at trying to cover up his crimes that irl he would immediately be caught that makes the sigma community worshipping him all the funnier.
Another Maximunch banger I will now Destroy Wall Street
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
The "literally me" movement is so funny.
its a movement?
I have an entire queue's worth of video essays just about the Literally Me phenomenon and how it relates to American Psycho specifically clogging up my watch later, I can't keep up bwahahaha
Just fyi, old nail guns need a hose connected to a compressor to work. So that probably wasn't real either.
Me when schizophrenia.
I find that the most profound thing about this movie, is that right from the get go,you can tell that everything is fake, the dialog is choppy and doesn't make sense, nobody acts how a human would act, the set pieces are to superfluous. As you go through the movie you really start to understand how fake it is, his entire being is fake and so is the reality he lives in.
Small detail, but the only people who actually act human are the ones that Bateman see's below himself.
Also I don't really find the movie funny, I'm just amazed how much symbolism is in the movie.
Except it's not supposed to be like that!
Every murder he commits is real!
The point of the book is that everyone is as psycho as him! They constantly mix each other up without correcting one another.
The landlord covers up the murders so that way the value of the property doesn't go down.
Please get some media literacy!
People who think it's not real have the most shallow reading of this story.
Everyone is shallow, they're too busy doing their own thing to pay attention to a serial killer underneath their nose! It's supposed to be hyperbole and satire of nepotism.
Everyone acts fake because they're ALL hiding something.
The only people Bateman doesn't kill are the people that show their true selves, IE his assistant.
No one cares to look deeper into what Bateman is doing, because they either cover it up for convenience, or are exactly like him and just don't care enough to look any deeper.
@@citizenvulpes4562 Fair points, although Batemen's reality is definitely skewed, it's fake not because the murders are, but how he perceives it all as, he thinks of himself as inhuman, so his reality reflects that being how everyone acts, you have a point about why everyone contradicts each other, but most of the falseness is what Batemen sees.
@@citizenvulpes4562Relax. You can make your points without sounding that upset. Also, there often isn't only one viable interpretation of a story. As long as it is internally sound and coherent different viewpoint of the same story can be valid. A work can have different meanings that an author did not intentionally create. This does not mean that an author's intention can be disregarded, but things can be more interesting that way. OP also didn't say anything about the murders but about the fake world that Bateman lives in.
@@citizenvulpes4562 "people have a different perspective or interpretation of a work than me? they should get some media literacy!"
@@xaevius5319 Its not up to intrepretation, that is the point. The movie leaves it open to interpretation, but the book all but confirms the murders and later books build upon it. The murders did happen. Bateman himself was killed by another psychopathic yuppie. It is 100% about media literacy because people wouldn't cling to the fantasy angle if they actually read the books. The director herself admits she screwed up badly by portraying it as fantasy in the movie.
Christian bale meets Jewish bale
When do they both meet atheist bale?
What about Pagan Bale
Or Buddhist Bale
Or Catholic Bale
Bale of the Holy Russian Empire 🤔
The fact that this doesn’t have 10 million views should be a crime
Disagree. I am absolutely puzzled, is this meant to be trying to create atmosphere and general vibe of Bateman's persona of generic pretense, or does the author is just that flat, boring and uninspired.
Either way, this wasn't amusing but rather boring, rehashed video, which was done better a hundred times already.
@@droopy_eyesis this sarcasm or something?
Sorry I was about to take away your 69 likes
Paul Allen has million views.
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
I appreciate you going out of your way to identify John Cale as a former member of The Velvet Underground. The fact that they got such a legend to do the score for this movie isn't talked about enough imo
Calling it misogynist is selling it short.
It is completely misanthropic.
There are no good people in it.
got introduced to your channel from the funny lego movie video, was immediately blown away, and it looks like based on this video that I will continue being blown away as long as you keep making this stuff. it's genuinely incredible stuff especially for video essays that aren't multiple hour long deep dives
I think he didnt kill the gay guy in the bathroom not because he's disgusted but because the guy was the first person to show him some modocom of actual care and this freaked him out so much he couldnt handle it
😮
The analysis of the pedestal the young male community has put Patrick Bateman on is correctly recognized, but not correctly analyzed. It's not the status of Patrick Bateman materialistically that brings attention to him, but more of the personality traits that he presents that make young men (aka, the "Sigma Community") feel like they can relate to the character. He makes terribly disturbing choices and has cringeworthy dialogue with others that makes him a relatable figure to young men. This is amplified by the fact that Patrick is on the "top" of the social and economic ladder, especially in relation to those young men who view him. He acts a certain way and gets away with what he wants while at the same time struggling with relatable insecurities. They aren't idolizing him because he's stylish and has a cool apartment, it's his persona, and the things he struggles with that run parallel to those materialistic items. To simply say "there is a lack of media literacy in male social circles" is a poor analysis of the reality of why he is seen in the way he is.
