American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman is More Relatable Than You Think
Why we are obsessed with reading about crime
American Psycho is a novel written by Bret Easton Ellis, that was subsequently adapted into a film in 2000. It is famous for its protagonist Patrick Bateman, who takes pleasure in brutally torturing people around him in New York City. Both the novel and the film are shocking for the portrayal of such a heinous psychopath, however, I’d like to suggest that we are more like Bateman than we’d like to admit.
Bateman takes on the position of voyeur, yet due to the highly modern world he lives in, this voyeurism is digital. Bateman’s obsession with pornography is evident in the novel with repeated instances of Bateman watching pornography, and even stating that ‘last night I had dreams that were lit like pornography’. His livelihood surrounds voyeurism-from whilst he is dressing, ‘the TV is kept on to The Patty Winters Show’, to the fixation he has with ‘returning videotapes’, or even the viewing of the murderous scenes he creates himself when torturing his victims.
The novel explores Bateman’s satiation of his perverse desires involving sex and violence, yet even in the face of the horror of the murderous scenes, it was the sexually graphic nature of the novel which first made the publishers hesitant to take on…
