American Psycho is a slasher film from 2000, directed by Mary Harron. It is hilarious, terrifying, and an amazing satire of America. From the start of the movie the psychotic main character, Patrick Bateman, played by Christian Bale, states that he is not real, and that there is only an idea of him. This idea is strengthened by all of his co-workers looking and acting the exact same as him. The sentiment is that, if Patrick Bateman exists only as an idea, then he is both no one, and yet represents everyone. Bateman serves as a reflection of its audience as a result of American capitalism. His insanity is outright criticism of the deplorable natures of American society.
Bateman acts as a very unreliable narrator in the film. This stems from his own mental issues; even from the start of the movie, his skewed perception of reality is very obvious. There are scenes where Bateman drags a body through an apartment complex, an ATM asks him to feed it a stray cat, and where he blows up two cop cars with a pistol. After all this, he ends up calling, and eventually meeting up with his lawyer, where he confesses to killing “20 or 40 people,” most notably Paul Allen, whom the lawyer claims to have met with after Bateman “killed” him. The movie closes with Bateman drinking whiskey in front of a door with a sign saying “this is not an exit” representing how, although he got away with all of his crimes, he is trapped with his growing regret and bloodlust.
The film was released to a highly polarized reception. Many misread the film and judged it for its usage of violence and women. Recently the film has seen a second push towards mass media, however again not in its originally intended way. With the rise of people from Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha using toxic masculinity to claim themselves as “Alpha males”, this movie has become a symbol of their beliefs. Although the official definition of an “Alpha Male” is a dominant male, social media has twisted it into simply being hateful. These self-proclaimed “Alphas” say that they can relate to him. However, Bateman goes against almost every standard these people use to define an “Alpha male”. Patrick Bateman is an unstable, easily-emasculated, and uncontrollable psychopath. He even chops off his co-workers head simply because he felt defeated by his business card being clearly superior to his own. The one linking trait there seems to be between “Alpha males” and the character is the toxic masculinity that is shown clearly through the film’s themes and language to be a large problem. Despite the fact that the parody in American Psycho is that Bateman is everybody, “Alpha males” have almost nothing in common with him.
With the rise of “Alpha males” lying about being anything like Bateman, the movie has a second parody, as it unintentionally makes fun of the “Alpha community”. Although American Psycho was meant to parody toxic masculinity, many have looked up to Bateman as an idol.