he made this mistake because he thinks art has only one meaning
The movie is made by 2 women and it’s making fun men like Patrick. Even the book is making fun of men like this, showing how ridiculous they are. The young men, in this community, are only looking at the top layer. They aren’t interacting with the story, and lesson it’s teaching them
I mean more directly Bateman comes across as vaguely closeted and neurodivergent. NPD, ASPD and other personality disorders are also extremely disabling.
The scene with Patrick and Jean at his place couldn't have ended in her death, as the nail gun wasn't plugged into a compressor. Although he thought about it, he chose not to because she's the only character that's an actual person and not just some concept or something
Patrick Bateman is an empty suit.
Love how at the end you said 6/10 but both the video and subtitles said 10/10 😭
The signal male memes were funny when they were ironic.
The problem with irony is there are people who think it is sincere. The Flat Earth Society started off as a joke and is now run by sincere believers.
Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots… y’all know the rest
Were they ever ironic?
I always saw it as a grift targeting the self-proclaimed alphas that knew deep down they couldn't pull the act off. Sigma allows them to save face while maintaining their inability to socialize. It's like, they still get to be alpha, but without all the leg work. Considering the vast, vast majority of males on the internet think of themselves as alpha, because of course they do, it's only natural that this would come about. Grifters gotta grift the smoothbrains.
@@huitzilopochtli6414 dude is so lazy he couldn't finish his opinion
@@OpposingFork any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company. Long winded but fits this situation exactly.
your music analysis are genuinely so impressive, i couldve never thought of the stuff that you did
6/10 or 10/10? also him looking at himself while having sex doesn’t make him gay just very narcissistic
it's called a joke
Found the overly happy person.
Autosexuality which is a form of asexuality is a form of queerness. It's not homosexual though.
*Impressive.*
*Very nice.*
*Let's see Paul Allen's comment section.*
Great video though I would disagree on two things:
1. I think he did kill Paul Allen and the confirmation of him being alive was just another mix up. Like it constantly happens in the movie. Bateman killed him out of jealousy just like he tried to kill the other man on the toilet.
2. Bateman is not a homosexual. Honestly the way this was delivered in the essay was a little offensive even though I do not believe it was meant that way. The reason why he stares at himself is that he does not actually enjoy or care about sex itself. He cares about the sovial implications of sex e.g. the social dominance it can represent. He looks at himself because he cares about his self image and wants to make sure he looks good during sex.
you do realise that comment was a joke heard the sarcasm?
I think that was meant to be a joke, though i can get how it could be offensive.
Yeah, autosexuality is not a form of homosexuality. Autosexuality is a form of asexuality.
I don't think I ever have been so confident that a channel will eventually have a million subs down the line from just 5.28K at the time of this comment. I watched your Lego Movie analysis and it was amazing to see genuinely thoughtful and logical ideas presented with your amazing narration. I love your video style, keep on uploading and I'm sure I'll be looking back on this comment in months or years time thinking how much your channel has grown!
Already 2400 more since you made this comment
I work in the same kind of industry as Patrick and I always found it unrealistic that the sun is up in the morning before he is.
As a composer, I appreciate quite a lot the analysis of the score and your use of the proper vocabulary.
That handwritten menu is _abysmal._ Everytime when I just start thinking I've gotten all I can get out of a film I've rewatched and reanalyzed 110 times, I find some brand new overlooked niche characteristic to fawn over. It was truly a project of passion, I love it so much lmao
An excellent video!
However, I disagree with your take on Jean. Especially given the line "Get out of here before I do something I regret" (iirc). Now this is Bateman, of course, but there's also how Bateman describes her in the book ("who i'll probably end up marrying.")
There is also the promotional emails not written but approved by the author, where he and Jean are married and he laments that she isn't the same person she once was, having grown vain and materialistic, concerned about her image.
So while I think it's "very clear" that the only thing that stopped him from killing her was the phone call, I don't think you should brush over Jean's purity so easily. I don't think you should ignore Patrick's complicated look of disgust after the phone call from Evelynn (disgust at Jean, or at himself?). I don't think you should ignore that he said to her "I don't think I can control myself." Is there anyone more "special," so to speak, to Bateman than Jean? That he would say to her the equivalent of "leave, as I otherwise can't restrain myself"?
Is that not inconvenient??? To have her live?????? Is it not inconvenient? To sit through that phone call with her listening?
I would have loved to see you dive into that scene further, although perhaps not relevant to the video.
Anyhow, all those nuances are brushed away with the "very clear" fact that he was interrupted by a phone call. The reading that in the scene, he is trying to find the "bad" in Jean but fails to, is also a "very clear" fit imo. Others have said in the book, the only non-violent fantasy he has is running through central park with baloons, with Jean.
My one complaint: just be careful not to dismiss these things, and with the brievity of your commentary on that scene and the "very clear" remark, you risk people like me getting peeved and either writing essays on how you have made a great error yadayadaor telling you to go f*** yourself lol.
A thoroughly novel and refreshing reading of this excellent work, however. Subscribed!
Don't forget that Patrick actually spares two people: Jean, and Lewis Carruthers. I believe he spared them for the same reason: they both see him with his mask off. Jean learns he's a liar who'd cheat on his own fiancé, and Lewis is actively aroused by the idea of Patrick doing violence to him.
In both scenes, as soon as Patrick is found out he simply wants to get out of the situation. He's more tactful with Jean because he has the opportunity to be - she didn't catch him at his most heinous, so if he feigns regret and tells her to leave he can salvage his relationship with her in spite of such an obvious faux-pas - but I think the conflicted emotion on his face is because he still wants to tell her what he really does, even alluding to it slightly. With Lewis on the other hand, Patrick has a panic attack because Lewis sees him for what he is, and not only is he unafraid, he welcomes it.
thanks for the comment, but I did start the sentence with "I personally think" lol
ironically, he behaves exactly like a self-proclaimed “sigma male” does
Even more ironic is that the whole sigma male shit is just a meme. We understand he's an asshole, it's just funny to pretend like it's 'sigma'. How the fuck do so many of you not get it? Lol.
PB specifically tailors his speeches to be as average and pretentious an opinion-piece as possible in order to construct an external persona that fits in with the collective, explaining their strange, rehearsed sound.
However, he cannot help but let his internal persona bleed through, explaining the ways in which his interpretations of the music are warped, almost backwards, to the generally accepted meaning.
So, the subtextual theme arrives in a triple layer of irony: that PB accidently shows his true individualistic side when he copies the collective (un-individual) attempts of his peers to be seen as individuals.
Perhaps, after all, it is clear that (despite their external efforts to appear so) his peers are not individual, they are carbon-copies of one another in both appearance and demeanor. Pat Bateman attempts to follow suit, but he is the only one who is truly an individual, his psychopathy being the only distinguishing feature in a sea of yuppie corporatism and Oliver People’s glasses.
Patrick’s line “inside doesn’t matter” sums up the movie. They don’t care about working diligently because only the Fisher Account will help your career. Patrick is engaged to someone he dislikes because they’re in the same social group. Nobody listens to each other and they pick up women in noisy clubs.
Bateman is literally the personification of modern societal virtue signaling, saying whatever he thinks is necessary to appeal and manipulate others for his own gain. Bro's the king of getting brownie points.
I dunno why but he´s litteraly as I feel like he´s in constant pain.
Still he's quite pathetic tbh.
Which is exactly what I think many people mean when saying that in response to Bateman. He's not "literally them" because the people watching him are murderous psychopaths, but because they're relating to his obvious mental struggles that come with living in a superficial world as he does.
because he is
He is. That's why he's literally me
_"My pain is constant and sharp. But I do not seek relief from this state; in fact I wish to inflict it on others."_ --- Literal direct quote from the book.
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
google supports their presidential candidates by giving their hate groups messages a voice while shutting down people questioning it
I actually sat here and tried the hand gesture from the Huey Lewis scene.
Also, Bateman is definitely a pathetic dude, possibly one of the lowest forms of human life. People probably get confused and think he's somehow a cool on that Sigma grind when it's actually Bale's magnetic performance drawing them in. Key word there being "performance".
lmao same, had to get off the floor to do it. it’s a very pop & lock move, especially the way he bounces it for emphasis. it’s been so long tho that I couldn’t make mine nearly that crisp :P
The majority of SIGMA POSTING is ironic mockery of dudebros on the internet. Only a small amount is legitimate.
@@thegatorhator6822that’s how it starts sure, but a lot of times in these online communities “satire” is just a thin veil for real beliefs.
Source: I was one of those guys for like 2 years
@2a-le6lr that's precisely how irony poisoning works
@@diskpoppyWdym
“He goes psychopath to psychotic… innit?”
I think you have to be from that era to really get the "hip to be square" song scene in the movie. The song was never meant to be taken seriously. It was a joke song similar to Weird Al, but with a bit more class. Most people that watched it on MTV back then get that and its a guilty pleasure, while also having a fun and catchy beat, but the reason it is used in that scene is because Bateman does NOT get that and in turn describe the song way more serious than it really is. In short, him trying to mimic humanity and failing.
A few other comments:
Nail gun scene: I actually think he has doubt because you have the trigger finger scene moving to pull, but then steps back a bit just before the distraction. Then you have the "you should go" part afterwards. Sure, via something she said and so on. He could have killed her, but the bathroom scene has already showed that he is unable to kill if he reasons something is off.
Lawyer saying he met Paul Allan: They know, just like the house broker at the end. They, via hes father and hes political power and so on, are covering for him. They dont care that hes valuable son, who he has working a "none job" in hes company, killed some low life people. They clean up everything. While the Paul Alan being dragged out to a car and blood scene is more likely hes imagination or maybe just the blood. One can argue that Paul Allen is cleaned up by other people afterwards.
Police officer: I kinda think he is also in on it. Hired by hes dad and that is why the cops seems to know everything, has all the clues, yet do not really do anything.
Christian Bale meeting Wallstreet floor workers (When that was a thing): I think allot of them just view going for the kill as an analogy for what they are doing and therefor liked the character. Lets not forget that ALL the banks knew years before that Bernard Madoff was scamming people. That is why they, the banks and their employees that invested money for the banks, did not invest in Bernard hedge fund, but none of them said anything ether. With that kind of morals and selfishness. I am not surprised a decent number of them would not view Bateman character as an ironic one, but maybe more like a metaphor for what was needed to succeed.
I always thought he couldn't kill Jean and the other guy because they were the only people to actually recognize him as a person (in the books they're the only ones who remember his name, for example)
At 22:11 Bateman says he has a lunch meeting with "uh, Cliff Huxtable." Cliff Huxtable was a character in an 80's American sitcom, The Cosby Show. The show was very popular so the name would have been instantly recognizable to a lot of Americans. It's pretty funny that Bateman chose that name for his lunch lie.
Anyone who read the book and couldn't tell it was satirical should not be criticizing it.
Bateman has been prime meme material for years whether it's the sonic OC business card scene or dubs guy on 4chan. People harnessing his meme potential doesn't mean they all love murder.
24:48 what about the Johnny cash song "i shot a man in reno just to watch him die"
“I shot a man in RENO…”
-Folsom Prison Blues
@@UnityAgainstJewishEvil okay I corrected the name
The best essay i've ever listened to.
Well written, good "analogies", good points made that i didn't hear before.
"I have a lunch meeting with Cliff Huxtable"
Don't gloss over the fact that he lied to Willem Defoe by saying he has a meeting with Bill Cosby's character in Cosby Show.
Love how he says "My name is Patrick Bateman" and it's like, he's not Patrick Bateman, it's just one of his personas, as if he has many.
Could it be that Patrick Bateman is a metaphor for corporate banking. Empty, not of substance, psychotic, mean and will say nice sounding things that are actually empty and cheap
hey, cool it with the antisemetic remarks
Wait, so the movie is secretly protesting against fiat currency? That shit is deeper than I have thought.
I do hate how much of his social mimicry is so similar to Autism. People already think we lack empathy.
I mean you do. Not to a murderous extent, but you for sure struggle with the concept more than the neurotypical types. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just the nature of your struggle.
I’ve worked with autistic people, and they do tend to lack empathy. Of course none of them tried to murder me lol.
@@EddyOfTheMaelstrom thats not how autism works
@@EddyOfTheMaelstromNot having empathy and not being able to pick up on social cues are two entirely different things.
@@EddyOfTheMaelstromwrong. A lot of us have a blunted affect which means even though we feel emotions it isn’t displayed. I can feel extremely happy yet I look pissed off. It sucks.
Young men who are confused and unsure about themselves idolize a fictional empty husk of a human being. It actually kinda makes sense.
the sign reading "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT" is actually the final line in the novel too
The lack of details in the book with simple commonplace nouns to represent everything is an indication of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia and schizotypical disorders are incapable of retaining detailed information about their confabulations so yeah that might also explain the masterful writing of the book
Both the book and the film absolutely have misinterpretations in mind, it's a part of the art of laughing at the people the story is about. The reader who understands the text is encouraged to think about the reader who doesn't, and laugh at them. They probably didn't expect the deification of Patrick to play out the way it did, what with our newfangled internet culture changing everything, but it still fits in perfectly, becoming another facet of how we enjoy this work.
Patrick Bateman is literally me because I have a mental illness that borders to insanity and I have constantly violent urges and tendencies. The quote I felt most represented by which Patrick said is the one when he says he doesn't want a better world for anyone and that he wants to conflict his own pain onto others. When he said that, I understood that he was literally me.
well that's really not cool for you, my condoleances. Out of morbid curiosity, what is the particular disorder (if you're cool with telling, of course) ?
@@jeanremi8384not them but the story is relatable. I was closeted transfem with autism, anxiety and undiagnosed ADHD. I probably have some kind of personality disorder like avoidance or narcissism. Not really sure of the details but I feel extremely disgusted with intimacy and affection. I do not have the ability to form emotional connections with others. I feel empathy, compassion and have a strong sense of duty and justice. I try to be kind but I don't really feel affection for other people. Doesn't mean I want to hurt others but I don't get close to them. Anyhow I used to struggle a lot with hypersexuality, anger and resentment and I had vivid homicidal and suicidal fantasies. Life's pretty shit but it's a lot better than before.
Detective Kimball needed his own spinoff movie.
Dafoe is a legend.
I loved your video. I think yours is a perfect anaylsis of the whole movie and bateman.
I also love the way the male sigma community, in a so fun way but at the same time scared, goes to admire Bateman which is exactly the opposite of what they aspire to become.
10:50 "He's definitely lying about his lunch meeting, the clock shows 11:29 AM"
What are you on about? That's a perfectly normal time to go out for lunch.
@pepenelez5726 As far as I can tell pretty much all of central europe at least. What time do you have lunch? At 4?
@pepenelez5726Basically everywhere? Where the hell are you from dude
My name is Yoshikage Kira. I'm 33 years old. My house is in the northeast section of Morioh, where all the villas are, and I am not married. I work as an employee for the Kame Yu department stores, and I get home every day by 8 PM at the latest. I don't smoke, but I occasionally drink. I'm in bed by 11 PM, and make sure I get eight hours of sleep, no matter what. After having a glass of warm milk and doing about twenty minutes of stretches before going to bed, I usually have no problems sleeping until morning. Just like a baby, I wake up without any fatigue or stress in the morning. I was told there were no issues at my last check-up. I'm trying to explain that I'm a person who wishes to live a very quiet life. I take care not to trouble myself with any enemies, like winning and losing, that would cause me to lose sleep at night. That is how I deal with society, and I know that is what brings me happiness. Although, if I were to fight I wouldn't lose to anyone.
I think he is suppost to be a sympathetic character it’s easy to relate somehow to his suffering and lack of meaning and I think he’s suppost to represent what a materialistic hyper image focused world (which is what the world was at the time) breeds. The reason he does kill that one girl is because she represents someone real and a sence of value.
Wow! you are using the Windows Vista/Windows 7 default butterfly picture as a profile picture. Nice
I disagree that he only spared Jean because of the phone ringing.
I always interpreted scene to represent the fact that Jean is the only person who genuinely cared for him. She is the only person he interacts with who isn't consumed by consimerism and therefore he couldn't bring himself to kill her
mmm.... not really though, I think he wants to kill somebody and in a fit, he choose Jean, however in the moment of truth the phone call happen, and he now can re-think how this will affect him, (always him) and this is not from some "she cares for me" but a "she could maybe become a problem" (I think a lot of people have this idea of the clasic, oh this fella is bad but she...oh she is special, she cares for him and so... he will care for her eventually" and that is not always true).
The YMS joke at the end was great 😂
I can't believe there's so much lore behind the dubs guy
1:53 "I might be a serial killer, but you know what I am not? an anti-semite"
I think you have to pair the breakdown of reality of whether or not patrick killed paul allen with his closing statements: it doesn't matter if it was real or not. Regardless if he literally killed someone, they reflect his innermost, darkest desires. But in a society where it honestly doesn't matter, there is no catharsis to be reached, no acknowledgement of a deeper self. Just like in the beginning, there's only an abstract idea of him that everyone already has of him and what their roles are; he simply is not there.
I think people miss the importance of Evelyn's line - "Your father practically owns the company. You can do anything you like, silly." This implies Patrick's family is also wealthy and can be covering up or ignoring his crimes to protect their image.
Christian Bale has stated in several interviews he found the script and the film hilarious. It is supposed to be a dark comedy .